To believe that change, and in particular the speed of change, is something peculiar to the twentieth century, is an error

In one generation, between roughly  1840 and 1870, Kentish Town was substantially altered from a suburban village, surrounded by fields, into the townscape we see today. To believe that change, and in particular the speed of change, is something peculiar to the twentieth century, is an error, at least where the physical environment is concerned.. Except in a few specific places, like New Town sites, the changes seen by many people today are as nothing compared with the paroxysms of alteration and despoliation weathered by their great-grandparents.

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977; 2010 edition), 143

Obviously date from an extinct era where there was no shortage of people to fetch, carry and sweep

As family homes today, these [London terraced] houses do not fulfil modern concepts of good design: four sets of stairs to service no more than eight or so rooms obviously date from an extinct era where there was no shortage of people to fetch, carry and sweep. But the design is otherwise less inconvenient than outsiders suppose. The numerous separate strata, initially reflecting the socially stratified nature of nineteenth-century life, adapt well to the disparate needs of the modern family, who do not necessarily wish to gather in one large circle round the parlour lamp of an evening, or even round the television set modern lighting and heading systems make such unity unnecessary

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977; 2010 edition), 121

Land use in London has traditionally been very wasteful, and still frequently is

Judged by continental standards, land use in London has traditionally been very wasteful, and still frequently is. Even today, more than 50 percent of all the land in inner London is actually open to the sky: some it is road space, some park or housing-estate space, but a great deal is individual garden.

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977; 2010 edition), 67-8 

Rain was London’s benison, the absolution for its grit and dust

Williams liked rain. Sunny afternoons on a deckchair in Regent’s Park could be pleasant when he felt like nattering with admirers, but it was rain that he associated with poetry: ‘Caught in a shower of light rain: it was like a mountain mist descending.’ It pleased him that other people were deterred by wet weather, and that the pavements were cleared by a downpour, and that car headlights glittered and were refracted in the puddles, and that afterwards the streets seemed cleansed. Rain was London’s benison, the absolution for its grit and dust. 

C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010), loc. 5,333

The London effect could be explained away when the diverse composition of pupils was taken into account

But as with so many quests, the rush to find answers had lost sight of the real story. Economist Simon Burgess delivered a humbling message: the London effect could be explained away when the diverse composition of pupils was taken into account. Burgess argued the headlong rush to find the magic bullets behind the London effect was overlooking the real achievement: the dynamism of London's increasingly diverse population, composed if children whose parents had come from all over the world. ... [and] London is now the stand-out capital of graduate coupling. By 2016, a thrd of London families had two parents with degrees. 

L.E. Major and S. Machin, Social mobility and its enemies (2018), 165-6

An area within which the Lieutenant of the Tower of London could muster a militia

The name Tower Hamlets sounds as if it is a modern construct, chosen to bind together a number of former councils into a new one in 1965. In fact the name had been used since 1605 to describe an area within which the Lieutenant of the Tower of London could muster a militia. It continued to be used for administration of justice, and was the name given to the 1832 parliamentary borough. 

T. Travers, London's Boroughs at 50 (2015), 125

There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war

It was the fag end of the war, a quiet conspiratorial time with no secret lives; we were all in it, and by now we knew most things about each other – we shared and stuffed ourselves on them. There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war, that freewheeling fantasizing that goes with displaced persons who are displaced through no fault of their own. The girls fell on the few men with an urgent and hungry disdain. They tidied the rooms of the bachelors and cooked for them. They took our shirts home at weekends and washed them.

L. Lee, 'Chelsea towards the end of the last war' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 88

Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!

'I wish you had left him in Soho,' he said, with a wave of his long, thin hands. 'There was a touch of romance in that sordid attic. I could even bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability of Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!'

W. Somerset Maugham, Of human bondage (1915), 475