I loved living in London, and I didn’t want to leave.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy.
I am British. I love Britain for all its faults and all its virtues. My husband is American and I am largely based in Los Angeles, but whenever someone asks me where home is, I automatically say ‘London.’
One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?
London is a modern Babylon.
If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.
London gives you that freedom to… be you.
I’m an adaptable nomad. I love Paris, I’ve been living in Los Angeles and New York since 1990. I love London, too. My roots are inside of me.
The first play I wrote was called ‘Twenty-five.’ It was played by our company in Dublin and London, and was adapted and translated into Irish and played in America.
I loved London. In the 1970s… it was very exciting, really wild.
I like the idea of an open, international London that thrives on attracting hard-working, talented people but has the confidence to tell them they must play by the same rules as everyone else.
Where I live is about an hour and a half West of London. I live in the countryside… It’s a classic little village, and it’s idyllic in a lot of ways.
Both me and my wife’s extended family all live within a 50-mile radius. Like me, a lot of them did time in London then started drifting back to the countryside and the sea. Perhaps it’s a homing instinct.
My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light. If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.
I have a lot of expectations and a lot of goals I want to fulfill, but the biggest dream is still to make the Olympic team for London.
London clubland divides itself between the St James’s refuge for toffs, and the Conquest of Cool, for the arts and media.
I ride a bicycle daily in London and have done for many years.
Mark Rylance is one of my heroes. I saw ‘Jerusalem’ four or five times, twice in New York, twice in London.
When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn’t have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.
London is the clearing-house of the world.
I would say that I definitely play a different role with my style; I like to mix it up a bit according to wherever I am. I dress differently in New York, L.A., Paris and London.
I don’t know how anyone gets anything done in cities. How can you live somewhere like London or New York, when there are 81 things to do every night? Awful. Give me solitude and space any time.
I didn’t do very well when I was at school, so my dad gave me the opportunity to travel in Africa. I drove from London to Nairobi. It was incredible.
I’ve put myself forward to be involved. Whether I get picked, we’ll have to wait and see. Obviously everybody is excited about it, about the Olympics coming to London and the football being played in different parts of Britain.
I’ve always said that L.A. is the city of America’s future. It is to the world what London was in the 19th century and New York in the 20th because of the growth of the Pacific Rim countries. We’re the portal to the emerging world.
If I could afford to live in London I would.
I’ve missed London so much for its fashion. No disrespect to the girls in Manchester, but some really do look like clones – there’s a lot of hair extensions and fake tans. You’re free to experiment down here.
If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it – London, the people of the south.
In 2008, I was in a London park when I came across a fledgling crow that had fallen from the top of an oak tree. A woman happened to be passing, and she said that she rescued animals, so she invited me back to her house. It turned out she was the wife of Jeff Beck. Jeff was there, and we ended up jamming together.
People drive everywhere in L.A., so you get very little human interaction… but N.Y. and Chicago are like London… L.A. lacks the social interaction.
The City of London has never been known for understanding technology and has never matched Silicon Valley’s tradition of knowledgeable investment in technology start-ups, just as the U.K. government has never matched the vast investment made by the U.S. government.
I will try to win the Olympics gold in London.
My mum, Jennie Buckman, was a north London Jew who, with my dad, proudly chose to raise me and my two brothers in Hackney.
The way everyone in London is right up against each other makes it very real to you growing up, the fact that people have different lives to you. And that causes problems; of course it does.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: ‘It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.
The feathers have been retired to the London Hard Rock Cafe. I don’t obsess about it as much. Also, it’s strange – the better physical shape I get in, the less I care about what suit I’m covering myself up in. I’m not really out to flaunt it, but I’m just more comfortable in my own skin.
Theatre is relatively easy if you’re British – you’re living in the theatre capital of the world, London – there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
I have run a general election campaign pregnant and ran Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign commuting to London with a new baby so I already have my system set up.
I don’t hate humanity and I’m not interested in people who do. Although, it’s funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. ‘London Fields’ is one of my favorite books ever. And it’s indefensible! But he’s so funny… I forgive him everything.
Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
I was only 18 and I’d be 22 if I was competing at London. I’m stronger and more experienced and I know I would have won gold.
I’ve been wearing Red Roses since I was 22. Jo Malone London is woven into the fabric of my life, and I couldn’t be happier to be working with a brand I love so much.
Comedy comes from a place of hurt. Charlie Chaplin was starving and broke in London, and that’s where he got his character ‘the tramp’ from. It’s a bad situation that he transformed into comedic one.
I’ve always been an outsider. Even in London. If I returned to Scotland, I’d feel a complete foreigner.
I would say L.A. is more polite than London – it’s a very careful place. People talk a lot in code.
When I come to London now it’s like being in L.A., because they know me like I’m at home.
I’m not a bad boy now I’m living in Russia. London was great but there were too many distractions.
What fascinates me about London is its multi-ethnicity, the coexistence of cultures and religions, but I do not see myself living here for very long. It’s too big, too much stress, too much of a metropolis.
London is obviously such a huge, complicated, difficult place, but it’s such a vibrant cultural place.
During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.
Markets rebounded quickly from morning jitters after the London Thursday terrorist bombing.
Folk music is where I come from originally. The very first thing that introduced me to playing guitars at all was skiffle – my cousin had been in London the summer that skiffle was big.
I love to shop vintage clothes; in London, I usually go to Relic and Alfie’s Market. I usually brunch around London Bridge, where I live.
The London games mark the 24th anniversary of my winning two golds and setting the world record in the heptathlon. Someone is going to want it; records are made to be broken – it’s only a matter of time. I hope mine will outlive me.
There’s something about doing theatre in London – it sinks a little bit deeper into your soul as an actor. It’s something about the tradition of theatre, about performing on the West End stage.
When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.
