London is no longer an English city

[Leafyhouse]

Said by John Cleese (he of Monty Python fame), recently. Link to story is here:

www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48451384

What do other people think? I do see London's diversity as being its great strength, but maybe it's just because I live in the London bubble - and maybe the view from the rest of the country is utter horror that the capital seems to be becoming increasingly disconnected from the country. Both economically and culturally. Hence the Brexit vote - Remain in a sea of Leave.

What's the view from others?

Charley50 made good points.

I have loved in London for 40 years having been born and gone to school elsewhere.

I fully recognise the ‘you live here, you are a Londoner’ welcome and vibe.

London is a fast moving city. We enjoy being the capital and generally welcome visitors, but it isn’t harsh if you get a bad reaction if you stand on the L on an escalator or pass through the barrier and stop dead to work out where to go. Just as I would expect short shrift if I visit a rural area and moan about the combines getting going at 4.30am during harvest.

London is full of all sorts of people. The main thing I experience is you don’t stand out if you are different, no one bats an eyelid on your clothing, your name.

London is the only city that makes a net financial contribution to the UK, and Londoners who earn ordinary salaries, millions of us, have jobs but suffer with high housing costs.

London is hardly on it's own with regards to Brexit
London: 59.9% Remain
Cardiff: 60% Remain
Bristol: 61.7% Remain
Manchester: 60.4% Remain
Oxford: 70.3% Remain
Edinburgh: 74.4% Remain
Agree with your post TheRedBarrows
I fully recognise the ‘you live here, you are a Londoner’ welcome and vibe

I'd even argue that its multiculturalism makes it feel like a much safer place, as a woman. That's how I feel in London anyway.........

If you want to wind people up, you can always tell them that there were black soldiers in London before the English even existed as a nation. (Roman army). London has always been a melting pot since its inception as a trading port - that's the bloody point!

It's still my capital as a English person and many of the objects that define us as a nation exist in it (tower of London, the London eye, red phone boxes, black cabs). I have also been to Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, etc. London is simply massive compared to the other cities on this island, leading to a centrifugal effect for jobs, events, attention, funding and migration. It is what it is.

If you want to wind people up, you can always tell them that there were black soldiers in London before the English even existed as a nation. (Roman army)

....One of whom, Septimius Severus, rose to the rank of Governor of Britain and then Emporer of Rome.

With the slave trade and imports of sugar and cotton through Liverpool and Manchester, Liverpool particularly was incredibly wealthy but the wealth was siphoned off to London. Although a bit 'fluffy' the Time Team exploration of the original docks in Liverpool is interesting highlighting it's importance when trade with the Americas expanded.
The way that London is happy to drag in the 'treasures' held in regional museums to the detriment of those outside London.

Always worth watching the opening scene of "Notting Hill" (as in Carnival) to see if you can spot the two non-white people?

(One quickly ducks for cover and the other runs away.)

The way that London is happy to drag in the 'treasures' held in regional museums to the detriment of those outside London.

Did you mean The way that London is happy to drag in the 'treasures' from the rest of the world to the detriment of those outside Britain?

Regional museums and galleries like Tate Liverpool and St Ives, V&A Dundee, the Hepworth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (and indeed Salt's Mill) are all going some way to redressing the balance within Britain but the Elgin Marbles? looted treasures of the Summer Palace? The V&A's and British Museum's warehouses of East India Company treasures, so many only a tiny fraction goes on show?

I would say cultural imperialism is a VERY English / British trait......

Emilyontmoor
Both really. Closing or restricting space/ hours in places outside London, similarly with many of the arts.
Just part of my 'beef' that London and the SE gets up to 5 times the spend on infrastructure compared to many in the North and Southwest.
The Guardian piece about the Pacer trains, selling them off to make community halls or whatever!

I don't understand why anyone thinks that cultural diversity, enormous hustle & bustle, lots of skin colours, aren't English. London has been like that for 150 years+.

Was London very 'English' when Dickens wrote Oliver Twist?

Red double decker buses, Mind the gap, maritime climate in a seat of tarmac & old buildings,, River Thames, Buckingham Palace, the Gherkin, City traders, world class Universities, Tower of London, Westminster, Soho. Are these not satisfyingly English enough?

Yes, London has been like that, but much of England hasn’t.
Many people don’t spend any time in London and to them it is alien.
My mum lived in Somerset, didn’t go to London for 40 years although she was born there. Her life was more village gossip, country buses and weekly markets. Cultural diversity didn’t come in to it much. She’s the same age as John Cleese.

Most capital cities, for which London is not an exception, are half way houses between small provincial towns and the 'world class' of capitals which are all different, but have many similarities. The large buildings stating that it is 'important' and that 'we' as humans have bagged that space.
If they are international trading centres, as London is, the nature off the occupations is different to other cities with greater emphasis on multi culture and language.

For Bronte sisters London would have been like visiting a foreign country, too.

Everywhere outside Yorkshire is 'Foreign' and vice versa.

London has always been our most multi-cultural city, ever since the Romans turned up. Port cities are always going to be more international than a small rural village, because it's what it does, and it's why London developed into our capital. I work for a multinational company (not in London) and one of the things I like about it is that I walk down the corridor and hear all sorts of languages being spoken.

I have lived in London, and hated it, mostly because I was always broke and back then (the past is another country,) you had to pay for the museums and galleries. I grew up in rural Dorset, and I still love it there, but it's not where I'd go for cultural diversity. We need both. The great thing about Britain is that there is so much variety, be it the weather, the landscape, people's background's, everything. Life would be far duller if everything was all the same.

What is an English city though?

You can rule out:

York, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield, St Albans, Exeter, Chester.

Any other 'English' cities to add to this list?

London has never had an indigenous population. It was, like all the other cities mentioned, over run by Europeans.

Leicester is a serious fail on 'English' as well.

Peterborough, Birmingham, Nottingham, Bradford, St. Albans to add to the list of insufficiently 'English', arguably. I suppose Cardiff might be more 'English' than many of the above.

{over run by Europeans.}

That is a disgusting expression, worthy of Goebbels.

I have lived in five UK cities and i know quite a few others very well. In my experience the least English city is Liverpool. It has a completely different vibe to the rest of the UK. It’s a great place.

For Bronte sisters London would have been like visiting a foreign country, too.

With their Irish heritage ?

{With their Irish heritage ?}
How dare people want to move around and explore pastures new.
Some were forced of course.

I haven’t read the whole thread but I have lived in London for 25 years. I moved here to do my nurse training.
I absolutely hated it to begin with but very very slowly I began to fall in love it. I honestly think that London is one of the most child friendly cities in the world. Even the most erudite museums do back packs for children.
At the South Bank centre, they do a free event every Sunday and loads of people take their toddlers there just to run around.
The acts I have seen range from Mexican rock bands to Viennese quarterts.
The Viennese quartet were amazing- they let children on the stage and hugged them and complimented their ‘lovely dancing’
For me, London shows that multiculturalism works.
We take you as you are - nobody gives a fuck about where you were born or the colour of your skin or your religion.

We take you as you are

( Bronte bore alert)

Charlotte B visited London numerous times to see her publisher.

And both she and Emily taught in Brussels, tho Emily suffered from crippling homesickness and went back to Haworth.

Emily and Charlotte studied in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with a Brussels Professor and one of her books is set there. Charlotte and Ann visited London early on in their success to squash rumours they were men and Charlotte in particular went on to visit London several times including visiting the Great Exhibition five times, an exposition of all things that conformed to the romantic Victorian idea of “oriental” (and perpetuated in the collections of the British Museum and V&A.) She said “It is a wonderful place — vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things.” I don’t think she had a problem with “foreign” in the sense of the romantic notion of empire that prevailed in Victorian society. There is plenty of racism in their books. They were high Tories and racism in that sense was their norm. In fact it is a perfectly valid literary theory that the Brontes, particularly Emily, took refuge in Haworth, because their independence of thought made strict Victorian society an uncomfortable place for them, the notion of the Brontes as heretics. I doubt they Found London society too “foreign”........