Quotes & Sayings About Londoners

I love Chatsworth, Winchester Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle ... Every time I'm in the vicinity of something old and worth looking at, I try to go. You don't even have to leave your home town to see some places. How many Londoners have seen the crown jewels? Not many, and they'll blow you away, I promise. — Alan Titchmarsh

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners. — Winston Churchill

I would like to express to all Londoners, to all of the British people, the solidarity, the compassion and the friendship of France and the French people. — Jacques Chirac

AN ESTIMATED 1,100 Londoners were killed during the April 16 raids - the most devastating night of the Blitz thus far. But it held that distinction for only three days; on April 19, German bombers hit London again, killing more than 1,200 persons. Almost half a million London residents lost their homes in the two attacks. The — Lynne Olson

I feel like all Londoners relate more to New York - L.A. doesn't feel like a 'city' city. It's like a sleepy town. — Natalia Kills

Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts. — Rebecca Solnit

And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and duck's bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing, some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars, donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their maws, all chewed up except for their helpless paddling feet; limestone or leaden, metalled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving from buttresses, walls and roofs. — Hilary Mantel

I lived the life of Londoners - and thence comes my immense gratitude and my deep attachment with the British people. I do not think there has ever been a people in the world who displayed a heroism as discreet, as mundane and as universal. — Maurice Druon

Somehow, this was one oddity too many. He could accept "Mind the Gap" and the Earl's Court, and even the strange library. But damn it, like all Londoners, he knew his Tube map, and this was going too far. "There isn't a British Museum Station," said Richard, firmly. — Neil Gaiman

Newspaper and radio rule this country. — Sam Selvon

I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a centre for modern culture. — Richard Rogers

I think the wolves all died when the great forests were cut down. That howling you hear is only the Londoners. — Hilary Mantel

They had gathered at Eastcheap to wait. At this time of day, the marketplace ought to have been thronged with people looking for bargains, moving from stall to stall, examining the fresh fish, choosing the plumpest hens, buying candles and pepper and needles. The stalls were open, but the fishmongers and cordwainers and butchers were doing no business, despite the growing crowd. The sun was hot, flies were thick, and the odors pungent; no one complained, though. They talked and gossiped among themselves, strangers soon becoming friends, for the normally fractious and outspoken Londoners had forgotten their differences, at least for a day, united in a common purpose and determined to revel in their triumph, for they were pragmatic enough to understand this might be their only one. Now they joked and swapped rumors and waited with uncommon patience, and at last they heard a cry, swiftly picked up and echoed across the marketplace: She is coming! — Sharon Kay Penman

Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon. — Stef Penney

All the things that have happened to you, all them years. Where you've been and who you've been with. All the different people I've met. I always seem to get on with them. If I see people I always talk to people. That's just what I do. — Craig Taylor

We live in different times. I would not have described London as a city of gun-toters but that was when Londoners still said sorry when you knock them over and called cappuccinos fluffy coffees & policemen, bobbies! — Tyne O'Connell

London is a city built on the wreckage of itself Osama. It's had more comebacks that The Evil Dead. It's been flattened by storms and flooded out and rotted with plague. Londoners jut took a deep breath and put the kettle on. Then the whole thing burned down. Every last stick of it. ... People thought it was the end of the world. BUt the Londoners got up the next day and the world hadn't ended so they rebuilt the city in 3 years stronger and taller. — Chris Cleave

Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashes. As if to say: Look. Look what we made. — Ransom Riggs

New York is on a grid system, so it's slightly less challenging logistically, but Londoners are more relaxed in their selling approach. With that intense shopping service in New York, it's easy to get carried away and make a wrong purchase. Here, there's a different flow. You are left to explore, and individuality is key. — Erin O'Connor

I don't know any Londoners 'cos I'm from Manchester. — Karl Pilkington

Given that all three of us were Londoners, we paused a moment to carry out the ritual of the "valuation of the property." I guessed that, given the area, it was at least a million and change. "Million and a half, easy," said Carey. "More," said Guleed. "If it's freehold. — Ben Aaronovitch

Messages continued to arrive from the Earl of Warwick, urging Londoners to hold firm for King Harry. Marguerite d'Anjou and her son were expected to land at any time, while from St Albans, Edward sent word that Harry of Lancaster was to be considered a prisoner of state. At that, John Stockton, the Mayor of London, contracted a diplomatic virus and took to his bed. — Sharon Kay Penman

People say that New Yorkers aren't friendly, but I think they're more friendly than Londoners. Here there is a front-footed nature of Americans. You can go out on a night out and meet 10 random people and stay in touch with them, whereas that's not going to happen in the same way in London. — Theo James

Sometimes I can be walking down the street, or riding a bus, and suddenly I see somebody who remind me of somebody I know back home, and I close my eyes and find myself thinking of the sea, or the taste of grafted mango, or the smell of saltfish frying, and then I come back to myself and open my eyes and realise where I am. — Caryl Phillips

If something like one in nine Londoners is a Muslim, then I want one in nine police officers to be a Muslim. Which means we are currently about 2,000 short. — Ian Blair

I do love New York. But I'm a Londoner at heart. — Kate Moss

I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report, I am determined to level with Londoners. — Boris Johnson

But what is coffee, but a noxious berry, Born to keep used-up Londoners awake? — Charles Stuart Calverley

Cybele, or the Great Mother - Magna Mater. This Cybele was supposed to have conceived a passion for a young man named Atys, and when Atys failed to respond to her advances, she became jealous. When she caught him having it off with someone else, she drove him so mad that he castrated himself. I am afraid that respectable young Londoners had celebrated their devotion to Magna Mater by doing the same - and we know this for sure because the river near London Bridge has also yielded a fearful set of serrated forceps, adorned with the heads of Eastern divinities. — Boris Johnson

His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr. — Peter Ackroyd

It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city. — Anthony Trollope

Londoners, with their noses pressed to cold windows, smiled, for a mid-summer storm was raging across England. Zues had blessed their land, taking away the bright happy sun and replacing it with gusty winds, lashing rain and utter misery. — Anya Wylde

We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings. — George Galloway

I'm made up of immigrant stock. I went to a primary school in London. I grew up eating Spangles, why shouldn't I be as well placed to speak for Londoners as anyone else? — Boris Johnson

They say that at Thomas More's trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. "Let me put you out of doubt," he said to the jurymen. "Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it." Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, "Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be! — Hilary Mantel

Indeed, in the midst of the devastation, most Londoners demonstrated a dogged determination to live as normal a life as possible: it was their way of thumbing their nose at Hitler. Each morning, millions of people left their shelters or basements and, despite the constant disruption of the train and Underground systems, went to work as usual, many hitchhiking or walking ten or more miles a day. Their commutes, which frequently involved long detours around collapsed buildings, impassable streets, and unexploded bombs, could take hours. Of the staff at Claridge's, Ben Robertson noted after a particularly violent raid: "Everyone was red-eyed and tired, but they were all there." The head waiter's house had been demolished during the night, but he had shown up, as had the woman who cleaned Robertson's room. "She was buried three hours in the basement of her house," another maid told Robertson. "Three hours! And she got to work this morning as usual." FOR — Lynne Olson

I am often struck by the anxious inferiority many well-educated British people display towards the U.S., particularly Londoners dazzled by New York, when many postcolonials are accustomed to regarding Britain's old imperial cosmopolis as the true capital of the western world. — Pankaj Mishra