<img src="http://carpelondinium.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/775561.jpg" alt="british-museum.jpg" width="450" name="image_operate_31371270764622552" title="依然在伦敦 (Anglophile是怎样炼成的）" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; ">

Bill Bryson: "I can never understand why Londoners fail to see that they live in the most wonderful city in the world.  It is far more beautiful and interesting than Paris, if you ask me, and more lively than anywhere but New York - and even NY can’t touch it in lots of important ways.  It has more history, finer parks, a livelier and more varied press, better theaters, more numerous orchestras and museums, leafier squares, safer streets, and more courteous inhabitants than any other large city in the world.

How is it possible, in this wondrous land where the relics of genius and enterprise confront you at every step, where every realm of human possibility has been probed and challenged and generally extended, where many of the very greatest accomplishments of industry, commerce and the arts find their seat, how is it possible in such a place that when at length ....

It looked so peaceful and wonderful that I could almost have cried, and yet it was only a tiny part of this small, enchanted island. Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain -- which is to say, all of it.  Every bit of it, good and bad -- Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying “mustn’t grumble”, and “I’m terribly sorry but’, ....

How easily we lose sight of all this.  what an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century.  Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure.  The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for many things - to post a letter, go for walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.

All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  I like it here.  I like it more than I can tell you.  and then I turned from the gate and got in the car and knew without doubt that I would be back."