Professor Vanessa Harding

Caitlin Morrissey

What is the DNA of London from your perspective, and what forces do you think have led London to acquire a certain set of traits?

Vanessa Harding

I tend to have a things-happen-by-accident view. They do accumulate over time, and they do then become path-dependent, but I'd find it hard to say that there was anything intrinsic or inherent to London that has made it develop the way it is. It seems to me that it's something that's happened over time with a combination of forces interacting with it. That's not to say that London and Londoners don't acquire or develop a sense of themselves and a belief in what their history means, but I'm not quite sure that that in itself is the driving force.

Caitlin Morrissey

And what sort of traits do you think London has managed to acquire over time if you were able to pick them out and name them or characterise them?

Vanessa Harding

I think a certain amount of confidence seems to be it. And that is the confidence from having been over many centuries the largest, the most economically powerful city or unit in the United Kingdom and obviously, for a number of centuries, the capital of a global empire.

Greg Clark

Well, let's get into it a little bit more, Vanessa, and just invite you to, in a sense, expand on that. So self-confidence is clearly a critical trait. How, in your view, was that acquired, and how does that then manifest now? 

Vanessa Harding

I think a confidence in London is acquired almost by experience, that it is a combination of fairly accidental features that mean that London emerges as a capital city of a very centralised nation-state. And the fact that London has an unusually powerful voice when it comes to interacting with the central state seems to me what things have built on, so the fact that central government, for example, for much of the late-Middle Ages and early modern periods, was dependent on finding capital, finding funding through London for the things it wanted to do on a national scale. And indeed, I mean, that continues now. That sense of owning the economic power gives people a certain amount of confidence.

There are other tensions. There are other real tensions between the city and the country over time. And there's a very strong country interest, in a historical sense, that is to say, the land-owning, the aristocratic interest. But London has tended to see itself as not necessarily opposed to that interest, but at least having a different perspective and a different set of-- a different kind of agenda for what it wanted from national government, and it has never been slow to put that forward. 

Greg Clark

I think we should ask you a little bit more about this relationship between London and the country, and then the countryside, as it were, and London. So London and the state; London and the country. But before we do that, can I just ask you to say a little bit more about these accidents because it's a very interesting perspective to see it as a series of accidents. 

Many people talk about London as being a kind of-- an organic city, don't they, which is kind of fertile but not planned as it were. What do you mean by accidents, and what examples would you give, Vanessa? 

Vanessa Harding

Well, I think one of the most interesting examples in London's history is the impact of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century which seems to herald quite a significant shift of cultural and economic power towards London. That's to say the whole of the country is affected, but the small advantages that Londoners have at that time is magnified into major advantages over the 150 - 200 years.

So, I mean, Londoners don't bring the plague on themselves or anybody else, but after the huge political and economic shakeup that it brings about, London is doing much better than any other British-- or English or British city and that London merchants are able to leverage their financial advantages, their contacts with the Crown to emerge from the late mediaeval recession in a much stronger position. 

Greg Clark

Very interesting. And, of course, you're the expert on this. And it’s fascinating that London, in a sense, accelerates that way. Are there other examples of accidents that you think have been important in London's path? 

Vanessa Harding

I suppose by accidents, I don't simply mean single catastrophic effect or events but things that might or might not have happened and that change things. I think that there are-- well, there are, as you write in your-- sorry, as you write in your chapter, the foundation of London on a particular site in order to serve a particular set of interests, which survive for another 300-odd years, but which then disappear, I think that's quite important in making London visibly a centre of Roman Britain. And what is then interesting to explore is what happens when the raison d'etre for having a capital city in the southeast of England with connections to the continent-- what happens when those reasons disappear?

And I think the period between the end of Roman London and the development of late-Saxon, Norman London is quite an interesting one because there is then a period in which there is a new settlement outside the walls of the Roman city that reflects a new-- well, perhaps not world order but a new political and geopolitical reality, which is the role of northern invaders and settlers and conquerors and the orientation of England and British interests towards the north North Sea rather than towards France and Southern Europe. So that's an interesting moment at which it might well have been that London would disappear. It doesn't completely do so, partly because of the spread of Norse and Viking trade and settlement all along the North Sea and Atlantic coasts.

But it's very striking that when London is re-founded under the late-Saxon monarchs, particularly under Alfred, it takes advantage of the Roman city, the walls but also the name of London, the idea that if you wish to make a centralised land-based state, that London is the place for the capital to be.

Greg Clark

And is your point that the Roman endowment was sufficient to make it obvious to Alfred and his clan that that was the place to put the capital? And what were the claims of Canterbury or any other place? Is that what you're saying, that Alfred consciously chose London and then when William arrives, London is the obvious place for him to then rule from? 

Vanessa Harding

Yes, it's not quite as single-minded as that. I think that in pushing back the Danish invaders and the Danish invasions, London is a strong point almost on the border of that. But London is still a walled city; it is a fortifiable centre. It has a Roman-founded church, I mean, from mediaeval Rome. It has the potential, I think, to develop as a city that will be at least one of the capitals of late-Saxon England, because there's still important functions carried on at Winchester, for example, the capital of Wessex. So it's partly about uniting the smaller English kingdoms, and it's partly about making an assertion against Danish and Norse settlement in eastern and northern England. But I think there is a conscious connection to an imperial past, to an attempt to say, this is what a capital is, or this is what a major city is, yes.

Greg Clark

With a consciousness of London's, as it were, inherited capability as a trading post, or not particularly?

Vanessa Harding

It's hard to say because the mid-Saxon settlement around Covent Garden and Aldwych had been a perfectly successful trading settlement. So I think it's more the notion of a civic centre, of urbanism, of urbanity, of a built, formerly-laid-out centre, which is a centre for the residence of powerful people, including the monarch, that all those things come together. And I think those are actually stronger than the trading side of it because it's actually quite difficult to resurrect the trading from the former Roman waterfront. 

Greg Clark

Vanessa, this is very, very helpful. I'm going to ask you one more question then hand back to Caitlin. So in the way that we've observed - and we're not as learned as you are on these subjects - it seems that the arrival of William, the Norman Conquest and then William's treatment of London marks a kind of particular moment in which some of these traits and features become sort of crystallised in a new settlement, as it were. I don't mean a new geographical settlement, a new political settlement between King and city. Does that make sense to you as a narrative? 

Vanessa Harding

I think you can certainly say that what William recognizes is that he has to get London onside. So it actually takes him some months to circle round and address the question of what he's going to do about London, so I think it is already obvious by then that London is the key to conquering at least the south of England. So in that sense, he doesn't create London.

What he does is recognize its power so that his charter, which is extremely short-- it's just very, very brief indeed, but it essentially says, "I recognise," as it were, "your traditions, your history, your laws. Work with me, and it will be okay." But he's doing that because he recognises the power that already exists in London. He's not setting it up as a new city. So if you think of the way that the later mediaeval kings founded cities in Wales as part of their conquest, it's a very different process. It's making a pre-existing centre, a Norman centre.

Greg Clark

Yes, I think we have understood that bit. It was the point about whether that charter, in a sense, crystallises a new agreement or a new arrangement between a new king and an established community of merchants and urbanists and others in a way that is significant. I'm telling you this only because, of course, this is what the City of London tell me every time I visit, and the question is, is it an exaggeration? 

And I think you're making the point very clearly that William doesn't somehow re-found London, that London is there, but what he does is, in a sense, to-- well, the way I'm putting it is, I think he crystallises an agreement with London about how to proceed together. 

Vanessa Harding

Yes. I think it's important not to fetishise this charter. I think it's one of many charters that he issues to pre-existing bodies. And what he specifically says is that you will have your rights as in King Edward's time, so it's natural that the city, the present City of London, sees this as a key moment. I think it needs to be set in a longer evolution.

Greg Clark

Right. Brilliant.

Vanessa Harding

But, of course, William does make a big difference to London because he brings at least some of the functions of government there, or he continues some of the functions of government there. And he found, certainly, the Tower of London and two lesser castles are part of his-- are, in a sense, a reflection of the importance he attaches to London and to the control of London. But you could say that planting the Tower of London is more of an act of domination than cooperation, that it's a question of securing London for royal interests. It's not particularly in the interests of the Londoners. 

Greg Clark

And maybe it's also a motif of power to make sure that people behave themselves. Let me pass back to Caitlin to continue the conversation about London and England and the United Kingdom. 

Caitlin Morrissey

So we've been talking a little bit about that relationship and how it's evolved over time, and I wonder if you had any reflections on, really, what London means to the rest of England and how the other cities in the UK-- whether they have pride in the city and how that's changed over time.

Vanessa Harding

I think there's always a somewhat awkward relationship between a very powerful leading city and other towns and cities and the country as a whole. And I think that the-- sort of up until the late-Middle Ages that the disparity is not so great. There are other important cities in England - important towns and cities, the cathedral cities, trading places and so on, some places that have virtually disappeared - and that London isn't as economically and politically dominant before the 14th century as it is to be by the 15th and 16th. So that sense of resentment or of unfair competition, I think, is something that emerges rather by the 16th and 17th centuries or at least is articulated more.

And it is very interesting that London doesn't have the parliamentary representation that its population or its power, its wealth would suggest. I mean, London has four members of parliament, which nowhere else has, but it's more than twice as large as any other city, and most other cities have two.

So parliament can be a place where these tensions exist. And while London may lead an urban response or an urban citizens response to some aspects of government policy, there's also the tension between London and the rest of the urban sector.

Caitlin Morrissey

And have there been times in the past where you think that the UK has showed an immense pride in its capital city or the opposite, kind of a really strong resentment? Are there moments that we can see this through? 

Vanessa Harding

I'm sure there are moments, but it's actually quite difficult to pick out what the evidence would be and whether a feeling of pride in London is actually widespread across the country or whether it's seen particularly as it becomes, as it were, the identity of the national capital and the city that we're talking about. Those from a distance, they might seem to merge.

So that London or Westminster, as is now the case, is often used as a shorthand for saying the power of national government. So there's that sort of confusion between, well, what are we talking about when we're talking about London? Are we talking about the representative national government? Are we talking about this urban and financial centre?

I think there are certainly moments at which you can see that particular parties are deeply resentful of London. For example, in the middle of the 17th century, when London is one of the leaders of the parliamentary-- or a leading supporter of the parliamentary side, it's deeply disliked. And Lord Clarendon refers to it as 'the sink of all the ill humours of the kingdom', a centre for sort of political radicalism and for-- its immense wealth backs the parliamentarian effort. And I think once Charles I loses London - or indeed, he never really has London - it's going to be extremely difficult for him to acquire any kind of military victory.

I suppose you could also-- thinking about periods when London's dominance is deeply resented-- is that there are-- the extreme concentration of trade and trading activity on London, sort of before the expansion of Bristol and certainly, Liverpool and Glasgow, there is a sense in which the merchants of small trading ports deeply resent the wealth and power of London merchants in the way they can, as it were, divert a great proportion of national trade through London rather than it being more evenly dispersed across the country. 

Greg Clark

And I suppose it follows from what you're saying, Vanessa, that if you just trace and track this long-term evolution of London's relationship with the UK, I suppose there have been moments when it's been more stable, more harmonious, moments when it's been more cantankerous, moments when there have been reasons for London and other parts of the UK to work together strongly, moments when it's had a lot of support in parliament, moments when it hasn't. 

What do you think sort of determines which phase we go into in that relationship at any one time? What are the triggers or the forces that either bring London and the country together or seem to set them apart?

Vanessa Harding

I think one thing is when there are stronger forces outside London making, for what looks like, a more balanced economic or political situation. So I think probably in the 18th century when London is certainly very large, but it's also the time when other cities are growing. So between the 18th and the 19th centuries, when the great Midland cities like Birmingham and Manchester develop, there's a sense of a more even distribution of power across the country. And you could say that it's perhaps, also, in cultural terms, when 18th century Edinburgh and Dublin are really important cultural and political centres as well, that then, the sense that London is the only centre is muted. And I think it's at moments when it looks as though it's really the only centre and that it has networks of power and connections, that it's very difficult to break into, that this, I think, is when it's resented. I mean as we've seen in the 21st century.

Greg Clark

Sure, sure. And I suppose my question is, in a sense, whose sense of this seems to matter? Is it the sense of what might sometimes be, perhaps, rudely called provinces and what they think of London? Or is it the media and how the media comments on this? Or is it parliamentarians? Or is it some combination of all of this that seems to really matter here?

Vanessa Harding

Well, I think it's interesting you mentioned the media. I think that has a very important part to play, partly because, I mean, in a sense, you could say the media is captured by London because that's where the printing industry develops and it's where, as it were, the newspaper and news industries develop, too. But they also then proliferate across the country so that there are local centres of printing and of news printing, and I think that those provide a useful complement to the London-centredness of what we call national newspapers or national news outlets and sources.

So I think it's really how the rest of the country feels about London and how it feels its interests are being represented that is the key to what the overall picture is. I'm not sure that it's that London itself is doing anything different; it's how other people are perceiving that balance of power or that distribution of power. 

Greg Clark

Yes. And earlier on, you spoke about path dependency, and you just referred to-- well, London appears to have both the political power, the economic power and the media power all in one place. Is that the kind of path dependency you mean, when it looks like people outside London are locked out from decision making? Or are there other kinds of path dependency that you have in your mind?

Vanessa Harding

I was actually thinking of it perhaps, particularly, in terms of London's physical development. So some of the factors that are established at a very early stage, including the actual-- the location of the City of London helped to determine how the rest of London grows. Even though the factors that meant this is why the Romans settled on this particular spot, those are no longer salient factors in how London develops. But the fact that there is a central spot, which has particular geographical, geological communications links, that's what's quite important.

And there are things-- I mean, as it were, the literal path dependency of the road network which affects-- which tends to focus on London. The roads radiate out from London; they, therefore, tend to focus activity on coming to London. And as we know with, for example, the rail network and so on, there was a period when there was a much wider-- a genuine network across the country. But if you look at that very attenuated network now, it really focuses on London. There's very little cross-country in it. 

Caitlin Morrissey

When you're talking about the risk of overstating the importance of the 1067 charter, it made me think, are there any kind of myths about London or things that people believe about London that you would think are overstated, and what is the risk of people believing in these? 

Vanessa Harding

I suppose the risk, I would say, is a belief in London's invincibility. The fact that it's always going to be okay; it’s always going to be successful. I think people-- I mean, particularly now, I think we are having to think-- well, we need to think very carefully about, what are the factors that are supporting London's centrality to the economy? It may be that there is so much centralization that it's never going to revert to any more distributed kind of power.

But I think one of the-- yes, I would say one of the risks is not looking critically at what it is that makes London as powerful as it is and not recognizing where risks to that might exist. And obviously, things like the moving-- any significant move of financial activity or financial institutions is one of the things that could certainly change that. 

Caitlin Morrissey

Yeah. Thank you. And so I'll jump back now to ask you if there are any inventions or discoveries that London is responsible for that you think the city is most proud of or have been so wildly influential in its history?

Vanessa Harding

I mean, there are obviously tonnes to choose from. It's hard to put your finger on anything particularly. In some ways, what London is good at is taking inventions or taking developments and developing them further. So, for example, things like financial institutions, different ways of banking and so on are not invented in London, but they are developed very substantially in London. So things like, I think, the stock exchange or dealing in stocks and marine insurance are both very important to the growth of London in the late 17th and 18th centuries. But they're not actually invented in London, but they find a natural home there and can be developed and pushed in further directions.

So I suppose you could say, well, one of the characteristics of London is an ability to pick something up and take it forward, whether you regard that as being a good quality or one that tends to appropriate to itself advantages that actually should be accruing to other places.

Caitlin Morrissey

Yeah, I think we would agree. It's sort of London's ability to scale inventions from elsewhere. And why do you think London has that capability?

Vanessa Harding

Well, I guess this is your big question, really, isn't it? And I don't think I know the answer. I would have said, just looking at what you had written, I thought that the sense that London provides opportunity or the belief that London provides opportunity is actually very important. I mean, that in itself is a stimulus to activity and invention and initiative and innovation.

There was a very interesting research project about 20 years ago about London and the creation of a skilled workforce, trying to work out what it is that comes together in the late 17th, 18th centuries to create and disseminate a highly skilled workforce. I mean, in manufacturing terms, that's what comes to characterise London. It's not cheap mass production. It's skilled and luxury goods, but also highly-- technically developed goods. And that's to do, I think, with a market, with investors, with a perception of opportunity and profit or opportunity for profit. 

Greg Clark

It's interesting that you said, right at the start, that self-confidence is part of London's kind of distinctive makeup. And then you've also said, here, that there's a kind of self-belief, and if people believe that London is good at something, actually, it'll turn out to be the case because if people believe it, they'll go to London to do it, and London will be good at it. So you're talking quite a lot about the psychology of London if I may put it that way. Does that make sense to you? 

Vanessa Harding

Yes, I would be cautious about attributing a psychology to London, per se, but I do think this-- and I do think this belief that London is a centre of opportunity-- and it's a well-founded belief, and it doesn't actually have to be anything very substantial. It is simply that from an early period, many people have felt that in order to flourish or in order to do better than they were wherever they came from, that London offered that opportunity and its economic opportunity.

But it's also the opportunity to live the kind of life they want to live and particularly, if they are religious refugees, to be able to worship or to be able to practise their religion in a way that they're not able to do in the place they come from.

Greg Clark

And again, I'm sort of checking, Vanessa, whether you agree with our view. But we want to-- we feel we should emphasise quite strongly this idea of London as a city of freedom, a city that respects privacy, a city that respects diversity, and of course, in particular, in relation to religious belief, for example, provides freedom of practice. And in relation to dissenters and nonconformists, it provides freedom of thought. Does that make sense to you as a central idea that London is a kind of city where civil liberties and freedom are, in a sense, highly respected and that plays into this idea of a city of opportunity?

Vanessa Harding

Yes, I think, I mean, all of these freedoms have to be one, that they're not handed out. I mean, London, from the mediaeval and early modern times, has a distinct idea of citizenship as being applicable to only a fraction of the population as a whole, and that there are privileges attached to that: privileges, rights and responsibilities.

The freedom to practise particular religions is, again-- I guess it probably comes sooner in London than in the country as a whole, the sense that it's more tolerant of difference and diversity because, in a sense, it has to be. But nonconformity, while it takes deep root in London, is also persecuted by the centre. And there are people in London who are hostile to religious radicalism. It's also true that the London mob is extremely hostile to Catholicism in the post-reformation years, so in the 17th and particularly, in the 18th century, as, for example, in the Gordon Riots. The London mob is far from tolerant-- or the London populous, more generally, is far from tolerant towards particular groups of believers.

So I would be cautious about saying that London is, as it were, willingly a haven for freedom but that people find it possible to carve out spaces for themselves. I mean, in terms of where they can live or how they can live within a large, heterogeneous cities., it's easier to stand out uniquely in smaller places.

But I would say this is probably also true of sexual freedom as well, that multiplicity and variety can flourish there in a way that it's difficult for them to do in some smaller and more, as it were, socially regulated places. But I do think - I mean, just going back to your point about London's freedom - in a different sense, that London doesn't have a-- it isn't part of a police state. I mean, its major European rival, Paris, does develop a very strong police in the French sense in the 17th and 18th century. So there is more control about people's behaviour, I think, and more control from a political point of view in Paris, for example - which, of course, is a more autocratic state than there is in London and in England.

So I think the state in its sort of broader sense has less of a grip on Londoners and on England than the state, for example, in France has on Paris and Parisians. That doesn't mean that Paris isn't extremely unruly and difficult but that there is a very powerful police presence there which isn't really the case in London. 

Caitlin Morrissey

This is so fascinating, actually. And a question that I'd had in mind was, in London's long history, are there influential leaders that stand out in your mind as having really shaped the city? These could be cultural leaders or political leaders or anybody that comes to mind. 

Vanessa Harding

Well, I think, in some sense, a very interesting and important development is the Royal Exchange, which, again, you mentioned in your chapter, that Thomas Gresham's role in promoting this, which is not an altruistic one-- I mean, it's because he sees advantage for himself and for the class of merchants to which he belongs. That, I think, is actually a very important promotion of London's ability to become this international-- this global imperial capital. It's not the only thing that contributes to it, but it helps to branch off from it, some of these other things such as dealing in stocks or insurance and so on.

But the sense that there is a mercantile community or a mercantile and banking community whose interests need to be served and promoted, I mean, that's really what underpins the foundation of the Royal Exchange. Of course, one of the striking things is that it's actually most successful, most important in a period when, again, the original parameters for setting it up, which were European Antwerp-focused trade, when those are no longer prominent. But it turns out to be a very useful vehicle for a different world of trading as well. 

Caitlin Morrissey

And in the last century or so, are there any more recent leaders that stand out at any point?

Vanessa Harding

Well, I should say, I'm not a historian of the 19th and 20th centuries, so I'd find it harder to say. I do think you can look to anybody like some of the great pioneering mayors of Manchester or Birmingham or whatever who I think really did change the cities that they governed. So it's almost as though-- and there is, in the 19th century, this tension between the cooperation of the city of London and the sense that there needs to be some governance for the rest of London. So a lot of the political interest is taken up in that tension and then in the way in which the LCC develops as the governing body for the rest of London. So I don't, offhand, see somebody as being a leader in that.

I actually think Ken Livingston was a very important mayor for London in a number of the things that he tried to do and also back when the Greater London Commission existed. But I don't have-- I can't see somebody as a sort of founding, leading figure in the 19th or first half of the 20th century.

Caitlin Morrissey

And just to pick up on that point about Ken Livingston, you mentioned there are a few things that stand out to you that he might have done that shaped London. What would those have been in your opinion?

Vanessa Harding

For me, certainly as an ordinary Londoner, I think the approach to London transport and to the transport network and to promoting-- or to trying to make it something which was about getting people about cheaply was actually really very important. I mean, I suppose, yes, thinking-- if I went back in time, then, yes, there would be the people who redesign or who think in terms of moving populations out, who found new towns around London. I mean, that sort of movement in the first half of the 20th century is also--

Greg Clark

Abercrombie and all of that.

Vanessa Harding

Yes, yes. Though, of course, I mean, Abercrombie, it's a question of how it was implemented and how people took his ideas and took them forward. So, again, I think you'd have to say it's bigger than any single person.

Greg Clark

Absolutely. Yes. Just coming back to the issue of inventions - and your point about the Royal Exchange is fantastic and the more general point about London not so much as an inventor but a scalar of things, I just wonder-- sometimes people go immediately to longitude, latitude, navigation, Greenwich, the Millennium and all of that. Does that stand out to you as being significant as a kind of driver of London's maritime history, or is London not, in fact, the place where longitude and latitude are discovered in that way? 

Vanessa Harding

I think they're absolutely bound up with London, but I would find it hard to say that they are London inventions. They contribute to a development of which London is also a contributor, but I don't see them as having that very direct connection.

I mean, one could certainly go back and point to the presence of the Royal Society from the late 17th century. I mean, in many ways, you could say, well, that's a London institution of a kind. It's not a City of London one, but it builds on what London is by that time, which is an attractive centre for the gentry, for intellectuals, for scientists. It's where a kind of promotion of invention or promotion of scientific discovery can go on. And the metropolitan context, I think, is very important for that because of the way it brings people together and allows them to interact in a kind of gentlemanly sociability. 

Greg Clark

And the Royal Society, of course, one of the interesting things is that it's flourishing today as well.

Vanessa Harding

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Greg Clark

You mentioned London transport, which is something very close to my heart as well. My understanding is that, again, whilst London did not invent the underground railway, it was the first city to really try to make underground railways its core of its transport systems, so, again, it may be another example of London taking an invention from somewhere else and doing it at scale for the first time. I'm interested to know if you have a reflection on that. I appreciate that this is largely very, very late 19th century and much more 20th century.

Vanessa Harding

Yes. It's very interesting to see how transport evolved over the 19th century, I mean, that to a significant extent it's playing catch up. That's to say that London is growing, and people are trying to find ways of moving people around. And then, I think, the adoption of underground and suburban railways together - because obviously, it's some of the lines that expand outside or towards the edges of the periphery of the, then, built-up area - that in itself, I think, is very transformative. So I don't think transport transforms London until the 19th century, till the late 19th century. But when it does, it's now such a determining factor. 

Greg Clark

Yes. And it creates, then, this structure of London which is very much organised around those suburban railways and the underground rails and of course, they're now substantially part of one system. Yes. I realise we're taking more of your time than we asked for, Vanessa, and we're going to be very quick. I'm going to come back to Caitlin to wrap up with a couple of final questions.

Caitlin Morrissey

So I do have one question prepared, which is what I thought would be good to end on, which is, given everything we've spoken about, what do you see as being London's most important traits as it navigates the post-COVID and its new Brexit context? 

Vanessa Harding

I think it's that its diversity in the broader sense of diversity that will allow a range of different solutions to emerge. I think that you could say it's fragmentation, but you could also say it's the fact that there's a multiplicity of possibilities, and that there's, therefore, a good chance that some of those will emerge. Although it's a huge conurbation, it is one with multiple centres within it. And again, it may be that we will come back to a more sort of reticulated city rather than a centrally focused one.

Caitlin Morrissey

So are you saying that there is potential for more suburban hubs to be emerging and more of a blended-city region?

Vanessa Harding

It would be very interesting. I think that does look like a possibility. I mean, you know, who knows? It's very, very early days yet. And I think-- well, I hope that the central things like theatres and galleries and so on will remain and will continue to flourish, though they're obviously facing huge challenges because the very things that have brought them about are some of things that are now under question, the mass gatherings and mass transport.

Greg Clark

Vanessa, was there anything we should have asked you that would have allowed you to say something that you'd really like to have said? 

Vanessa Harding

The only thing I thought of is that the Dick Wittington myth is a very important one, particularly because of this sense that anybody can come to London and do well. Now, of course, that's not actually the truth of his life, but it's interesting how the myth grows up, particularly-- 100, 150 years later is when it really becomes strong. So that's a kind of a practical adaptation of the materials of history to help to support a larger myth about London.