We are going down to London tomorrow on one of our periodic “raids”. It was planned that I would spend a day in the library of the Estorick Collection. (I am scheduled to give a talk in the New Year on the Italian modern artist Renato Guttuso. Their library will be an extremely valuable source in that project.) This morning, however, I received a text from the Curator of the Collection, telling me that it will not be possible for me to use the library as the librarian is ill. That would have been no more than disappointing, but for the fact that he added, “Would it be possible for you to pop in next week?” The assumption implicit in his question was that I am based in London. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him (despite a reference in my original email) that I might live somewhere else in the country, and that “popping in” is not a possibility.
I don’t know whether this is the case in other countries, but there is an implicit belief on the part of people in London that the country and the city are equivalent. This is also implied in the phrase which makes me see red, which refers to the area around the capital as “the Home Counties”. I guess that the rest of us must be the “foreign counties”. The same idea recurs elsewhere.
The cultural dominance of London is brought home to me every time I go there, and take advantage of the trip to visit cultural resources which are quite disproportionately concentrated in the capital. In 2025 Bradford will be “The City of Culture”. I guess that for the rest of the time we must be “The City of Barbarity”.