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(There has always been a London tradition for big swaggering buildings that don't fit in. In the twenties and thirties it was the blocks of Portland stone; Portland Stone; it has such a dignified ring; surely Portland stone would have been welcomed; surely it is a quintessentially Londonesque building material, the greyness, the sobriety? but no; it was found to be an intrusion into the fabric of London: "those mountains of Portland stone and concrete that tower above us" Osbert Sitwell muttered in 1928).

In London we cannot talk, as in Paris, of beauty, harmony; that is not he kind of city that London has ever really been; yes, enclaves of harmony here and there; but as a whole, let us face it, London is deeply unlovely; unlovely, but we love it for its great floundering, wounded and fragmented self; the wounds of war, of demolition, of cut price and crackpot architectural utopianism, of just too many years of laissez faire, housing speculation, insufficient planning, bad planning, deprivation of funds, irregularity of funds. It is preposterous in its anarchic clutter, in its wastes of space in the spindliness of its wavering up hill and down dale suburbs.

"London" writes Peter Ackroyd "has always been an ugly place. Contemporary criticism of "modern architecture" apparently emerging haphazardly and without due planning has been anticipated by dismayed or disgusted Londoners of every century." But it is not just a matter of architecture. Elsewhere in this article he continues:

"London is a dark city because it has been built at the imperatives of money and power rather than the needs or aspirations of its inhabitants."

It notably lacks virtues that other cities have, social, aesthetic, urban, hedonistic virtues. One loves it in spite of its dank, sallow self; no, worse, because of it. It inspires the most intense love-hate tributes; intense love, intense hate. Alexander Herzen, socialist thinker, who came to (wealthy and comfortable) exile in London in 1852 writes:

"On one side the stalactities of the Houses of Parliament would loom through the darkness…on the other, the inverted bowl of St. Paul's….and street-lamps…street-lamps…street-lamps without end in both directions. One city full fed, went to sleep; the other hungry, was not yet awake…for all this I came to love this fearful ant-heap…"

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