It’s always bitter sweet reading people’s recollections of that mighty polis.
I still visit every year or so and marvel / grimace at its ongoing transformation from a vast network of distinct, interconnected, mostly native occupied low-rise ‘villages’ to the claustrophobia-inducing, financial services strip mine whose operators loom over the city
from the sky-piercing monoliths that have forever altered its skyline.
Barely a handful of people I grew up with there remain, the rest having long since fled to the countryside or abroad.
Perhaps my dear old father, the most Anglophile of Greeks, said it best when he remarked after a recent visit, “I went to London and didn’t once set foot in England.”
Romanian born, in Bucharest, but grew up in Los Angeles. I recently went to Bucharest with my wife and daughter and loved it. Compared to Los Angeles it was clean, friendly, and had a much better, well, everything. So much so that my American wife wants to move there.
I've never been to London but one of my cousins spent some time in school there and she hated it, went back to Bucharest.
So refreshing to read this love song to London. Also the astute Anglophile advice about the constant self-deprecation.... "how in life, like in love, those who don't respect themselves will never get respect". George Orwell said it eighty years ago "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality". And I said it about two years ago (which I can't resist sharing here):
"England and the English: how best to characterise them? Well: theirs is a land of poets and dreamers; a land of fiercely independent gritty people who know how to take their drink and dance a jig. And you just can’t help but love to hear them sing. Then there’s the food of course – the marvellous food. And so sexy; with that famous dress sense, such gorgeous specimens of masculinity and femininity the English are overall. If all - or any - of the above was passed through some AI software it would grunt out “Does not compute, does not compute!” Why is this so? If the English are pricked, do they not bleed? ......self-deprecation is a gambit all too likely to backfire. It’s the sort of thing foreigners might associate with the boy or girl they used to bully at school. And as every shy teenager comes to ruefully note, a bit of bravado gets you places that self-effacement doesn’t. Then there’s the faintly annoying do-gooder undertones of support for the underdog. None of it is the stuff of which Mel Gibson movies are made..... " .https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/englishness-as-a-brand
What a fantastic post and beautiful read, Alex. A Brit would never get away with writing something so flattering of the U.K! It's lovely to hear that, despite your experiences, you still remain fond of London. This sense of shame about being English is something I started to feel in my teens (before national self hatred became a national pastime!) At first, it was down to punk/anti establishment sentiment, and a fair bit of ignorance, but later became more political, after becoming more aware of things like colonialism. Now, finally in my fifties, I have reached a place where I am no longer ashamed of my nationality but neither am I a flag-waving patriot (the most English thing you'll find in my Hungarian home is a huge jar of marmite!) Maybe what I feel now is more a mixture of love and fondness for my old country, yet acknowledgement of its past mistakes. Moving to Hungary has had a huge impact on how I feel about national identity, though. It's allowed me to see how a sense of patriotism, respect and love for your own culture really contributes to community and social harmony. Despite what the MSM media say about Hungary, the Hungarians I know are not nationalistic. But they do value their own culture. The Brits could learn a thing or two from the Hungarians. What I sense now when I visit the U.K, and from what I read, it's becoming more and more fragmented, divided and low-trust. I can't help but feel this drip drip of negative (national) self talk, as well as what we're hearing from the media, is really eroding any positive sense of identity and pride. I don't know what the solution is, but it makes me sad to see this decline. On the whole, England is(was?) a great country and for the first half of my life, while growing up and living there, I was very happy.
Excellent brief summary of nesimtire; you allude also to the related pathology of brazen denial. Maybe more irritating still is denial of *intention*. I call it the 'Ce Boss?' syndrome, as in: 'Ceeeeee mbos? Ce (h)am facut?!' Gypsies are the undisputed masters of it but some Romanians are extremely worthy adepts.
I moved to London from Scotland about 23yrs ago and started off in Bloomsbury.
It was a weird combination because if you ever stopped going with the flow of London, you realised how alien it was compared to what you knew.
English people came in from all points of the compass and had a sense of dislocation from each other, never mind those from Wales, Ireland or the waves of immigration that arrived.
Ultimately, I learned just to accept it all, keep rolling and colonise your own piece of the action.
A good post for me to read today - I move to London in about 36 hours. Can't say I'm optimistic about the prospects for recovery, but I do have a sense that, as you say, there's still a good deal of genius about.
I had a similar feeling to your reaction to the Pakistani riot when I first moved to London. One night my friends and I were on quick visit to the corner shop in a nice West Hampstead street. I saw a man on a bench clenching a large kitchen knife and stabbing the wooden armrest with it up and down, up and down. My first thought was, oh my God what if he takes out that frustration on me, second thought was I better call the police, third thought was nobody in my group has either noticed or seems bothered, fourth thought was why bother the police, and fifth thought was London isn’t for me.
I love it as a visitor but you have to develop an immunity to human misery that I’m not sure is possible for everyone.
As a Canadian who lived in London (now in the South West) I too saw this English self-hatred and thought it queer. Canada has plenty self-haters too, much more since I left when Trudeau's apology tour began. But the British self-hatred is different. Canadians can, and do, deflect their hatred onto the British whenever possible, especially if they don't have an Anglo last name. But in England, there is nowhere to shift the blame for any perceived errors of colonialism, so they take on the fashionable posture of ancestor-flagellation and distancing themselves from anything remotely pre-Blair. I remember discussing the British Museum at a team lunch where the more upper-middle class managers spoke of how awful it was for taking all these cultures precious artefacts. When I pointed out to them that the Assyrian exhibition would be rubble now because of Isis, I got blank stares and then finally a reply from my Department Head, "Yes, but that's just one example." These managers failed to see that the respect for great civilisations of the past is a uniquely British value. The British colonialists prized civilisation so much that they instinctively valued it when they saw it elsewhere. Instead they get painted as greedy, stupid thieves. But thieves don't typically build sacred buildings to store and show off their goods, do they?
Britain has two competing traditions – one that’s humanist, devoted to ideals of freedom, equality (not equity), brotherhood of man, genuine informed democracy and speaks to the principles of Bertrand Russell liberalism, and another that’s Tory ethno-authoritarian, brutally white supremacist, and bound up in ruthless zero sum hierarchy.
Factions of the latter tradition - currently more ascendant than at any time since WW2 - see the words and forms of liberal democracy as mere rhetoric and facilities, to be exploited at will as tools to sell hegemony from the moral high ground, and violated whenever it serves the Machiavellian purposes of opportunist post-colonial extracttion and the preservation of generrational power.
Everything good that's come out of Britain is a product of the first tradition. Everything else, the second.
I lived in London for 6 years as a student and everything you have written rings true. It is a special place, where cultures and history come together in imperfect harmony. Backset with both towering metal architecture of the new age contrasted by centuries old stone buildings, it has this distinct worldliness to it that I’ve not seen in any other city. I love it and miss it.
Now, living back on the east coast of the US, I see how much of what I took in London as “Western” was for granted. The simple fact that education is seen as a meaningful end in itself in the UK, and not simply as a tool for advancement, has had massively beneficial results for Londoners, creating an atmosphere of general interest in others and promoting a kind of civil/social engagement that is sorely lacking in my country. I remember how you would see an artist, a banker, a builder, and a businesswoman all sitting outside a pub having a chat about politics, current events, or maybe some sort of shared passion. If you try to talk to someone at a bar about something you have read where I am now, they would immediately feel like you were trying to to make them feel ‘stupid’ and either act like you’re a pretentious asshole, or more likely just pretend they know what you’re talking about to save face for their own ego. It’s all about optics here in America. In London, I at least had the feeling that your character was considered to be the most important part of you. That is definitely worth something in this increasingly vapid world of glib, pseudo-moralising self-worshippers. Too bad it costs both arms and legs to live there and it’s only getting worse!
Just got back from my first-ever visit to London (I'm a born and raised (and will likely die) Californian). It did notice a distinctly higher level of politeness and civility, even among the crush of different peoples and cultures. It's not gone.
Never feel guilt over things for which you are not guilty. That would eliminate much of "wokeness,"
What a wonderful ode to London, Alex.
Thank you.
It’s always bitter sweet reading people’s recollections of that mighty polis.
I still visit every year or so and marvel / grimace at its ongoing transformation from a vast network of distinct, interconnected, mostly native occupied low-rise ‘villages’ to the claustrophobia-inducing, financial services strip mine whose operators loom over the city
from the sky-piercing monoliths that have forever altered its skyline.
Barely a handful of people I grew up with there remain, the rest having long since fled to the countryside or abroad.
Perhaps my dear old father, the most Anglophile of Greeks, said it best when he remarked after a recent visit, “I went to London and didn’t once set foot in England.”
Romanian born, in Bucharest, but grew up in Los Angeles. I recently went to Bucharest with my wife and daughter and loved it. Compared to Los Angeles it was clean, friendly, and had a much better, well, everything. So much so that my American wife wants to move there.
I've never been to London but one of my cousins spent some time in school there and she hated it, went back to Bucharest.
So refreshing to read this love song to London. Also the astute Anglophile advice about the constant self-deprecation.... "how in life, like in love, those who don't respect themselves will never get respect". George Orwell said it eighty years ago "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality". And I said it about two years ago (which I can't resist sharing here):
"England and the English: how best to characterise them? Well: theirs is a land of poets and dreamers; a land of fiercely independent gritty people who know how to take their drink and dance a jig. And you just can’t help but love to hear them sing. Then there’s the food of course – the marvellous food. And so sexy; with that famous dress sense, such gorgeous specimens of masculinity and femininity the English are overall. If all - or any - of the above was passed through some AI software it would grunt out “Does not compute, does not compute!” Why is this so? If the English are pricked, do they not bleed? ......self-deprecation is a gambit all too likely to backfire. It’s the sort of thing foreigners might associate with the boy or girl they used to bully at school. And as every shy teenager comes to ruefully note, a bit of bravado gets you places that self-effacement doesn’t. Then there’s the faintly annoying do-gooder undertones of support for the underdog. None of it is the stuff of which Mel Gibson movies are made..... " .https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/englishness-as-a-brand
What a fantastic post and beautiful read, Alex. A Brit would never get away with writing something so flattering of the U.K! It's lovely to hear that, despite your experiences, you still remain fond of London. This sense of shame about being English is something I started to feel in my teens (before national self hatred became a national pastime!) At first, it was down to punk/anti establishment sentiment, and a fair bit of ignorance, but later became more political, after becoming more aware of things like colonialism. Now, finally in my fifties, I have reached a place where I am no longer ashamed of my nationality but neither am I a flag-waving patriot (the most English thing you'll find in my Hungarian home is a huge jar of marmite!) Maybe what I feel now is more a mixture of love and fondness for my old country, yet acknowledgement of its past mistakes. Moving to Hungary has had a huge impact on how I feel about national identity, though. It's allowed me to see how a sense of patriotism, respect and love for your own culture really contributes to community and social harmony. Despite what the MSM media say about Hungary, the Hungarians I know are not nationalistic. But they do value their own culture. The Brits could learn a thing or two from the Hungarians. What I sense now when I visit the U.K, and from what I read, it's becoming more and more fragmented, divided and low-trust. I can't help but feel this drip drip of negative (national) self talk, as well as what we're hearing from the media, is really eroding any positive sense of identity and pride. I don't know what the solution is, but it makes me sad to see this decline. On the whole, England is(was?) a great country and for the first half of my life, while growing up and living there, I was very happy.
Excellent brief summary of nesimtire; you allude also to the related pathology of brazen denial. Maybe more irritating still is denial of *intention*. I call it the 'Ce Boss?' syndrome, as in: 'Ceeeeee mbos? Ce (h)am facut?!' Gypsies are the undisputed masters of it but some Romanians are extremely worthy adepts.
I moved to London from Scotland about 23yrs ago and started off in Bloomsbury.
It was a weird combination because if you ever stopped going with the flow of London, you realised how alien it was compared to what you knew.
English people came in from all points of the compass and had a sense of dislocation from each other, never mind those from Wales, Ireland or the waves of immigration that arrived.
Ultimately, I learned just to accept it all, keep rolling and colonise your own piece of the action.
A good post for me to read today - I move to London in about 36 hours. Can't say I'm optimistic about the prospects for recovery, but I do have a sense that, as you say, there's still a good deal of genius about.
shout out to farquad
This is wonderful!
Romanian-American here. Born in Romania, raised in the US. I’m constantly astounded by your love of colonialism, particularly US-flavored.
I had a similar feeling to your reaction to the Pakistani riot when I first moved to London. One night my friends and I were on quick visit to the corner shop in a nice West Hampstead street. I saw a man on a bench clenching a large kitchen knife and stabbing the wooden armrest with it up and down, up and down. My first thought was, oh my God what if he takes out that frustration on me, second thought was I better call the police, third thought was nobody in my group has either noticed or seems bothered, fourth thought was why bother the police, and fifth thought was London isn’t for me.
I love it as a visitor but you have to develop an immunity to human misery that I’m not sure is possible for everyone.
As a Canadian who lived in London (now in the South West) I too saw this English self-hatred and thought it queer. Canada has plenty self-haters too, much more since I left when Trudeau's apology tour began. But the British self-hatred is different. Canadians can, and do, deflect their hatred onto the British whenever possible, especially if they don't have an Anglo last name. But in England, there is nowhere to shift the blame for any perceived errors of colonialism, so they take on the fashionable posture of ancestor-flagellation and distancing themselves from anything remotely pre-Blair. I remember discussing the British Museum at a team lunch where the more upper-middle class managers spoke of how awful it was for taking all these cultures precious artefacts. When I pointed out to them that the Assyrian exhibition would be rubble now because of Isis, I got blank stares and then finally a reply from my Department Head, "Yes, but that's just one example." These managers failed to see that the respect for great civilisations of the past is a uniquely British value. The British colonialists prized civilisation so much that they instinctively valued it when they saw it elsewhere. Instead they get painted as greedy, stupid thieves. But thieves don't typically build sacred buildings to store and show off their goods, do they?
Britain has two competing traditions – one that’s humanist, devoted to ideals of freedom, equality (not equity), brotherhood of man, genuine informed democracy and speaks to the principles of Bertrand Russell liberalism, and another that’s Tory ethno-authoritarian, brutally white supremacist, and bound up in ruthless zero sum hierarchy.
Factions of the latter tradition - currently more ascendant than at any time since WW2 - see the words and forms of liberal democracy as mere rhetoric and facilities, to be exploited at will as tools to sell hegemony from the moral high ground, and violated whenever it serves the Machiavellian purposes of opportunist post-colonial extracttion and the preservation of generrational power.
Everything good that's come out of Britain is a product of the first tradition. Everything else, the second.
I lived in London for 6 years as a student and everything you have written rings true. It is a special place, where cultures and history come together in imperfect harmony. Backset with both towering metal architecture of the new age contrasted by centuries old stone buildings, it has this distinct worldliness to it that I’ve not seen in any other city. I love it and miss it.
Now, living back on the east coast of the US, I see how much of what I took in London as “Western” was for granted. The simple fact that education is seen as a meaningful end in itself in the UK, and not simply as a tool for advancement, has had massively beneficial results for Londoners, creating an atmosphere of general interest in others and promoting a kind of civil/social engagement that is sorely lacking in my country. I remember how you would see an artist, a banker, a builder, and a businesswoman all sitting outside a pub having a chat about politics, current events, or maybe some sort of shared passion. If you try to talk to someone at a bar about something you have read where I am now, they would immediately feel like you were trying to to make them feel ‘stupid’ and either act like you’re a pretentious asshole, or more likely just pretend they know what you’re talking about to save face for their own ego. It’s all about optics here in America. In London, I at least had the feeling that your character was considered to be the most important part of you. That is definitely worth something in this increasingly vapid world of glib, pseudo-moralising self-worshippers. Too bad it costs both arms and legs to live there and it’s only getting worse!
Just got back from my first-ever visit to London (I'm a born and raised (and will likely die) Californian). It did notice a distinctly higher level of politeness and civility, even among the crush of different peoples and cultures. It's not gone.