History Main / BritainIsOnlyLondon

This one is fairly understandable when you consider that London has been by far the biggest urban conurbation of the British Isles for the past millennium[[note]] At present some 12% of the UK's population lives in Greater London, a figure that increases if you wish to define the 'London area' as anywhere within the M25; by comparison, less than 7% of Americans live in the New York City area [[/note]], and for most of that period, it also was by far their most important political, economic and cultural centre. And London's importance extends beyond the British Isles, as for centuries it not only was the capital of England and later the UK, but also of UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, and the world over people measure their geographical position and their standard time with reference to the Greenwich Meridian in London. As a European metropolis, London for several centuries could only be compared in its aggregate of size, importance, and influence to one other city: UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}. From a non-British point of view, London is exciting, overwhelming even, in its labyrinthine sprawl of streets and underground lines, in its mix of various British (Irish, Scottish, Welsh...) and foreign populations (e.g. South Asian and Eastern European). Most foreign travellers find what they want to see in an urban context on a trip to Britain within a 100m radius of the Houses of Parliament and they might not even be able to name a museum, gallery, theatre or store outside of it. It's not that they don't want to see more of the wider British Isles, but there they are usually interested in individual buildings (Canterbury Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the [[Music/TheBeatles Cavern Club]] in Liverpool, etc...) and scenic areas in the countryside.

** As far as air travel goes, this is a self-reinforcing trope: London is ''the world's'' busiest air traffic hub, so that's where it logically follows all airlines should try to focus their business in the UK, to the detriment of other cities. Meanwhile, nobody is willing to build extra runways and terminals in the northern half of the country [[SelfFulfillingProphecy because nobody flies from there]].

Are aliens landing in [=UFOs=]? They'll land in Hyde Park. Is there a neighbourhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's probably right off of Shaftesbury Avenue. Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the Earth's surface, wherein the {{Precursors}} created all life on Earth? There's probably a sealed tunnel in UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground that breaches right into it. Are you looking for TheLeader of a secret den of werewolves? He's probably [[Music/WarrenZevon drinking a piña colada down at Trader Vic's]].[[note]]And his hair is perfect.[[/note]] UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny? Wembley Stadium has front-row seats. A magical gateway between worlds? Look in the London Underground again — or keep your eye out for an [[Series/DoctorWho out-of-place police box]]. ZombieApocalypse or ThePlague has broken out? The epicenter is in Neasden.

* ''VideoGame/MarioKartTour'': Justified. Many of the debuting racetracks in this game are based on capitals of real-life countries (the only exceptions being New York Minute, Los Angeles Laps and Vancouver Velocity, since the capitals of USA and Canada are Washington DC and Ottawa respectively). So when it's England's turn, the course representing it is ''London'' Loop, which also features many iconic attractions like the Big Ben and River Thames.

* London is featured less than you might think in the ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'' series. It's definitely the main place in ''[[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheUnwoundFuture Unwound Future]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/LaytonsMysteryJourneyKatrielleAndTheMillionairesConspiracy Mystery Journey]]'', but the good professor also visits other places in the other games like [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheCuriousVillage St Mystere]], [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheLastSpecter Misthallery]], [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonVsPhoenixWrightAceAttorney Labyrinthia]], etc. Although he doesn't seem to visit any other real-life British places...

** Similarly, Music/BritneySpears greeted Manchester as London.
** Music/LadyGaga, at T in the Park (UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}}'s biggest music festival) greeted the crowd with "Hello, London"... ''[[EpicFail Twice]]''. Considering how many Scots, um, [[BerserkButton dislike]] being mistaken for the English, this was met poorly.
*** Liam Gallagher famously made fun of artists not knowing where they are by opening an Oasis concert at Wembley Stadium in 2000 sarcastically shouting "Hello, Manchester!". Gallagher, a [[UsefulNotes/FootballPopMusicAndFlatCaps Manchester]] and UK native, was of course well aware that he was in London.

* Most American media will refer to British newspapers as "the London papers". While this is accurate in the sense that their offices are indeed in London, it creates the impression that they only circulate in the city limits (only three do). This may be more to do with Britain being smaller than America, and national newspapers, therefore, being a lot more feasible.
** It is worth noting that many of the major American newspapers are named for the cities they are published in (e.g. the ''New York Times''), with at least one national paper named for a particular ''street'' (''Wall Street Journal'') which might also have something to do with this.
** ''The Guardian'' once averted this trope by being the '''''Manchester''' Guardian'' -- named for the city it was published in at the time (and even after it moved production to London). But the place name has long since been dropped from the paper's title, and it would be difficult to argue that this paper, like all the other national broadsheets, isn't incredibly London-centric these days.
** London-based newspaper ''The Observer'' is renowned, among ''provincial'' readers, for its incredibly myopic metro-centrism. A general trend among the paper's would-be opinion formers is that ''South'' London (i.e., the other side of the Thames) is so far out of the cultural and social loop that it isn't worth visiting. So what hope for the ''rest'' of us if an otherwise readable paper has this prejudice?
** ''Magazine/PrivateEye'''s architecture column once mentioned the "remote" city of Aberdeen, prompting a Scottish reader to point out that for many, many people, London was the one that was remote.

* This has somewhat been averted in the Series/EurovisionSongContest - of the nine times it has been in the United Kingdom, four of them - 1960, 1963, 1968 and 1977 - have been in London. The remaining shows have been in Edinburgh (1972), Brighton (1974), Harrogate (1982), Birmingham (1998) and Liverpool (2023). Indeed, London - which met the criteria - was specifically excluded from the 2023 shortlist as the UK government and the BBC aimed to "move events and opportunities outside the capital". The 2004 Junior edition was also originally planned to be in Manchester, but was relocated to Lillehammer (via Zagreb) due to finance and scheduling problems.
** Played straight with anniversary editions, however: one to celebrate the 50th anniversary was going to be held in London, but the venue was unavailable and was relocated to Copenhagen. The 60th anniversary edition, was held in London.

* On an episode of ''Series/TheGrahamNortonShow'', German actress Creator/DianeKruger asked comedian John Bishop (who is from Liverpool and sounds like it) if he could do an "English accent" - meaning the London RP dialect. To her credit, she seemed to immediately realise her mistake and said [[LampshadeHanging "you know what I mean"]].

* For the most part, it's averted in ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''. Until the BigBad [[ThoseWackyNazis Millennium]] fully enters the series, we have action taking place in an undisclosed British suburb, an abandoned factory and warehouse in Badrick, Ireland, outside the town of Cheddar ([[ShownTheirWork actual places]]), the Hellsing Organization, Britain's National Gallery, a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and an undisclosed suburb of Brazil. Even when they reveal themselves fully, the fight afterward takes place in presumably the English Channel on a British ship taken over by Millennium. London is their main target and the last five manga [=volumes/OVAs=] pretty much take place there; clearly, this is not a case of generalization.

** Given that much of the movie was filmed in London, and given director Creator/StephenSommers, this was certainly deliberate. In the DVD commentary, he specifically states that he knows the view is impossible, but left it in because he thought [[RuleOfCool it looked cool]].

** Except for ''The Brightonomicon'', which is set in Brighton. Naturally, the narrator had come to Brighton from Brentford. Like the author, who used to live in (or near) Brentford and now lives in (or near) Brighton.

** Unusually this isn't a case of AuthorAppeal, since Connolly and Ridyard are, respectively, Irish and English-born South African.

* Averted by ''Literature/ThomasTheTankEngine''. Two engines, Donald and Douglas are Scottish, another two, Duck and Oliver are from the West Country, and the writer assures people to see the trains in Wales. Of course, the writer ''is'' British, but still.

*** Apparently, Sodor is actually in the Irish Sea, close enough to Cumbria to be linked to Barrow-in-Furness by rail ferry.

** Creator/StevenMoffat was particularly irritated by this trope's use in ''Doctor Who'', which is why [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour "The Eleventh Hour"]] subverts this as the out-of-control TARDIS arrives in central London after crashing from space and narrowly avoids colliding with Big Ben, but instead crash lands in a small English village in the garden of a girl from Scotland. The rest of Moffatt's first season only has two episodes set in London (the second also in two other parts of Britain), and a third with a brief (though important) scene there (respectively: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]], [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E13TheBigBang "The Big Bang"]], and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens "The Pandorica Opens"]]).
*** Incidentally, Amy and Rory lived in London late in their tenure as companions, and the next companion, Clara Oswald, lived in London despite being originally from Blackpool.

** Although the multiplayer mode of London 1961 did feature a relatively (for the time) accurate version of Manchester to roam around in. Just a shame this wasn't built on...

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', [[AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs the Reapers attack Earth]] ''en-masse''. After Shepard assembles TheCavalry to retake Earth, the final part of the game is set in the war-torn streets of London.
** It also features some of the usual sights, like Big Ben, and even the odd telephone box. Now, unless they're there for tourist purposes, it's hard to imagine them [[AnachronismStew having any real purpose a couple of centuries into the future]].
* ''VideoGame/TheGetaway1'' and its sequel ''VideoGame/TheGetawayBlackMonday'' both avert this as they were handled by a London based developer.
** There was also a spin-off of sorts called ''Gangs Of London'', which takes place all around the title city and has an in-game map that accurately depicts the names and locations of real-life streets.
* London is featured less than you might think in the ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'' series. It's definitely the main place in ''Lost Future'' but the good professor also visits other places in the other games like [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheCuriousVillage St Mystere]], [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheLastSpecter Misthallery]], [[VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonVsPhoenixWrightAceAttorney Labyrinthia]], etc. Although he doesn't seem to visit any other real-life British places...

** The [[OOpNorth northern]] city of Manchester made three credible attempts to be chosen as the host city for the Olympics. Despite each bid being highly professional and well-regarded by those who mattered, the metropolitan intelligentsia responded with patronising sniggers and mutters about provincials not knowing their place. There is a suspicion Manchester's bids were not properly backed or even taken seriously by London governments. It was a different story when London applied.
*** The IOC stated that although any UK city was welcome to bid for the Olympics, only London had any chance of winning.

* After UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher died, her rather sycophantic biographer Charles Moore was invited to a radio debate. He tried to argue that she was not a divisive Prime Minister, when in fact she was perhaps the most divisive since WWII (this is true regardless of whether or not one thinks she was a ''good'' PM). When he was finally forced to admit that Thatcher was despised in many parts of the country, he labelled these parts "not the particularly important bits". When asked to elaborate, his combined response could be boiled down to, in essence, "err, well, London and the South of England liked her!" Perhaps one of the strongest recent expressions of London narcissism.
** And while he might have thought he spoke for "the South of England" as a whole, at best he spoke for the urban South-East. The overwhelmingly rural South-West of England is rather different politically, being split roughly in half between Tory and Lib-Dem supporters where the South-East (the area in which London sits) is overwhelmingly Tory[[note]] Though the area surrounding London is overwhelmingly Tory, it is important to note that London itself isn't: since the Mayor of London was introduced in 2000, Labour have so far had it for ten years (Ken Livingston, 2000-2008 and Sadiq Khan since 2016) to the Conservatives' eight (Boris Johnson, 2008-2016); London also usually has more Labour [=MPs=] than Conservative[[/note]]. Very often the London-based British media will say "the South" when they're angling for "the Southeast" and really just thinking about London.
*** Granted, she's not exactly universally loved in the South East either- not universally hated like in the North, but she was still pretty divisive.
*** Note parts of the South-East not particularly far from London include Brighton, with a Green MP & council, are renowned for being socially liberal.

* And in 2021, a TV show seeking to identify ''Britain's Best loved Television Advert'' gave the accolade to a series of ads for Heathrow Airport, featuring a family of anthropomorphised cute bears getting together for Christmas, that had never, ever, been screened outside London and the South-East. ''Britain'''s favourite TV advert?
** And even within the Creator/{{ITV}} regions, there were issues. Granada [=TV=] covered the whole of the North-Western region from the Scottish borders to Chester and notionally included the Isle of Man. But a frequent complaint was that 95% of its local news and current affairs footage dealt with Manchester and Liverpool, the two biggest and most significant cities. Granada Is Only Manchester or Granada Is Only Liverpool was heard a lot.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb,'' we open on an establishing shot of the family in the back of a taxi cab in England somewhere, and Lawrence, the (British) father, hangs his head out the window, to say, "Ah, London, there's Big Ben, the White Cliffs of Dover, Buckingham Palace, Stonehenge..." Phineas sticks his head out the window and comments, "London's gotten a lot smaller since we were here last..." Cut to a shot of all those landmarks in the same scene. This is made even more bizarre as the voice of Lawrence is none other than Creator/RichardOBrien, of ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'' fame.

* Averted to some extent by ''Series/{{Frasier}}''. Daphne Moon is from [[UsefulNotes/FootballPopMusicAndFlatCaps Manchester]], rather than London, and at least sounds like she's from ''somewhere'' in the north of England.

* Music/{{Beyonce}} once greeted a crowd in Brighton with "Hello, London!" Sadly, the microphone didn't pick up their response. (Brighton is about 40 miles from the capital -- there is even a film called ''London to Brighton'', which should make clear they're different places.)

** As far as air travel goes this is a self-reinforcing trope: London is ''the world's'' busiest air traffic hub, so that's where it logically follows all airlines should try to focus their business in the UK, to the detriment of other cities. Meanwhile, nobody is willing to build extra runways and terminals in the northern half of the country [[SelfFulfillingProphecy because nobody flies from there]].

* Every now and then England has a debate over where something national, such as the football stadium, should be located. It is pointed out that land and running costs would be cheaper in the North and that the Midlands is central and would be easier to get to. Then the planners remember that everything must be in London because everything else is in London and it's built there.

** Manchester had been promised significant government investment in expanding the successful (and economically significant) Metrolink urban tram system to cover more areas of the conurbation with new lines. local people were less than enchanted when the Blair government suddenly did an about-turn and cancelled the project, diverting the funding to the Crossrail project in London, on the explicitly stated grounds that this was far more important and Manchester was just going to have to wait. Even local MP's normally supine and sycophantic to Blair were moved to protest. Manchester is only now (2017) finishing the upgrades that might have been in place fifteen years ago.
* There's a stereotype about Londoners, that goes along the lines of them never truly realizing that they're not in London even if they're halfway up the Yorkshire dales and fighting off sheep. Then again, there's probably a similar one for every capital city in the world.

** And while he might have thought he spoke for "the South of England" as a whole, at best he spoke for the urban South-East. The overwhelmingly rural South-West of England is rather different politically, being split roughly in half between Tory and Lib-Dem supporters where the South-East (the area in which London sits) is overwhelmingly Tory[[note]] Though the area surrounding London is overwhelmingly Tory, it is important to note that London isn't: since the Mayor of London was introduced in 2000, Labour have so far had it for ten years (Ken Livingston, 2000-2008 and Sadiq Khan since 2016) to the Conservatives' eight (Boris Johnson, 2008-2016); London also usually has more Labour [=MPs=] than Conservative[[/note]]. Very often the London-based British media will say "the South" when they're angling for "the Southeast" and really just thinking about London.

*** Note parts of the South-East not particularly far from London include Brighton, with a Green MP & council, renowned for being socially liberal.
* The tendency for many British politicians -and their campaign donors- to act like this trope is TruthInTelevision is one of the many reasons the Scottish National Party are doing so well in TheNewTens.

* In non-British media it is somewhat common to use Scotland Yard as a generic name for British law enforcement. In reality, Scotland Yard is the unofficial name of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), which only has jurisdiction in the Greater London region.

* And in 2021, a TV show seeking to identify ''Britain's Best loved Television Advert'' gave the accolade to a series of ads for Heathrow Airport, featuring a family of anthropomorphised cute bears getting together for Christmas, that had never, ever, been screened outside London and the south-East. ''Britain'''s favourite TV advert?

** Early "talking book" recordings of ''The Railway Series'' included a variety of engine accents: Gordon ends up coming from the North, James from Wales and Toby from the West Country.

* Averted by ''Literature/ThomasTheTankEngine''. Two engines, Donald and Douglas are Scottish, and the writer assures people to see the trains in Wales. Of course, the writer ''is'' British, but still.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' mostly averts this. It does feature London prominently as the Ministry of Magic is based there and so is Diagon Alley, where Hogwarts students buy most of their magical equipment. The safehouse in Grimmauld Place is located in Islington, which is a London borough. The train to Hogwarts leaves from King's Cross every year, making one wonder about the students who may live closer to the school (which WordOfGod confirmed was in Scotland). However, two of the main protagonists are explicitly from outside London: Harry was born in the West Country and raised in Surrey, and Ron is from Devon. The only Londoner in the cast is the minor character Dean Thomas (and if his support of West Ham is anything to go by, he's from Stratford in the East End).

* It becomes clearer, as the Literature/{{Discworld}} develops more depth and detail, that the great smelly city of Ankh-Morpork is a FantasyCounterpartCulture of London, taken UpToEleven. the City Mappe features a suspiciously familiar wiggly river with lots of Thames-like twists and turns. It even has an "Isle of Gods" in roughly the plae where the Isle of Dogs appears on London's map, and district names like Dimwell and Dolly Sisters echo locations in London, as do many street names [[note]]In the overall conception, nearby areas like Lancre (Lancashire), The Chalk (Wiltshire, Somerset and The Downs) and The Shires (a Borsetshire-like rural England) fill the spaces for England as a whole. The capital city, however, is a steampunk fantasy London. [[/note]]

* Creator/RossGrant likes to remind aspiring UK-based actors that they don't have to move to London to "make it", and that there's a very active film and television industry in the north (he's Manchester based) - considering the likes of ''Series/CoronationStreet'', ''{{Series/Hollyoaks}}'', ''Series/{{Emmerdale}}'', and ''Series/LastTangoInHalifax'' are all filmed up there. It has been noted, however, that the creation of the Creator/{{ITV}}1 monolith, based inevitably in London, has effectively killed the old ITV regions for everything except residual functions like local news[[note]]as with many other British institutions, you can trace ITV's NetworkDecay to running afoul of Thatcher; the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_on_the_Rock Death on the Rock]]" scandal pissed her off so badly she basically deregulated ITV as a method of kicking out the legendary Creator/ThamesTelevision, which produced the offending documentary; it didn't help that another of her arch-nemeses, the trade unions, were absurdly powerful at ITV (they called two strikes, one in 1968 and another in 1979, that saw the entire network cease broadcasting). Thames was ejected unfairly for [[SketchySuccessor Carlton]], which proceeded to buy up other ITV companies and erase their names for Carlton's own. Together with Granada, they merged into a single ITV company in 2004, two years after rebranding most of the network as ITV1 and reducing the regional identities to little more than local news[[/note]]. Large production facilities in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester are now just memories or empty derelict shells awaiting demolition. [[note]]Manchester City Council, at the time of writing, was trying to get heritage/museum artefact status for the old illuminated letters atop the former Granada TV building, which could be seen a long way across the city at night - which does tend to say it all about the demise of regional TV programme-making[[/note]]

* Creator/RossGrant likes to remind aspiring UK-based actors that they don't have to move to London to "make it", and that there's a very active film and television industry in the north (he's Manchester based) - considering the likes of ''Series/CoronationStreet'', ''{{Series/Hollyoaks}}'', ''Series/{{Emmerdale}}'', and ''Series/LastTangoInHalifax'' are all filmed up there. It has been noted, however, that the creation of the Creator/{{ITV}}1 monolith, based inevitably in London, has effectively killed the old ITV regions for everything except residual functions like local news. Large production facilities in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester are now just memories or empty derelict shells awaiting demolition. [[note]]Manchester City Council, at the time of writing, was trying to get heritage/museum artefact status for the old illuminated letters atop the former Granada TV building, which could be seen a long way across the city at night - which does tend to say it all about the demise of regional TV programme-making[[/note]]

* Averted and Conversed in ''VideoGame/LoveOfMagic''. The game takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, but various people (notably Mom) call it England. Scots like Katie do not take kindly to this.
-->'''Mom''': Katie, Bella, it was so nice to meet you, and to know my son has found such nice new friends here in England.\\
'''Katie''': (after leaving the pub) Bloody yanks; the difference between Scotland and England ought to be clear to anyone.

Compare BigApplesauce, HollywoodProvincialism, CanadaDoesNotExist, TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse, FreestateAmsterdam, and NewYorkIsOnlyManhattan. France gets a very similar treatment with GayParee. A strange variation occurs in [[IrishMedia Irish media]], with a huge number of productions set in Dublin. In UsefulNotes/NewZealand, the country's largest city, Auckland, tends to be used this way, if [[SceneryPorn natural scenery]] isn't involved. Fictional depictions of [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn the Soviet Union]] and UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} tend to be set in Moscow. The SpaghettiAndGondolas version of UsefulNotes/{{Italy}} typically (but not always) takes place in Rome. Contrast AliensInCardiff (where a small town or a mid-sized city is the primary setting) and OopNorth (for British works set in northern England).

* For the most part, it's averted in ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''. Until the BigBad [[ThoseWackyNazis Millennium]] fully enters the series, we have action taking place in an undisclosed British suburb, an abandoned factory and warehouse in Badrick, Ireland, outside the town of Cheddar ([[ShownTheirWork actual places]]), the Hellsing Organization, Britain's National Gallery, a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and an undisclosed suburb of Brazil. Even when they reveal themselves fully, the fight afterward takes place in presumably the English Channel on a British ship taken over by Millennium. London is their main target and the last five manga [=volumes/OVA's=] pretty much take place there; clearly, this is not a case of generalization.

This one is fairly understandable when you consider that London has been by far the biggest urban conurbation of the British Isles for the past millennium[[note]] At present some 12% of the UK's population lives in Greater London, a figure that increases if you wish to define the 'London area' as anywhere within the M25; by comparison, less than 7 percent of Americans live in the New York City area [[/note]], and for most of that period, it also was by far their most important political, economic and cultural centre. And London's importance extends beyond the British Isles, as for centuries it not only was the capital of England and later the UK, but also of UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, and the world over people measure their geographical position and their standard time with reference to the Greenwich Meridian in London. As a European metropolis, London for several centuries could only be compared in its aggregate of size, importance, and influence to one other city: UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}. From a non-British point of view, London is exciting, overwhelming even, in its labyrinthine sprawl of streets and underground lines, in its mix of various British (Irish, Scottish, Welsh...) and foreign populations (i.e. South Asian and Eastern European). Most foreign travellers find what they want to see in an urban context on a trip to Britain within a 100m radius of the Houses of Parliament and they might not even be able to name a museum, gallery, theatre or store outside of it. It's not that they don't want to see more of the wider British Isles, but there they are usually interested in individual buildings (Canterbury Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the [[Music/TheBeatles Cavern Club]] in Liverpool, etc...) and scenic areas in the countryside.

** As far as air travel goes this is a self-reinforcing trope: London is ''the world's'' busiest air traffic hub, so that's where it logically follows all airlines should try to focus their business in the UK, to the detriment of other cities. Meanwhile, nobody is willing to build extra runways and terminals in the northern half of the country [[ShapedLikeItself because nobody flies from there]].

This one is fairly understandable when you consider that London has been by far the biggest conurbation of the British Isles in the past millennium[[note]] At present some 12% of the UK's population lives in Greater London and this figure increases to 20% if you include the whole of London's metropolitan area. By comparison, less than 7 percent of Americans live in the New York City area [[/note]], and for most of that period, it also was by far their most important political, economic and cultural centre. And London's importance extends beyond the British Isles, as for centuries it not only was the capital of England and the UK, but also of UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, and the world over people measure their geographical position and their standard time with reference to the Greenwich Meridian in London. As a European metropolis, London for several centuries could only be compared in its aggregate of size, importance, and influence to one other city: UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}. From a non-British point of view, London is exciting, overwhelming even, in its labyrinthine sprawl of streets and underground lines, in its mix of various British (Irish, Scottish, Welsh...) and foreign populations (i.e. South Asian and Eastern European). Most foreign travelers find what they want to see in an urban context on a trip to Britain within a 100m radius of the Houses of Parliament and they might not even be able to name a museum, gallery, theatre or store outside of it. It's not that they don't want to see more of the wider British Isles, but there they are usually interested in individual buildings (Canterbury Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the [[Music/TheBeatles Cavern Club]] in Liverpool, ...) and scenic areas in the countryside.

* Parodied and inverted in an episode of ''Radio/TheNowShow'' shortly after the opening of the Media City complex in Salford. They began by talking about how the main news story was the snow, then said that where they were recording in Broadcasting House, London, it ''wasn't'' snowing, but that was typical of the Manchester-based news media.

** Creator/StevenMoffat was particularly irritated by this trope's use in ''Doctor Who'', which is why [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour "The Eleventh Hour"]] {{subverts}} this as the out-of-control TARDIS arrives in central London after crashing from space and narrowly avoids colliding with Big Ben, but instead crash lands in a small English village in the garden of a girl from Scotland. The rest of Moffatt's first season only has two episodes set in London (the second also in two other parts of Britain), and a third with a brief (though important) scene there (respectively: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]], [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E13TheBigBang "The Big Bang"]], and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens "The Pandorica Opens"]]).