London’s Big Dig Reveals Layers of History
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
He blamed shifting sensibilities over time, and had he known the phrase at the time, he'd have probably described it as political correctness gone mad.
What strikes me is the way the essential purpose of London, and especially central London, hasn't changed. Since the Romans, it has been a financial or commercial centre. And therefore a centre of wealth and partying.
Slave girls might no longer be sold there (at least not with paperwork), but London is the capital of contracts.
Nitpick: The City of London is not particularly central, and City is what contains the remnants of old Roman Londinium. The article misleads there by leading with a picture from Piccadilly Circus which is pretty much in the middle of the heart of London, while most of the digs the article talks of are happening in City, which is east of the centre.
City borders on the centre, and has a few tourist attractions, but you can live in London for years and never have a reason to go there unless you work for a bank etc.
It is specifically City of London that was the undisputed financial centre (now that role is shared with Docklands, even further East). It's like world to itself compared to the rest of London (especially as City even has a unique governing model where corporations are assigned votes).
It is if that's where you go most of the time. I only rarely go west. Mayfair was once described as a nice village on the outskirts of London
In terms of modern London though, I take it as defined by the M25, and on that scale, the everything from Greenwich to White City is pretty much central.
> In terms of modern London though, I take it as defined by the M25, and on that scale, the everything from Greenwich to White City is pretty much central.
If you take expansive definitions like that, sure. But if e.g. people tell you they're "going in to London", odds are they're talking about Westminster unless they happen to work in banking.
There are endless definitions of this, but the point I was making is that when people think of London, City is rarely what they're thinking of. You see it even in the article, where they chose to lead with a picture from the centre of Westminster and describes it as "in the heart of London".
EDIT: This is particularly relevant in context of your original comment about the "essential purpose" of London: Westminster was nerver part of Roman London/Londinium - it was formed as a separate town. It's purpose was entirely different. What you describe as central London includes a number of other old towns with entirely different purposes to City.
In some ways it isn't even part of England or the UK. It has its own administrative, legal, and financial structures, it owns significant prime land around the rest of London, it has its own police force, and it even has its own political representative in Westminster (unelected, of course).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_remembrancer
People are often confused by this, because if they think about it at all they assume the City is a trading district where the banks live.
But it's a lot more than that. Its role in British and world history is huge. Its influence is also shadowy and relatively poorly documented, which is an interesting thing in itself.
I am not quite sure what point you are trying to prove, the City is mapped in full even on the most restrictive tourist map. It contains the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London. It is in Zone 1 of the tube. Except for some geographical and political quirks, I can't believe anybody, especially not Londoners, are going to be mislead by the article assumption.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c