The Enid Blyton Society

KEVP wrote:I don't think being born in London should be a "top sign of a true Londoner". Someone who is born in London but spends their entire life somewhere else isn't going to be considered a "true Londoner". While someone who moves to London and lives there a long time and fully embraces London life and identity is much more of a "true Londoner".

I was thinking the same thing, KEVP.

Enid Blyton did live in London again as an adult, in a flat in Chelsea with her husband Hugh, but they only stayed there for 18 months. She went to London quite frequently for work-related matters and shopping though.

Katharine wrote:According to someone I was talking to the other day, a true Londoner never refers to the Underground as 'The Tube'.

Interesting to read the responses to my quote. Maybe it depends on which part of London people are from that influences the choice of 'tube' or 'underground'?

I live just outside London and spend quite a lot of time there. I have always heard it referred to as The Tube. The London Evening Standard, the local newspaper always refers to it thus as does tfl.

Even growing up in Australia, I always knew very well that the London Underground was called the Tube!!

Tube to me is a tube of Smarties!

The typical Londoner that I knew has almost disappeared. Today's typical Londoner is probably of African ancestory (yes, I know we all are before Courtenay points this out ). London is now so multi-cultural, that native Londoners (those whose great grandparents were Londoners) have moved away.

London has always been a city of immigrants. It was built in the first place by immigrants from Rome. In any period of history the "typical Londoner" was an immigrant or child of immigrants.

Every new group of immigrants is resisted by the people already in London (especially the younger Londoners) but then with enough time each group becomes integrated into London, and everyone forgets they were immigrants. Then a whole new group of immigrants from another place arrives, and the whole story starts all over again.

Reminds me of an article I found a few months ago, KEVP: DNA study finds London was ethnically diverse from the start

I wouldn't exactly call the Romans 'immigrants' in the usual sense of the world - they invaded and took over!

True though that London has always been ethnically diverse right from the start.