Paris or London: Which is more beautiful?

Paris is grand and breathtaking; London is ‘rude and low’, which is easy for us imported Northerners to say safe in the hills of Yorkshire. Actually it was John Dryden who said so, so there. I like the suggestion in Austen Saunders’ Spectator Book Blog that London’s messy layout and ramshackle streets is a result of constrained monarchs not lording the local planners. The logic then is Paris is the symbol of despotism that required Revolution; London therefore a symbol of quiet resistance. No Robespierre but just a Wilfred Grimsdale.

From London’s maze to British Railways post-war? Or Carlisle Airport’s aborted take-off or just about any Project Le Grande that smacks of centralism. Where the US citizenry pack a small basement arsenal against Big Government we employ the local official; who, at the point of contact, sends years of MBA-project-planning-precision into a paper storm. Tombs and Tombs’ The Sweet Enemy suggests the French despise such lack of vision. They also grind teeth at our parliament. Its maddening obsession with precedent. The future is dictated by ‘let’s check what we did last time’; like driving forward using only the rear-view mirror.

Tombs is English and the other Tombs is French; making their Tome on the 300-year-war a little more interesting. Tis intriguing how history reveals ‘us’. Russia went with Platonic Idealism; England with Socratic Argument… France goes with the classical and elegant. Shakespeare was rough and crude and not worth our time, they said. Our desire to disunite and slug it out then leaves our city streets organically arranged. More a collage of opinion and minor fracas between the Mr Grimsdales than sweeping Champ-Elysees. Like one of those paint pots swinging on a rope above the studio floor of the genius Tony Hart’s Vision On; leaving its random splodges.

Randomness then is its own beauty; grand vision is seen for what it is, contrived and a little bit over blown. Impressive but wounded by self-engrandising puffery that is likely to induce slight regret. France post-war drove its railways like coach and horses where we bobbed and weaved around badger sets as we consulted the tea-lady. We see planning-by-committee as our birthright. Management by consensus then has led to patchwork London streets; Rome’s straight lines weren’t sustainable. Because they were Roman I suppose. You couldn’t hide in alleyways in the Roman world as they’d been marbled over? Where in Britain our freedom means we lurk seditiously in corners, up twittens, down quashetts.

So, Paris is more beautiful then. But we’re more satisfied in our unmade beds.