I’m doing a public talk at the Museum of London later this month and have come across two rather good quotes, one about London and one about the broader context of politics.

“There are two great railways stations, one for the north and one for the south. The great roads out of London are 120 feet wide, with two divisions, one for slow-moving and the other for fast-moving traffic; and there will be a huge belt of green fields surrounding London.”
Aston Webb, talking about London in 2014 from the perspective of 1914 and showing that you can sometimes be roughly right.

“It is as certain as anything in politics can be, that the frontiers of our modern national states are finally drawn.”
The journalist H.N. Brailsford getting it horribly wrong in 1914.