Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

In London, I've always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be London, at least once a fortnight.

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.

London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.