With two millennia of history under its belt, London is as much a city of myth as it is of stone and mortar. Some of its most famous tales grew out of misunderstood history, while others were born from pure fiction.
These are just three of the urban legends that continue to define, confuse, and deceive the capital.
London is not a city and therefore does not exist.
London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, home to nearly nine million people, and a major global hub for finance, culture, and politics with a history stretching back nearly 2,000 years to its founding by the Romans as Londinium.
Yet, while London operates as a single physical metropolis, its legal and administrative structure is uniquely complex, which explains why you might hear people claim it technically does not exist. It serves as the de facto capital of the United Kingdom, recognised by custom and tradition, but not by any single statutory charter or royal proclamation.
Is London a City?
In everyday terms, London is an enormous metropolis. However, under strict British constitutional law, a location is only an official 'city' if it has been granted a specific royal charter by the reigning monarch.
Shortly after my father, Joseph Anthony Gerard Morrissey, passed away in 2009, I discovered three handwritten diary entries on loose A4 sheets. He had already typed up and published many other entries on a Slovakian website, which is unfortunately no longer online.
I do not know who wrote these pages or how to trace the author,
so I am sharing them here to finish what he started.
If you have any information about these entries or recognise who might have written them,
please get in touch by leaving a message or sending an email.
Enjoy reading.
Dog Adoption, Dubrava Style; or, The Shanghaiing of a neighbour by the village Press Gang
I have previously mentioned that after virtually every Christmas, one or two dogs are abandoned in the snow on the lane to our village. Their ex-owners, tiring of their Christmas pets, having no interest in the long-term responsibility of owning and training a puppy, and with their children back at school, simply drive up to our village and unceremoniously dump their dogs like so much Christmas wrapping.
The village, again as previously mentioned, has an extravagant collection of dogs, and this is an eyewitness account of how this heterogeneous pack came to be.
Last week, a little puppy was found abandoned, freezing, and starving to death—its ribs starkly standing out—trapped deep in a roadside snowdrift. It was found by a good neighbour and was temporarily given to us to feed and warm up. We have, for unknown reasons, by far the warmest cottage in the village. It was very affectionate and desperately anxious to please, though, as we soon discovered, completely un-housetrained—which, whilst speaking volumes about its original owners, kept us busy.
The next day, the finder of the puppy and some friends came round to discuss what was to be done with it. Most of the permanent residents are animal lovers. Between the half-dozen of us in our cottage that morning, I calculated that we had a grand total of five dogs (most of them abandoned outside the village), four cats, five goats, and three sheep. I have lost count of the chickens and rabbits, which count for eggs, meat, and cash, and are therefore not counted as pets. The former all answer to individual names and are fed by hand. Oh, I forgot: there are a few million bees, who clearly 'know' their keeper.
Shortly after my father, Joseph Anthony Gerard Morrissey, passed away in 2009, I discovered three handwritten diary entries on loose A4 sheets. He had already typed up and published many other entries on a Slovakian website, which is unfortunately no longer online.
I do not know who wrote these pages or how to trace the author,
so I am sharing them here to finish what he started.
If you have any information about these entries or recognise who might have written them,
please get in touch by leaving a message or sending an email.
Enjoy reading.
The Potravini Bench
There is a small village General Store at the bottom of the three-kilometre lane from our village to the parent village of Hronská Dúbrava. In front of its steps is a dilapidated bench, lurching under a bedraggled conifer. In front of the bench are two used car tyres which, once upon a time, must have contained flowers. However, currently they contain nothing but assorted weeds and a million-or-so cigarette butts. These giant vehicular ashtrays are surrounded by dust in the summer and a quagmire of mud in the winter. In clement weather, the bench is occupied by a small congregation of out-of-work drunks, who gather there with their dogs, fags, and the cheapest bottled beer in the village. In our village, you can buy a bottle of beer, drink it outside, and return the bottle for the deposit, which is put down on the next bottle. Of course, the beer is supplemented by surreptitious bottles of home-distilled Slivo.
Our village drunk and executive is Jay, a regular. The most regular regular. The bench has the inestimable advantage of being adjacent both to the nearest beer for Jay and, just a few metres away, the village graveyard, where his late partner lies buried. So Jay can kill two birds with one stone—or should I say, two kidneys with one beer. He can deposit an armful of half-dead flowers higgledy-piggledy on the grave and guzzle a bellyful of beer at the same time.
By some miracle, Jay gets a 4,000 Koruna pension. This after a lifetime's non-contribution to any known, or unknown, pension scheme. Jay had, on the death of his partner, discovered religion, but not the attributes that go with it, like sobriety; he asserts to all and sundry that his undeserved pension is a blessing from God to his deserving, 'returning to the fold' sheep. He has got the Bible-thumping, self-justifying jargon of the born-again down to a tee.
He ought to run for the American presidency: his ignorance, stupidity, and incompetence, together with his cunning, should have him in with a good chance. His main handicap is that he can speak in complete, syntactically correct sentences when not drunk. It is clear to the rest of us that his pension is the result of some monumental, post-communist, bureaucratic cock-up. Not divine intervention.
The Collector of Nightingale Road: The Story of Horace 'Robbie' Robinson
Born in Palmers Green, London, on August 15th, 1896, Horace Herbert Robinson, known to all as 'Robbie', joined Lloyds Bank as a young man in 1914. After marrying his longtime friend, Mildred Manton, in 1929, Robbie embarked on a lifelong career with the bank that spanned over four decades.
In 1940, he moved to Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, ultimately settling at 76 Nightingale Road in 1948. He remained with Lloyds until his retirement in 1956, stepping down as the respected manager of their bustling Great Portland Street branch and living out the rest of his days in the Hertfordshire community he had grown to call home.
A Veritable Museum
From an early age, Robbie was a compulsive collector of anything that took his fancy. Collecting became his principal hobby throughout his life, with the result that his house on Nightingale Road became a veritable museum.
Wednesday August 12, 2026. Sunny with a high of 33°C (91.4°F)
Another day and another adventure.
The annual summer fête, at Croxley Business Park, was our first stop, today. Erin and Keilyn had both been before, but Emma, myself and Steve had never visited, so that had to be rectified. Erin, although up and ready for another adventure, was feeling a little under the weather from yesterday's epic walk and decided that she would go to Croxbury, as it had been named this year, but would not go to London after.
We left home and made the short walk towards Croxley Business Park, stopping at Greggs to buy some lunch which was eaten on the benches outside the store. As the girls tucked into their food Keilyn spotted Steve crossing the road and yelled out his name. Steve, ever the entertainer, covered his face and turned away at a pace, disappearing out of sight, but reappeared moments later. Keilyn's face went through a mixture of emotions in those few seconds. Steve purchased some food and before long we were heading towards the sports field, adjacent to Croxley Common Moor.
The drive was lined with flags and banners, with us being greeted at the entrance by four ladies on stilts, wearing rainbow-coloured wigs. Once on the sports field we headed for the shade of a tent and purchased some raffle tickets, while Keilyn bought some candy floss. We then had a wander around the field, where a stage had been set up with a band doing Oasis covers among others. A bouncy castle and bouncy slide along with face-painting stalls and a man making balloon shapes entertained the little ones.
There were two fun fair rides set up along the other side. A Ferris wheel and another ride for older kids. It was about this time that Steve announced that he had never been on a Ferris wheel. This needed correcting. So, Keilyn and I joined the queue, with Steve and Erin behind us. Soon we were clambering aboard and once secured into our seats waited for everyone else to take their seats. As each seat filled our seat moved higher, until all of the seats were full. Then the ride began.
For a good few minutes we took in the sights and sounds offered by the ride. The massive expanse of Croxley Moor, to our right, and the business park to our left. When the ride finished we found ourselves at the top and so I was able to turn in my seat and take a photo of Erin and Steve, who were behind us, with Croxley spread out behind them.
On exiting the ride we found Emma, who had been watching us from a bench, and made a move towards the exit. After saying our "Goodbyes", Emma and Erin made their way back through the business park, while Steve, Keilyn and I went through a gate onto Croxley Moor. It turns out that Steve had never walked across the moor! We made our way along the dusty tracks, passing bushes and trees, while rabbits darted in and out of cover, until we reached the River Gade. Here we stopped to take in the view along the river, with small fish swimming just below the surface of the crystal clear water.
