London
Frank Sinatra sang an old pop song called A Foggy Day in London Town. The Clash performed one called London Calling. Even Elvis Costello did tune called London's Brilliant Parade. There's just something about the city on the Thames that has lured poets and painters and romantics and rebels for millennia.
Maybe it's the legendary fog lining the walkways off the river. Perhaps it's got something to do with the coziness of the pubs and famously friendly Londoners themselves. It's most likely, though, that London's allure is some combination of all and none of these-some ineffable and unique combination that makes London one of the most famous and beloved cities in the world, no matter how gray and heavy the skies hang and how inevitably the rains roll in from the North Atlantic.
London has captured the imagination of the world since the Romans set up camp there around 43 C.E. In fact, "[a]ccording to findings displayed in The Museum of London, the initial language of London was Latin with much Greek spoken due to the presence of Greek speaking Roman soldiers and businessmen" (www.en.wikipedia.org). But this didn't last long, and after the fall of the Roman empire, various Celtic tribes, as well as the Angles and the Saxons, moved in and made the city their own. The English language as we know it today is the result of both the Germanic tongue of these Anglo-Saxons as well as of the French language that was used after the Norman invasions of 1066.
Whatever the derivation of the English language, it has been the basis of some of the most important feats of literary achievement in the history of mankind. From Shakespeare to Shaw and from Dickens to Woolf, the expressiveness and range of the English language has proven to be the perfect medium for conveying the nature of the human condition when pen is put to paper.
But the history of London is about far more than literature, and the present is just as impressive as its past. Today, London is one of the world's cultural and political centers, and what happens in this city often reverberates around the world. Many critics of popular and high culture, in fact, believe that modern London is the place to live and study for those wishing to keep their fingers on the carotid pulse of the Western world. Writers like Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, artists like Damien Hirst and Abigail Lane, and even chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, have all made London a center of their creative lives.
For students, studying in London can prove to be the kind of life-changing experience of which few people ever dare to dream. The city itself is not only famous for the history of its universities, but also for the number of enthusiastic and ambitious students living and studying in the city today. As a result, students from all over the world are drawn to London, and studying there is just as much an international experience as it is a British one.
For students who want to understand the culture from which much of the West comes, as well as for those who yearn to be in the middle of all the most exciting developments in our modern world, London is the place to study. But perhaps Henry James put it most succinctly: "It is difficult to speak adequately, or justly, of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent" (www.msnbc.msn.com).
