I was just going through my blog archive, as I often do, and realised that it is now more or less twenty years to the day since I wrote this entry in reaction to the terrible bombings of 7/7. I opened it by saying how, at the time, I lived in the North of England, so all I knew was the peace and quiet of rural Cheshire, far removed from the hubbub and chaos of the metropolis. The thing is, London is now my home and has been for the last fifteen years. In fact I feel more comfortable and settled here than anywhere else.

I just got in from a lovely long trundle along the Thames near Woolwich, the river looking majestic in the afternoon sun. Thus, when I think about what happened to this city two decades ago, I remember too everything else this place has been through over two millennia: the bombings, blitzes, plagues and riots. The Thames kept flowing through them, just as it always has, and just as it flowed on after the horror of twenty years ago. And sure enough, London bounced back into what turned out to be some of her greatest, most triumphant years. I may have grown up in Cheshire, and I might have been shielded from what happened here; but over the last fifteen years I have got to know London, and I know now that this city is far, far greater than anything any lunatic can throw at it.