The Emanation of the Giant Albion

Old London, you must understand, is a cackling old whore. She is big, ugly and has blackened teeth and bad skin under the caked make-up; her warts are ill-hidden and her clothes not of the current mode. She is the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, throttling the life out of the Indies and the tea trade; she is Mother Gin, dashing her childrens' brains out against the steps in the rookeries of St. Giles. She is a villainess of the blackest stripe, of the old school. Mind your purse when you walk with her, because her fingers are nimble and her morals as open as her old sewers.

But she's built on the bones of Boudicca and the Gloriana herself; she's seen kings and queens and lords and she's seen a fair few of them lose their heads. She won't lose hers over such a little trifle as this. Jacobites and Chartists and Fenians and Roaring Boys and Nazis and the IRA have all boasted that they'll bring the old strumpet to her knees, and where are they now? They cast themselves against her and she wore them all down in the end.

This is the city of Hawksmoor and Wren; the city of the Ratcliffe Highway and the confessions of de Quincey, of Spring-heeled Jack and Francis Dashwood, of small quarrels in Deptford and great reckonings at Tyburn, of old Leather Apron and his red days of autumn. What do these poor fool people imagine they can teach old London of wickedness?

London's bones were old before the Romans came. Fire has scoured her flat; plague raddled her and still she reels out of the shadows, too much make up, stinking of cheap gin, skirts ridden up and though you know you shouldn't, still you can't resist her leering grin and promise of adventure in the dark.

History sits to one side plotting new abuses to heap upon her, this fallen woman of a royal line, and she endures defiant and unbowed, with a twisted grin and a dare. Don't worry about old London. She's seen off her share of black eyes in the past. Save your pity for those who have done it, for when London finds them she'll show none, like the cool and ruthless businesswoman that she is; no. In lieu of pity, she'll show them her own justice.