Multicultural London

Those of you that know me best know that I love interesting food. Really, anyone that's ever had to talk to me for more than five minutes knows this about me. So to no one's surprise, my travels around London have focused on food. Through food, I've learned a little bit of London's vitality, its multiculturalism.

I'll begin by quoting a passage from London Perceived by V.S. Pritchett(1962):

One of the paradoxes of London's loss of colonial power is that it has made the contact with the people of the former colonies more intimate. In the past our never very large army of civil servants went out to these countries and the best of these men did, in fact, have a close knowledge of the place they were ruling. But now the traffic has been reversed. The people of these countries now come to London on terms of political, intellectual, and social equality....

At first the thousands at night look foreign; the sallow and swarthy seem to out-number the red-faced English, until one discovers many of the swarthy are English too; one can no longer speak certainly of London types. What has happened is that a new breed of Londoners has appeared. They are very young, and, for the first time for many generations, they cultivate a romantic style. (208-210)

Though the use of "swarthy" here is an unfortunate artifact of an earlier time, Pritchett's description of the new London rings true today. London, unlike Paris or Barcelona, for instance, feels intensely multinational, a consequence of the imperialism of the British Empire and its English language.