Four hundred years ago the genius was part of the industry of human happiness based south of the river an ironic location, given the suffering on the south bank of the Thames. What London lacks in transport facilities, it more than makes up for spiritually Church of England worshippers with lofty aims can choose from St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Southwark Cathedral, which celebrates Shakespeare.

Half-century-old buses stutter along streets laid down by the Romans nearly two millennia ago, while beneath the streets the world's original and most extensive Underground railway ticks along to its own eccentric clockwork. Londoners put up with a great deal in their daily lives, not least coping with a constricted capital that has not enjoyed the benefits of mass clearance of the metropolitan arteries (as Baron Haussmann did in Paris) or a tidy grid (which keeps Manhattan moving). ), London has a 'downtown' airport that is within easy reach of the financial centre or, for the past decade or so, centres.ДЄ good definition of a 'Londoner' is 'a person from somewhere else' a better definition is 'a tolerant person.'. Alone of the capitalistic capitals (New York, Tokyo, Frankfurt. And it is an excellent example of re-using the docks that enabled London to wrest, in the 19th century, the title of global capital from Amsterdam. It is also, thanks to the UK's openness in aviation, a battleground between British, Belgian and French airlines. The Docklands airport is a small gateway to the capital that is a pleasure to use. To get a sense of the reality behind the numbers, take a cross-section through the ultimate global village starting at the antithesis of Heathrow: London City Airport. London is the world's capital, and ex officio capital of Europe, the northern hemisphere and, let's speculate, the solar system. The French capital has a stronger claim, yet it has been comprehensively out-pointed in our survey of civic greatness.

However lovely the German spa town may be, it does not have the qualities of scale, diversity, wealth and culture that defines a great capital (and no, it wasn't just that I was there in the wrong season). Halfway through Europe's most glorious century, the 19th, Eugne Guinot opined 'in Europe there are two capitals: Paris for the winter and Baden-Baden for the summer'.

The capital of the world hemingway