In Quotations – serie

Since its humble beginnings as a ford for oxen across the river Thames in the tenth century, Oxford has been an inspiration to generations of writers and thinkers, who have admired its ‘dreaming spires’ (Matthew Arnold), or warned of its excesses, as did Anthony Trollope: ‘Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent’. This compact gift book is packed full of witty, scandalous and entertaining quotations about this famous city from the Middle Ages to the current decade.

‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,’ said Samuel Johnson in 1777. Since then the capital has been characterised variously as a ‘riddle’, a ‘cesspool’ and a ‘modern Babylon’, and both Londoners and visitors alike have continued to share their candid views of a great city in a variety of literary forms. This compact gift book is packed full of witty, scandalous and entertaining quotations about this famous city from the Middle Ages to the current decade.

Over the centuries, Paris has intrigued, revolted, scandalized and most of all captured the heart of many a visitor. For Dickens it is the ‘most extraordinary place in the world’, for Hazlitt, ‘a beast of a city’, and for French writers, the essence of civilization: ‘I maintain that, for people of breeding, there is no salvation out of Paris.’ claimed playwright Molière. Describing the capital variously as a city of lovers, gastronomy, fashion and filth, myriad quotations – sometimes poetic, sometimes humorous and always fizzing with insight – are collected here.

‘I have struck a city– a real city – and they call it Chicago ... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages,’ so wrote Rudyard Kipling on his tour of America in 1899. From these inauspicious beginnings rose the ‘windy city’, home to the first skyscraper, gateway to the Great Lakes, birthplace of modern advertising and shorthand for stories about violent crime during America’s prohibition and Al Capone’s dominance of the ganglands. This book offers candid views of an extraordinary town, which has attracted citizens from all over Europe and the rest of the world. They have made the city what it is today – and written about it variously with affection, loyalty, disgust and amazement.