People From London

"It was through looking at churches that I came to believe in the reason churches were built."

"The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living."

""I think the mystery of its winding drive gave me a respect for the system of hereditary land owing which I have never shaken off. (Rawsden Manor Wilts.)"

"Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won. The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less."

"We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn."

"Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament — you against me!"

"The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gymn, A man was running a mineral line, A lass was singing a hymn, When Captain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Came swimming along in the old canal That carries the bricks to Lawley."

"Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl, Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five: That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl, Although he’s playing for Woking, can’t stand up to your wonderful backhand drive."

"He would have liked to say goodbye, Shake hands with many friends. In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends.You, God, who treat him thus and thus, Say, "Save his soul and pray." You ask me to believe You and I only see decay."

"Think of what our Nation stands for, Books from Boots and country lanes, Free speech, free passes, class distinction, Democracy and proper drains. Lord, put beneath Thy special care One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square."

"Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy, We will pardon Thy Mistake. But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be, Don't let anyone bomb me."

"Whist upon whist upon whist upon whist drive, in Institute, Legion and Social Club. Horny hands that hold the aces which this morning held the plough."

"Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way Where a young man lands hatless from the air."

"It's about, you know, how the world is so...fucking doomed. Sort of an apocalyptic album but I want it to be quite cartoony in a way."

"If I had sharp claws I'd get on all fours. And scratch your back for free."

"I see my body float like leaves. Every day I want to breathe. Rap my knuckles till they bleed. A river deep."

"And every word that you speak makes my heart sing when it's weak for often this outlook on life can be bleak."

"Well I've travelled around the earth and still I wonder if I'm the first human being who questions his worth."

"Bittersweetheart, bittersweetheart you've been good to me."

"But you and I know the seasons are slow the rivers they froze, the wind always blows down all our dreams, the engine's out of steam. **All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed"

"All of your days will be blessed so put on a smile and get dressed into the void we will fly away from here."

"You pretend you're happy. That you've got it all. But don't be upset If you fall on your knees. And beg like a dog."

"I drink a lot of wine when I'm alone."

"When you're on your own. You walk in the rain."

"Who's to say that every performer should be a good actor? Why can't you just be yourself?"

"I guess God has the last laugh. From up on high he lets us kill. And his people die for their faith. And we call it triumph of the will."

"Oh, I'm staying in today. And watch the others play. Oh, wash my sins away. Like all good children I mean what I say."

"I guess it's you I miss. 'Cause I just stare at the ceiling. My stomach knots and twists. You've created this feeling. And I may be out of style. But do you know what true love is? I'll make this all so worthwhile. So let's rise above this. Let's rise above this."

"If the world did end. Would you be my apocalyptic friend?"

"There's something in my eye. Bloodshot in disguise. God knows I really tried. Making the big time. Aiming to climb high."

"God, you make me sing. Funny things about you You infect my mind. All the time, you do."

"And if you need to kiss me. Then you'll most definitely miss me. When I'm gone."

"So I said I don't mind if I lose. 'Cause if I win I'll be so confused"

"Without me all the lines of reality will blur."

"I begged God to cure my aching limbs. But he did nothing, he gave me no advice. Didn't this God abandon Jesus Christ? Oh if it comes to you, I'll die for your sins."

"Once I was a shadow of man. Most dark nights my head was in its hands."

"Yes we feel bad in winter. We act a little bit strange. The dark sky threatens me daily. Makes me alter and mood change, change, change, change."

"I need to build a wall around me. But I want to smile with everybody. Would you say that is possessive of me?"

"I wish I was fiction, I wish I was fact."

"I can't express myself 'cause I'm not fully grown."

"My heartache, is my mistake you see."

"I want to take all the sadness. Of the world from your shoulders. I want to take all the sadness. Of the world from your shoulders. I want to take all the sadness."

"I'm not scared of dying. I'm not scared of death. I'll keep a smile 'til my last breath. I've loved 'til I've lost. I've lived how I felt. One day I will find peace within myself."

"There were soldiers everywhere... They were well fed and the civilian population was obviously starving. I mean starving in its absolute sense; not undernourished as, for instance, most Oriental peasants are undernourished and some unemployed workers in Europe, but having had for weeks next to nothing to eat. Later I found out that there had been no bread at all in the place for three months, and such for as there was I saw for myself in the market. The only edible thing on the lowest European standards was chicken -- about five chickens, fifteen roubles each. No one was buying. Where would a peasant get fifteen roubles? For the most part – the few that remain – are sold at the railway stations to passengers on their way to the mountains in the south for a holiday or for a rest cure in a sanatorium. The rest of the food offered for sale was revolting and would be thought unfit, in the ordinary way to be offered to animals. (...) "How are things with you?" I asked one man. He looked around anxiously to see no soldiers were about. "We have nothing, absolutely nothing. They have taken everything away," he said and hurried on. This is what I heard again and again and again. (...) It was true. They had nothing. It was also true that everything had been taken away. The famine is an organised one."

"While working at the BBC, Muggeridge had earned the label "NSIT" ("not safe in taxis"). His niece [Sally Muggeridge], took a relaxed view of such matters, telling the Daily Mail: "I grew up in the Sixties and know about these things..."It was all the more remarkable the he had been able to effect such a life-changing transition in his 60s to a born-again Christian, adopting a much more Spartan lifestyle: not only giving up sex, smoking and drinking, but also becoming a vegetarian.""

"To carry personal responsibility for keeping God alive in the modern world would be a grievous burden for anyone, even Muggeridge, whose search for the Kingdom has been fascinating to observe but who, since he found it, has been sadly in danger of becoming Christianity's most bizarre exhibitionist. Face contorted, hands clawing in the air to pantomime his inner anguish, world weary and longing for an apocalyptic end to a Naughty Age, Malcolm reviles the medium which feeds him and begs reassurance that he is still loved from the assorted personalities who gather about him like Plato's disciples. 'Why?' his strangulated cry goes up - tempting a heavenly retort 'Why indeed?'"

"The Webbs ridiculed another visitor to the USSR who saw things differently. This was Malcolm Muggeridge, the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian newspaper. Muggeridge journeyed by train through the famine-stricken Ukraine, witnessing the consequences of official measures. Desperate peasants crowded railway-station platforms as he travelled south. The bloated bodies of starving children orphaned by the deaths of executed or malnourished parents horrified him. The dismissiveness of local party and government functionaries when he questioned what was going on failed to fool him. He refused to be lathered with communist soft soap. Unfortunately his editor in Manchester usually preferred a lighter treatment of the Soviet Union. Muggeridge resigned but not before he got at least some of his dispatches printed. Indeed the Manchester Guardian also accepted an account by Gareth Jones, the Russian-speaking former secretary of David Lloyd George. Jones was horrified by what he witnessed in Ukrainian villages, and gave vivid speeches on the subject after returning to Britain. Muggeridge wrote up a searing account of his own experiences in his book Winter in Moscow."

"The real motive force of neo-Toryism, giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognize that British power and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see that Britain’s military position is not what it was, tend to claim that ‘English ideas’ (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems to be gaining ground among youngish intellectual, sometimes ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers."

"Only a handful of Western reporters - notably Gareth Jones of the Daily Express, Malcolm Muggeridge of the Manchester Guardian, Pierre Berland of Le Temps and William Chamberlin of the Christian Science Monitor - had the guts to publish accurate reports about the famine. The bulk of the press corps in Moscow, notably Walter Duranty of the New York Times, knowingly connived at the cover-up for fear of jeopardizing their access to the nomenklatura."

"It is a frightening thought that a man as prejudiced as Muggeridge was allowed such power in an organisation such as the BBC, and in other equally powerful organs of the media. Here was a man who was known to be deeply anti-Semitic ... , whose entire life and actions were determined by prejudices, and who was openly carrying on with extramarital sexual liaisons despite pronouncing pious values. He also tried to use his position to stop other people from using contraception. He was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and of other American war exercises. He cast doubt on the suffering in Hiroshima; he participated in CIA funded clandestine activities... He had absolutely no room in his psyche for relativism in religion, for tolerance and understanding, and he fervently believed that Christianity should go out with the sword as well as the Gospel to conquer inferior cultures. He would have no hesitation in twisting and bending facts in order to promote Christianity — in this he had an ally in Teresa."