London has always been more that a capital city, and this collection of writings which reflect not merely a sense of place, but the teeming variety of the town which prompted Samuel Johnson to declare - "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life". Essays are seen through the eyes of foreigners as varied as Talleyrand and Dostoevsky, Lenin and Mazzini, we see criminal London, low life and high life, beggars, politicians, royal families, intellectuals and animals. From "Black Beauty" to Virginia Woolf and from William Wordsworth to Peter Simple this anthology is a varied collection of work.