ABSTRACT
The famous lexicographer and narrator of London Samuel Johnson stated, ‘a man that is tired of London is tired of life’. As a capital city – and, as some claim, a global city – London excites praise and opprobrium in equal measure. The challenge for any analysis of ‘London as a region’ is the complex interaction between London as a metropolitan area and its impact on the surrounding region. What is the direction of causality? Is the metropolis creating the region or is the region sustaining its focal metropolitan point? This immediately provokes the question of what is a ‘region’. Does London correspond to any meaningful definition of this term? In a book about the rise of the English regions, should a chapter even be devoted to London?
