London Key Quotes

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Unwrapping the paper carefully so it doesn’t tear, I find a beautiful red leather box. Cartier. It’s familiar, thanks to my second-chance earrings and my watch. Cautiously, I open the box to discover a delicate charm bracelet of silver, or platinum or white gold—I don’t know, but it’s absolutely enchanting. Attached to it are several charms: the Eiffel Tower, a London black cab, a helicopter—Charlie Tango, a glider—the soaring, a catamaran—The Grace, a bed, and an ice cream cone? I look up at him, bemused. “Vanilla?” He shrugs apologetically, and I can’t help but laugh. Of course. “Christian, this is beautiful. Thank you. It’s yar.” He grins. My favorite is the heart. It’s a locket. “You can put a picture or whatever in that.” “A picture of you.” I glance at him through my lashes. “Always in my heart.” He smiles his lovely, heartbreakingly shy smile. I fondle the last two charms: a letter C—oh yes, I was his first girlfriend to use his first name. I smile at the thought. And finally, there’s a key. “To my heart and soul,” he whispers.
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3))
Alex decided he’d had enough. He put down his knife. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to work with me. Well, that’s fine. Because I don’t want to work with you either. And for what it’s worth, nobody would ever believe you were my mom because no mom would ever behave like you.” “Alex…,” Carver began. “Forget it! I’m going back to London. And if you’re Mr. Byrne asks why, you can tell him I didn’t like the jelly, so I went home to get some jam.
Anthony Horowitz (Skeleton Key (Alex Rider, #3))
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
Jack London
Richard opened his hand, and the key stared up at him from his palm. "By my crooked teeth," asked Richard, remembering, "who am I?
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere (London Below, #1))
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
One slice of key lime pie. Two forks.' I felt Todd’s hand on my arm. 'You’ll thank me later.' No doubt I would.
Ophelia London (Abby Road (Abby Road, #1))
Children's author C. Alexander London (2011) writes, “It's a fact: people can survive without books. People can even have wonderful, full lives without books. But they can't long endure without community, and a community is built on stories.
Donalyn Miller (Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits)
There are all sorts of families," Tom's grandmother had remarked, and over the following few weeks Tom became part of the Casson family, as Micheal and Sarah and Derek-from-the-camp had done before him. He immediately discovered that being a member of the family was very different from being a welcome friend. If you were a Casson family member, for example, and Eve drifted in from the shed asking, "Food? Any ideas? Or shall we not bother?" then you either joined in the search of the kitchen cupboards or counted the money in the housekeeping jam jar and calculated how many pizzas you could afford. Also, if you were a family member you took care of Rose, helped with homework (Saffron and Sarah were very strict about homework), unloaded the washing machine, learned to fold up Sarah's wheelchair, hunted for car keys, and kept up the hopeful theory that in the event of a crisis Bill Casson would disengage himself from his artistic life in London and rush home to help.
Hilary McKay (Indigo's Star (Casson Family, #2))
Manglish is the Malaysian form of English. It’s superior to Singlish when you’re in Malaysia and inferior when you’re in Singapore. It’s known for its love for Malay, Cantonese, Tamil, Mandarin, and Hokkien. Occasionally, there are English terms, too. It’s different from Indian English, which is spoken with a punchy tone, or British English, which is an endangered language in London. A key distinction between Manglish and Singlish is Manglish’s recognition of Tamil words. Singlish denies the existence of inferior Tamil words.
Merlin Franco (Saint Richard Parker)
One of the keys to happiness, experts tell us, is autonomy in one’s life – the luxury of being able to decide your own destiny and achieve the fulfilment of self-realisation. It is no coincidence that the region that is consistently judged to have the highest levels of well-being and life quality, and the happiest, most fulfilled people, also has the greatest equality of educational opportunity and, according to a London School of Economics study comparing the incomes of fathers and sons over thirty years, among the very highest levels of social mobility in the world. The four main Nordic countries occupied the top four places on the list.
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia)
She ran her hand over the dash. “You’re petting my car,” Hunter said, turning the key. “I usually charge for that.
Ophelia London (Falling for Her Soldier (Perfect Kisses, #3))
She fished in a pocket of her dress and tossed a labelled key to Griff. "Think of it as a treasure hunt, with that our only clue. The reward for success is not having a vampire for an aunt.
Andrea K. Höst (The Pyramids of London (The Trifold Age, #1))
Yet all three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction.
Jack London (White Fang)
What are you—” I paused and it hit me. “Oh heavens, what did you do?” He shrugged innocently. “Let’s just say … that I’ve been … in a sense … blackmailing key members of London society and editors of the scandal sheets into preserving your reputation.” I gaped at him. “And by ‘in a sense,’ I mean that’s exactly what happened.” He smiled broadly at the room. “You—you’re serious?” I found myself half gasping the words but also not finding it terribly hard to believe. Mr. Kent never hid his worse qualities. He wore them like badges.
Tarun Shanker (These Ruthless Deeds (These Vicious Masks, #2))
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.” – Jack London,
I.C. Robledo (The Secret Principles of Genius: The Key to Unlocking Your Hidden Genius Potential (Master Your Mind, Revolutionize Your Life Series))
When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned, then admitted, "When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows." Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can't figure out what a writer is trying to say but think it sounds intelligent will typically resort to calling such work "daring," "provocative," or "complex." An unholy alliance of writers and readers is at work here.
Ralph Keyes (The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear)
What are you—” I paused and it hit me. “Oh heavens, what did you do?” He shrugged innocently. “Let’s just say … that I’ve been … in a sense … blackmailing key members of London society and editors of the scandal sheets into preserving your reputation.” I gaped at him. “And by ‘in a sense,’ I mean that’s exactly what happened.” He smiled broadly at the room. “You—you’re serious?” I found myself half gasping the words but also not finding it terribly hard to believe. Mr. Kent never hid his worse qualities. He wore them like badges.
Tarun Shanker (These Ruthless Deeds (These Vicious Masks, #2))
My friend Simon managed only sixteen of the seventeen League games - he smashed his head on a bookshelf in London a few hours before the Grimsby game on the 28th of Decemebr; his girlfriend had to take his car keys away from him because he kept making dazed attempts to drive from Fulham up to the Abbey.
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild / White Fang)
Then yesterday Hitler dispatched an ultimatum: Either carry out the terms of the Berchtesgaden “agreement,” or the Reichswehr marches. A little after midnight this morning Schuschnigg and Miklas surrendered. The new Cabinet was announced, Seyss-Inquart is in the key post of Minister of the Interior, and there is an amnesty for all Nazis. Douglas Reed when I saw him today so indignant he could hardly talk. He’s given the London Times the complete story of what happened at Berchtesgaden. Perhaps it will do some good. I dropped by the Legation this evening. John Wiley was pacing the floor. “It’s the end of Austria,” he said.
William L. Shirer (Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-41)
The key to innovation—at Bell Labs and in the digital age in general—was realizing that there was no conflict between nurturing individual geniuses and promoting collaborative teamwork. It was not either-or. Indeed, throughout the digital age, the two approaches went together. Creative geniuses (John Mauchly, William Shockley, Steve Jobs) generated innovative ideas. Practical engineers (Presper Eckert, Walter Brattain, Steve Wozniak) partnered closely with them to turn concepts into contraptions. And collaborative teams of technicians and entrepreneurs worked to turn the invention into a practical product. When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history’s basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered.
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
above all the parishes in London, for a great number of alleys and thoroughfares, very long, into which no carts could come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the bodies a very long way, which alleys now remain to witness it; such as White's Alley, Cross Keys Court, Swan Alley, Bell Alley, White Horse Alley, and many more.
Daniel Defoe (History of the Plague in London)
I HAD TO GO to America for a while to give some talks. Going to America always does me good. It’s where I’m from, after all. There’s baseball on the TV, people are friendly and upbeat, they don’t obsess about the weather except when there is weather worth obsessing about, you can have all the ice cubes you want. Above all, visiting America gives me perspective. Consider two small experiences I had upon arriving at a hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. When I checked in, the clerk needed to record my details, naturally enough, and asked for my home address. Our house doesn’t have a street number, just a name, and I have found in the past that that is more deviance than an American computer can sometimes cope with, so I gave our London address. The girl typed in the building number and street name, then said: “City?” I replied: “London.” “Can you spell that please?” I looked at her and saw that she wasn’t joking. “L-O-N-D-O-N,” I said. “Country?” “England.” “Can you spell that?” I spelled England. She typed for a moment and said: “The computer won’t accept England. Is that a real country?” I assured her it was. “Try Britain,” I suggested. I spelled that, too—twice (we got the wrong number of T’s the first time)—and the computer wouldn’t take that either. So I suggested Great Britain, United Kingdom, UK, and GB, but those were all rejected, too. I couldn’t think of anything else to suggest. “It’ll take France,” the girl said after a minute. “I beg your pardon?” “You can have ‘London, France.’ ” “Seriously?” She nodded. “Well, why not?” So she typed “London, France,” and the system was happy. I finished the check-in process and went with my bag and plastic room key to a bank of elevators a few paces away. When the elevator arrived, a young woman was in it already, which I thought a little strange because the elevator had come from one of the upper floors and now we were going back up there again. About five seconds into the ascent, she said to me in a suddenly alert tone: “Excuse me, was that the lobby back there?” “That big room with a check-in desk and revolving doors to the street? Why, yes, it was.” “Shoot,” she said and looked chagrined. Now I am not for a moment suggesting that these incidents typify Austin, Texas, or America generally or anything like that. But it did get me to thinking that our problems are more serious than I had supposed. When functioning adults can’t identify London, England, or a hotel lobby, I think it is time to be concerned. This is clearly a global problem and it’s spreading. I am not at all sure how we should tackle such a crisis, but on the basis of what we know so far, I would suggest, as a start, quarantining Texas.
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island)
Forget it! I’m going back to London. And if your Mr. Byrne asks why, you can tell him I didn’t like the jelly, so I went home to get some jam.
Anthony Horowitz (Skeleton Key (Alex Rider, #3))
DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms 410 DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 420 The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands                                      I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie 430 These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.                            Shantih shantih shantih
T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)
Hang on …’ Liam says. ‘Aren’t there only thirty-two pods? I read about it – thirty-two pods for the thirty-two boroughs of London.’ ‘Yeah, but there’s no number thirteen. So there’s a number thirty-three to make up for the missing pod,’ I say.
Lena Jones (The Secret Key (Agatha Oddly, #1))
I click to buy it and I’m furious to discover that it’s not available in Ireland and they won’t post it from abroad and the only place that sells it is Harrods and it’s impossible for me to go to Harrods because it’s like being trapped in an Escher painting.
Marian Keyes (The Break)
The very rich, having fundamentally missed the point of urban living, have long been frustrated by the fact that it’s impossible to squeeze the amenities of a country mansion—car showroom, swimming pool, cinema, servants quarters etc.—into the floor space of your average London terrace. Those without access to trans-dimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery, have had to resort to extending their houses into the ground. Thus proving that all that stands between your average rich person and a career in Bond villainy is access to an extinct volcano.
Ben Aaronovitch (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
Get out!” His command thunders as if projected through a megaphone. The harshness of his voice is like a lash across my back. I run through the shadows, down the stairs, into the foyer. I grab my purse and keys off the floor and rush outside, where the cold rain pelts my face and blends with my hot tears.
London Clarke (The Neighbor)
I had hoped for a rich crop of eccentrics among them, such as I had encountered at the annual general meeting of the Anglo-Albanian Society in London a month previously. The secretary of the society was a retired optician from Ilford who had discovered the Balkan paradise late in life and learnt its language; the rank and file of the society seemed either elderly revolutionaries of the upper classes, who knew the key to world history yet somehow had never learnt how to do up their shirt buttons properly, or lonely, embittered proletarian autodidacts, who dreamed of vengeance upon the world and called it love of humanity.
Theodore Dalrymple (The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World)
It was the Rothschilds who funded the early ‘Jewish’ settlers in Palestine; it was the Rothschilds who helped to create and fund Hitler and the Nazis in the Second World War which included the sickening treatment of Jews, gypsies, communists, and others; it was the Rothschilds who used the understandable post-war sympathy for the ‘Jews’ they had mercilessly exploited to press through their demands for a take-over of Arab Palestine; it was the Rothschilds who funded the ‘Jewish’ terrorist groups in Palestine which bombed, murdered, and terrorised Israel into existence; and it was the Rothschilds who funded and manipulated these terrorists into the key positions in Israel, among them the Prime Ministers, Ben-Gurion, Shamir, Begin, and Rabin. These men would spend the rest of their lives condemning the terrorism of others with an hypocrisy which beggars belief; it was Lord Victor Rothschild, the controller of British Intelligence, who provided the know-how for Israel’s nuclear weapons; it was the Rothschilds who owned and controlled Israel from the start and have continued ever since to dictate its policy; it was the Rothschilds and the rest of the Brotherhood network which has hidden and suppressed the fact, confirmed by Jewish historians, that the overwhelming majority of ‘Jewish’ people in Israel originate genetically from the Caucasus Mountains, not from the lands they now occupy. The Jewish people have been sacrificed on the Rothschild altar of greed and lust for power, but even the Rothschilds take their orders from a higher authority which, I believe, is probably based in Asia, and the Far East dictates to the operational headquarters in London.
David Icke (The Biggest Secret: The book that will change the World)
The key to innovation-at Bell Labs and in the digital age in general-was realizing that there was no conflict between nurturing individual geniuses and promoting collaborative teamwork. It was not either-or. Indeed, throughout the digital age, the two approaches went together. Creative geniuses (John Mauchly, William Shockley, Steve Jobs) generated innovative ideas. Practical engineers (Presper Eckert, Walter Brattain, Steve Wozniak) partnered closely with them to turn concepts into contraptions. And collaborative teams of technicians and entrepreneurs worked to turn the invention into a practical product. When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history's basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered.
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
Now we wish to get into the house, but we have no key. Is it not so?" I nodded. "Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could not still get in. And think there was to you no conscience of the housebreaker, what would you do?" "I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the lock for me." "And your police, they would interfere, would they not?" "Oh no! Not if they knew the man was properly employed." "Then," he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to whether or not that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever, oh so clever, in reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No, no, my friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty houses in this your London, or of any city in the world, and if you do it as such things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done, no one will interfere.
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
She ran her hands, butterfly fashion, over the keys. "A little morsel of Stravinski?" she said. It was in the middle of the morsel that Adele came in and found Lucia playing Stravinski to Mr. Greatorex. The position seemed to be away, away beyond her orbit altogether, and she merely waited with undiminished faith in Lucia, to see what would happen when Lucia became aware to whom she was playing. . . . It was a longish morsel, too: more like a meal than a morsel, and it was also remarkably like a muddle. Finally, Lucia made an optimistic attempt at the double chromatic scale in divergent directions which brought it to an end, and laughed gaily. "My poor fingers," she said. "Delicious piano, dear Adele. I love a Bechstein; that was a little morsel of Stravinski. Hectic perhaps, do you think? But so true to the modern idea: little feverish excursions: little bits of tunes, and nothing worked out. But I always say that there is something in Stravinski, if you study him. How I worked at that little piece, and I'm afraid it's far from perfect yet.
E.F. Benson (Lucia in London (The Mapp & Lucia Novels, #3))
People, especially those in charge, rarely invite you into their offices and give freely of their time. Instead, you have to do something unique, compelling, even funny or a bit daring, to earn it. Even if you happen to be an exceptionally well-rounded person who possesses all of the scrappy qualities discussed so far, it’s still important to be prepared, dig deep, do the prep work, and think on your feet. Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded the London-based department store Selfridges, knew the value of doing his homework. Selfridge, an American from Chicago, traveled to London in 1906 with the hope of building his “dream store.” He did just that in 1909, and more than a century later, his stores continue to serve customers in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Selfridges’ success and staying power is rooted in the scrappy efforts of Harry Selfridge himself, a creative marketer who exhibited “a revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail,” as he is described on the Selfridges’ Web site. His department store was known for creating events to attract special clientele, engaging shoppers in a way other retailers had never done before, catering to the holidays, adapting to cultural trends, and changing with the times and political movements such as the suffragists. Selfridge was noted to have said, “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” How do you get people to take notice? How do you stand out in a positive way in order to make things happen? The curiosity and imagination Selfridge employed to successfully build his retail stores can be just as valuable for you to embrace in your circumstances. Perhaps you have landed a meeting, interview, or a quick coffee date with a key decision maker at a company that has sparked your interest. To maximize the impression you’re going to make, you have to know your audience. That means you must respectfully learn what you can about the person, their industry, or the culture of their organization. In fact, it pays to become familiar not only with the person’s current position but also their background, philosophies, triumphs, failures, and major breakthroughs. With that information in hand, you are less likely to waste the precious time you have and more likely to engage in genuine and meaningful conversation.
Terri L. Sjodin (Scrappy: A Little Book About Choosing to Play Big)
Even today, every night of the year, the Queen’s Keys are carried in great ceremony to lock up the gates of the Tower. The Chief Yeoman Warder at 9:53 meets his escort warders and they walk to the gates. They arrive at 10:00 p.m. exactly and are challenged by a sentry with a bayonet who cries loudly, “Who comes here?” The reply by the Chief is, “The Keys.” “Whose keys?” “Queen Elizabeth’s keys.” “Pass, Queen Elizabeth’s keys, and all is well.” The party passes through the Bloody Tower Archway into the fortress and halts at the Broadway Steps. At the top of the stairs, the Tower Guard presents arms and the Chief Warder raises his hat and proclaims, “God preserve Queen Elizabeth.” The sentry replies, “Amen!” Afterward, the keys are taken to the Queen’s House for safekeeping and the Last Post is sounded. This ancient ceremony was interrupted only once since the 14th century. During World War II there was an air raid on London. Bombs fell on the Victorian guardroom just as the party was coming through the Bloody Tower Archway. The noise knocked down the Chief Yeoman and one of the Warder escorts. In the Tower is a letter from the Officer of the Guard in which he apologizes to King George VI for the ceremony finishing late, as well as a reply from the King which states that the officer is not to be punished since the delay was due to enemy action.
Debra Brown (Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors)
decided to move to London while the house was being emptied. At first I stayed in a hotel – the Inn On The Park, the location for the famous story about me ringing the Rocket office and demanding they do something about the wind outside that was keeping me awake. This is obviously the ideal moment to state once and for all that this story is a complete urban myth, that I was never crazy enough to ask my record company to do something about the weather; that I was simply disturbed by the wind and wanted to change rooms to somewhere quieter. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that, because the story is completely true. I absolutely was crazy and deluded enough to ring the international manager of Rocket, Robert Key, and ask him to do something about the wind outside my hotel room. I certainly didn’t want to change rooms. It was 11 a.m., I’d been up all night and there were drugs everywhere: the last thing I needed was the hotel staff bustling in to help me move to a different floor. I angrily outlined the situation to Robert. To his lasting credit, he gave my request very short shrift. On the other end of the phone, I heard the muffled sound of Robert, with his hand over the receiver, telling the rest of the office, ‘Oh God, she’s finally lost it.’ Then he spoke to me again. ‘Elton, are you fucking insane? Now get off the phone and go back to bed.
Elton John (Me)
OLIVER DAVENANT did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat. As well as this, his reading led him in and out of love. At first, it was the picture of Alice going up on tiptoe to shake hands with Humpty Dumpty; then the little Fatima in his Arthur Rackham book, her sweet dusky face, the coins hanging on her brow, the billowing trousers and embroidered coat. Her childish face was alive with excitement as she put the key to the lock. “Don’t!” he had once cried to her in loud agony. In London, he would go every Saturday morning to the Public Library to look at a picture of Lorna Doone. Some Saturdays it was not there, and he would go home again, wondering who had borrowed her, in what kind of house she found herself that week-end. On his last Saturday, he went to say good-bye and the book was not there, so he sat down at a table to await its return. Just before the library was to be shut for lunch-time, he went to the shelf and kissed the two books which would lie on either side of his Lorna when she was returned and, having left this message of farewell, made his way home, late for lunch and empty of heart. If this passion is to be called reading, then the matrons with their circulating libraries and the clergymen with their detective tales are merely flirting and passing time. To discover how Oliver’s life was lived, it was necessary, as in reading The Waste Land, to have an extensive knowledge of literature. With impartiality, he studied comic papers and encyclopaedia, Eleanor’s pamphlets on whatever interested her at the moment, the labels on breakfast cereals and cod liver oil, Conan Doyle and Charlotte Brontë.
Elizabeth Taylor (At Mrs Lippincote's)
In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel located in the Jordann District and after lunch in a café went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert’s Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern Amsterdam provided different but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale-pink bricks stuck together with curiously white mortar, long rows of narrow apartment blocks from the early twentieth century, with large ground-floor windows, bicycles parked outside every house, street furniture displaying a certain demographic scruffiness, an absence of ostentatious buildings, straight streets interspersed with small parks…..In one street lines with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me, on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oaken desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle; I wanted to put my key in that red front door every evening. Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements my seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to the financial mean. There was an honesty in its design. Whereas front doorways in London are prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accept their status, avoiding pillars and plaster in favor of neat, undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, speaking of order, cleanliness, and light. In the more fugitive, trivial associations of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change-from finding camels where at home there are horses, for example, or unadorned apartment buildings where at home there are pillared ones. But there may be a more profound pleasure as well: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide. And so it was with my enthusiasms in Amsterdam, which were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, including its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
that? Masculinity is and was a broad category that encompassed many forms of behaviour; the manliness of these particular men was inflected by identities of class, ethnicity and profession. Yet it is striking how often the key protagonists appealed to pointedly masculine modes of comportment and how closely these were interwoven with their understanding of policy. ‘I sincerely trust we shall keep our backs very stiff in this matter,’ Arthur Nicolson wrote to his friend Charles Hardinge, recommending that London reject any appeals for rapprochement from Berlin.156 It was essential, the German ambassador in Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen wrote in March 1912, that the Berlin government maintain a posture of ‘completely cool calmness’ in its relations with France and approach ‘with cold blood’ the tasks of national defence imposed by the international situation.157 When Bertie spoke of the danger that the Germans would ‘push us into the water and steal our clothes’, he metaphorized the international system as a rural playground thronging with male adolescents. Sazonov praised the ‘uprightness’ of Poincaré’s character and ‘the unshakable firmness of his will’;158 Paul Cambon saw in him the ‘stiffness’ of the professional jurist, while the allure of the reserved and self-reliant ‘outdoorsman’ was central to Grey’s identity as a public man. To have shrunk from supporting Austria-Hungary during the crisis of 1914, Bethmann commented in his memoirs, would have been an act of ‘self-castration’.
Christopher Clark (The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914)
We lived in a safe, family-friendly area, but parts of London were rough, as you’d expect from any large city. Mark had a knack for attracting muggers. One time, we were in a train station and a little kid--no more than about eight years old--came up to him: “Oi, mate, give me your phone.” We always carried the cool Nokia phones with the Snake game on them, and they were the hot item. It was like inviting trouble carrying one around, but we didn’t care. Mark thought the mini-mugger was crazy: “Are you kidding me? No way.” Then he looked over his shoulder and realized the kid wasn’t alone; he had a whole gang with him. So Mark handed over his phone and the kid ran off. I never let him live down the fact that an eight-year-old had mugged him. I had my own incident as well, but I handled it a little differently. I got off the train at Herne Hill station and noticed that two guys were following me. I could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer. “Give us your backpack,” they threatened me. “Why? All I have is my homework in here,” I tried to reason with them. They had seen me on the train with my minidisc player and they knew I was holding out on them. “Give it,” they threatened. My bag was covered with key chains and buttons, and as I took it off my shoulder, pretending to give it to them, I swung it hard in their faces. All that hardware knocked one of them to the ground and stunned the other. With my bag in my hand, I ran the mile home without ever looking back. Not bad for a skinny kid in a school uniform.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself — one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.
Jack London (Jack London: The Complete Novels (The Greatest Writers of All Time Book 3))
How many thefts have there been?’ I asked. ‘That depends on how you define it,’ said Adrian. Because material went missing off sites all the time, which is why important finds were collated and secured the day they were found. Important in archaeological terms not always being the same as valuable – at least not in the fenceable sense. Archaeology came in all shapes, sizes, and apparent degrees of nickableness. ‘We wouldn’t have even noticed some of the thefts if they hadn’t been important to the context,’ said Adrian. Context being the key concept of modern scientific archaeology, and what separates your modern professional from the fumbling archivists and swivel-eyed tomb raiders of the past. It’s a religion they share with scene of crime technicians and it had been drummed into me from my first day at Hendon. Context – where you find an object – is more important than the actual object. In policing it’s whether the broken glass is on the inside or the outside. In archaeology it’s whether that datable coin is found in the wall foundations or its demolition infill. You can live without the coin, but you need the dating information.
Ben Aaronovitch (Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London, #7))
POEM – MY AMAZING TRAVELS [My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures] My very first trip I still cannot believe Was planned and executed with such great ease. My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man, He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan. I got my first long vacation while working as a banker One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner. She visited my father and discussed the matter Arrangements were made without any flutter. We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany, In each of those places, there was somebody, To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places, It was a dream come true at our young ages. We even visited Holland, which was across the Border. To drive across from Germany was quite in order. Memories of great times continue to linger, I thank God for an understanding father. That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more, I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe. Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo, Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando. I was accompanied by my husband on many trips. Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit. Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah, Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla. We sailed aboard the Creole Queen On the Mississippi in New Orleans We traversed the Rockies in Colorado And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico. We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome, The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. To explore the countryside in Florence, And to sail on a Gondola in Venice. My fridge is decorated with magnets Souvenirs of all my visits London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome? Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born. CN Tower in Toronto so very high I thought the elevator would take me to the sky. Then there was El Poble and Toledo Noted for Spanish Gold We travelled on the Euro star. The scenery was beautiful to behold! I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina, Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines, Places I love to lime. Of course, I would like to make special mention, Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean. Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas Two ships which grace the Seas. Last but not least and best of all We visited Paris in the fall. Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin Amazing places, which made my head, spin. Copyright@BrendaMohammed
Brenda C. Mohammed (Travel Memoirs with Pictures)
And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124
Shawn Levy (The Last Playboy : the High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa)
COUNT. What’s to stop you taking her with you to London? FIGARO. A man who was married and had to be away so much? I’d never hear the end of it. COUNT. But with your qualities and brains you could climb the ladder and end up with an important government post one of these days. FIGARO. Brains? Climb the ladder? Your Lordship must think I’m stupid. Second-rate and grovelling, that’s the thing to be, and then the world’s your oyster. COUNT. All you’d have to do is take a few lessons in politics from me. FIGARO. I know what politics is. COUNT. Like you know the key to the English language? FIGARO. Not that it’s anything to boast about. It means pretending you don’t know what you do know and knowing what you don’t, listening to what you don’t understand and not hearing what you do, and especially, claiming you can do more than you have the ability to deliver. More often that not, it means making a great secret of the fact that there are no secrets; locking yourself in your inner sanctum where you sharpen pens and give the impression of being profound and wise, whereas you are, as they say, hollow and shallow; playing a role well or badly; sending spies everywhere and rewarding the traitors; tampering with seals, intercepting letters, and trying to dignify your sordid means by stressing your glorious ends. That’s all there is to politics, and you can have me shot if it’s not. COUNT. But what you’ve defined is intrigue. FIGARO. Call it politics, intrigue, whatever you want. But since to me the two things are as alike as peas in a pod, I say good luck to whoever has anything to do with either. ‘Truly, I love my sweetheart more’, as old King Henry’s song goes.
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (The Barber of Seville / The Marriage of Figaro / The Guilty Mother)
7 Lessons on Failure You Can Learn From Top Athletes What's the key to progress? You could state diligent work or commitment or even an inspirational mentality. Yet, the genuine mystery? Disappointment. Your past disappointments are straightforwardly identified with your future achievement. Without them, you may not be sufficiently inspired to achieve your objectives. Competitors confront overcome regularly all through their vocations yet don't give it a chance to get them down. Rather, they let it drive them to progress. A recent report in which the analysts met Olympic gold medalists found that a large number of those competitors considered mishaps basic to their gold decoration wins. Disappointment is similarly as basic to your profession, regardless of what your teach. For whatever length of time that you have the correct disposition and view your disappointments as learning encounters, you can utilize them to push forward and make progress. Here are seven lessons that the world's best competitors can show you about disappointment. 1. There is no such thing as flawlessness. This past August, Olympic champion Usain Bolt kept running in the men's 100-meter race at the IAAF World Championships in London. Despite the fact that he was relied upon to win, he completed third, denoting his first misfortune in an Olympic or big showdown last and consummation a 45-race winning streak. While Bolt is generally viewed as the best sprinter ever and holds various world records, he is as yet human. Flawlessness does not exist, notwithstanding for somebody as capable and solid as Bolt. You can't hope to prevail at all that you set out to do. There will be times when you flop, so you should set your desires in like manner.
Businessplans
On this account I feel always, on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used after, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the sistance, to all the markets, and other parts of London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmers of discontent: but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say, that, in this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich - that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties; and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad: yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance with the master key. Some of these rambles lead me to great distances: for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time.
Thomas de Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Analects From John Paul Richter)
Like so many authors, Price confesses that he hates writing. “The only thing worse than writing is not writing,” he once told the London Telegraph.152 Which could be the key to the whole thing—choosing the anxiety of writing over the small death of not doing it.
Sarah Stodola (Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors)
We believe in four key things; quality of design, integrity of build, outstanding service and a passion for the products we produce. These are the core characteristics of our company that was started by a professional team with over 60 year’s experience in the industry.
Louis Mark
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Now,” Hunt said, ignoring the tumult, “if I may have a look at that remaining handcuff, I may be able to do something about it.” “You can’t,” Lillian said with weary certainty. “The key is in St. Vincent’s pocket, and I’ve run out of hairpins.” Sitting beside her, Hunt took her manacled wrist, regarded it thoughtfully, and said with what she thought was rather inappropriate satisfaction, “How fortunate. A pair of Higby-Dumfries number thirty.” Lillian gave him a sardonic glance. “I take it you are a handcuff enthusiast?” His lips twitched. “No, but I do have a friend or two in law enforcement. And these were once given as standard issue to the New Police, until a design flaw was discovered. Now one may find a dozen pair of Higby-Dumfries in any London pawnshop.” “What design flaw?” For answer, Hunt adjusted the locked cuff on her wrist, with the hinge and lock facing downward. He paused at the sound of more furniture breaking from upstairs, and grinned at Lillian’s gathering scowl. “I’ll go,” he said mildly. “But first…” He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket with one hand, inserting it between her wrist and the steel cuff as a makeshift inner padding. “There. That may help to cushion the force of the blow.” “Blow? What blow?” “Hold still.” Lillian squeaked in dismay as she felt him lift her manacled wrist high over the desk and bring it down sharply on the bottom of the hinge. The whack served to jar the lever mechanism inside the lock, and the cuff snapped open as if by magic. Stunned, Lillian regarded Hunt with a half smile as she rubbed her bare wrist. “Thank you. I—” There was another crashing sound, this time coming from directly overhead, and a chorus of excited bellows from the onlookers caused the walls to tremble. Above it all, the innkeeper could be heard complaining shrilly that his building would soon be reduced to matchsticks. “Mr. Hunt,” Lillian exclaimed, “I do wish that you would try to be of some use to Lord Westcliff!” Hunt’s brows lifted into mocking crescents. “You don’t actually fear that St. Vincent is getting the better of him?” “The question is not whether I have sufficient confidence in Lord Westcliff’s fighting ability,” Lillian replied impatiently. “The fact is, I have too much confidence in it. And I would rather not have to bear witness at a murder trial on top of everything else.” “You have a point.” Standing, Hunt refolded his handkerchief and placed it in his coat pocket. He headed to the stairs with a short sigh, grumbling, “I’ve spent most of the day trying to stop him from killing people.
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
As society becomes ever more mediated, reliant on and reconfigured by complex and fast-changing digital technologies, academic analysis is urgently in need of fresh thinking. Look no further: this volume offers a wealth of insightful concepts, critical questions and intellectual traditions to revitalise our field. Through a rigorous historical grounding, it simultaneously integrates and yet distinguishes among key approaches to pose a new research agenda for the digital world.—Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science
Klaus Bruhn Jensen (A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies)
What the virus did to us. It has always been unimaginable that this pub could be empty while the music played. I am going to talk about what the virus did to us: Do you remember when we sat under trees fighting over which drink we should… drink? How can you possibly forget? We would wake up and imagine what we were going to be in future. We would open our windows and touch each other like we were keys on a pianoforte Do you remember? When we said we were going to go to London Pose in front of The Louvre And raise our hands to the blinding lights on Time Square. We would lay down on the pale moonlight cry and curse the white men for not giving us visas! Do you remember? We had high hopes. Then the virus came omne autem inuicem We watched it like a car without breaks And when it came windows bolted, The music faded, The city of London lost its light, Cafes in Italy bolted and owners run without knowing where they put their keys Times Square became a ghost town And our very little bar we used to insult —— no longer played music And when at night, We sat down to count who we have lost, It didn’t matter if we cried anymore What mattered was when Others would count our dead bodies Like how they count damaged mangoes In the fruit lane at the market.
J.Y. Frimpong
One key characteristic of Nordic cities is the lack of people. Queues, jams and crowds are a rarity in the North; even the capitals can have a semi-deserted air if you are arriving from London or New York. Where are all the people? But Helsinki made Oslo look like Mumbai.
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia)
It was about a week later that I left my parlor to find my long-absent bodyguard leaning with his back against the wall, as though there were nothing unusual about his presence in the corridor outside my door. “London!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to find you back on duty.” “I hope you’re not disappointed, but I figured I might be welcome here again,” he said with a laugh. “I assume I’m no longer a war criminal.” “Quite the contrary--you are a war hero. But I haven’t seen you since you escorted Narian and me back to the city. Where have you been all this time?” “I had to take care of some other business.” He shifted his weight and glanced downward, unable to conceal a grin. “There was another woman who deserved to know I was all right.” I immediately glanced to the third finger of his right hand, where rested a golden betrothal ring, and my smile lifted along with my heart. “Tanda is a fortunate woman to have you.” In atypical form, London confessed his feelings toward her. “After so many years, I never thought I would be so blessed as to have her once more by my side.” Was this the effect Tanda had on my bodyguard, even dating back to the beginning of their courtship? Was her love the key to making him less guarded, more open, more relaxed? And did my love have the same effect on Narian?
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
a happy workforce is the key to a successful business
Lacey London (Clara Bounces Back (Clara Andrews, #10))
But perhaps most importantly, the website also featured a section labeled “Data: What we’ve learned from your work so far.” This page put the individual players’ efforts into a much bigger context—and guaranteed that contributors would see the real results of their efforts. Some of the key results of the game included these findings: • On average, each MP expensed twice his or her annual salary, or more than £140,000 in expenses on top of a £60,675 salary. • The total cost to taxpayers of personal items expensed by MPs is £88 million annually. And the game detailed: • The number of receipts and papers filed by each MP, ranging between 40 and 2,000 • The total expense spending by party and by category (kitchen, garden, TV, food, etc.) • Online maps comparing travel expenses filed with actual distance from the House of Commons in London to the MPs’ home districts, making it easy to spot MPs grossly overcharging for travel (for example, MPs from nearby districts who filed £21,534 versus £4,418, or £10,105 versus £1,680) Bringing these numbers to light helped clarify the true extent of the crisis: a far more pervasive culture of extravagant personal reimbursement than originally suspected.
Jane McGonigal (Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World)
It was the German powerhouse Deutsche Bank AG, not my fictitious RhineBank, that financed the construction of the extermination camp at Auschwitz and the nearby factory that manufactured Zyklon B pellets. And it was Deutsche Bank that earned millions of Nazi reichsmarks through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. Deutsche Bank also incurred massive multibillion-dollar fines for helping rogue nations such as Iran and Syria evade US economic sanctions; for manipulating the London interbank lending rate; for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to unwitting investors; and for laundering untold billions’ worth of tainted Russian assets through its so-called Russian Laundromat. In 2007 and 2008, Deutsche Bank extended an unsecured $1 billion line of credit to VTB Bank, a Kremlin-controlled lender that financed the Russian intelligence services and granted cover jobs to Russian intelligence officers operating abroad. Which meant that Germany’s biggest lender, knowingly or unknowingly, was a silent partner in Vladimir Putin’s war against the West and liberal democracy. Increasingly, that war is being waged by Putin’s wealthy cronies and by privately owned companies like the Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll factory that allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The IRA was one of three Russian companies named in a sprawling indictment handed down by the Justice Department in February 2018 that detailed the scope and sophistication of the Russian interference. According to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Russian cyber operatives stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political and religious activists on social media, and used divisive issues such as race and immigration to inflame an already divided electorate—all in support of their preferred candidate, the reality television star and real estate developer Donald Trump. Russian operatives even traveled to the United States to gather intelligence. They focused their efforts on key battleground states and, remarkably, covertly coordinated with members of the Trump campaign in August 2016 to organize rallies in Florida. The Russian interference also included a hack of the Democratic National Committee that resulted in a politically devastating leak of thousands of emails that threw the Democratic convention in Philadelphia into turmoil. In his final report, released in redacted form in April 2019, Robert Mueller said that Moscow’s efforts were part of a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to assist Donald Trump and weaken his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Mueller was unable to establish a chargeable criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, though the report noted that key witnesses used encrypted communications, engaged in obstructive behavior, gave false or misleading testimony, or chose not to testify at all. Perhaps most damning was the special counsel’s conclusion that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through Russian efforts.
Daniel Silva (The Cellist (Gabriel Allon, #21))
Mathematicians, meanwhile, have increased gray matter in the inferior parietal lobule, which plays a key role in computation and calculation.6 Its size is directly correlated with the amount of time spent in the field; the older and more experienced the mathematician, the greater the increase in gray matter. When scientists analyzed the brains of taxi drivers in London, they found that the hippocampus—a region of the brain involved in spatial memory—was significantly larger in their subjects than in non–taxi drivers.7 Even more fascinating, the hippocampus decreased in size when a driver retired. Like the muscles of the body responding to regular weight training, particular regions of the brain adapt as they are used and atrophy as they are abandoned.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones)
Books were my mother's world, but she was mine. We lived in the apartment above the shop, and every day with my mom was an adventure. We didn't travel far on vacations because of the shop." Natalie used to beg to travel the world the way her friends did on school holidays---Disneyland, Hawaii, London, Japan. Instead, her mom would take her on flights of the imagination to Prince Edward Island, to Sutter's Mill, to Narnia and Sunnybrook Farm, to outer space and Hogwarts. She tried her best to bring her mother back to life with a few key anecdotes and memories smeared by tears. And then she looked down at the page she'd read many times growing up---from The Minpins by Roald Dahl. "The first time my mother read this book to me was after a visit to the Claymore Arboretum. I was five years old, and I believed the dragonflies were fairies, and that tiny sprites rode around on the backs of songbirds. She let me go on thinking that for as long as I pleased. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the best parenting advice ever." She breathed in, imagining the comfortable scent of her mother's bathrobe as they snuggled together for their nightly story. She breathed out, hoping her words would somehow touch her mother one more time. "And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
Susan Wiggs (The Lost and Found Bookshop (Bella Vista Chronicles, #3))
The Gang of Four consisted of: Bidyut Sen, the group’s mastermind in New York; Steve Benardete, a politically connected New Yorker and former treasurer of the key derivatives lobbying group, ISDA—the International Swaps Dealers Association; George James, head of the London office; and Paul Daniel, leader of the booming East Asian offices, headquartered in Hong Kong.
Frank Partnoy (FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street)
Too soon the cab was drawing up outside her parents' house. She paid the driver and let herself in quietly with her own key. Before stepping into the sitting room, she stood in the hallway for a moment like a diver slowly surfacing, carefully acclimatizing herself to a different atmospheric pressure.
Kate London (Post Mortem (Collins and Griffiths, #1))
Will Freeman may have discovered the key to dating success: If the simple fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women – women who would not ordinarily look twice a Will – might not only be willing, but enthusiastic about dating him, then he was really onto something. Single mothers – bright, attractive, available women – thousands of them, were all over London. He just had to find them.
Nick Hornby (About a Boy)
The conspiracy against the constitution, the elected government, and key institutions was planned and created in Europe, especially London and Canada, in the summer of 2013. The traitors were very confident of destroying the elected government within a week. I have indicated this in my messages on social media from time to time. Now, there should be a major cleanup and reorganization of the institutions involved. The matter must be addressed and investigated.
Ehsan Sehgal
Introduction When it comes to skincare, one of the most important factors we often overlook is maintaining the hydration of our skin. Dry and dehydrated skin can lead to a multitude of issues, including itching, flaking, and premature aging. That's where Tatily London Bodywash comes in. Powered by Botnica and enriched with glycerine and blueberry extract, this bodywash offers a luxurious and nourishing experience that leaves your skin feeling soft, smooth, and deeply hydrated. In this article, we will explore the science behind glycerine, the key ingredient in Tatily London Bodywash, and dive into the numerous benefits of incorporating this bodywash into your daily skincare routine. So, let's delve into the world of skincare and discover how Tatily London Bodywash can transform your skin. The Science Behind Glycerine Glycerine, also known as glycerol, is a natural compound that is derived from plant or animal fats. It is a colorless and odorless liquid that has been used extensively in the skincare industry for its moisturizing properties. Glycerine acts as a humectant, drawing moisture from the air into the skin and forming a protective barrier that helps to seal in hydration. One of the unique properties of glycerine is its ability to attract and retain water molecules. This means that when glycerine is applied to the skin, it helps to replenish and maintain the skin's moisture levels, leading to a plump and hydrated complexion. Additionally, glycerine has emollient effects, which help to soften and smooth the skin's texture Benefits of Tatily London Body-wash Tatily London Body-wash takes the power of glycerine to the next level with the added benefits of blueberry extract. This combination creates a body-wash that not only hydrates the skin but also provides it with essential nutrients and antioxidants to promote overall skin health. Here are some of the key benefits of using Tatily London Body-wash: 1. Deep Hydration: The glycerine in Tatily London Body-wash deeply moisturises the skin, leaving it feeling hydrated and supple. Say goodbye to dry and itchy skin! 2. Nourishing Blueberry Extract: Blueberries are packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that help to protect the skin against environmental damage and promote a youthful complexion. 3. Gentle and Safe: Tatily London Body-wash is free of parabens and silicons, making it suitable for all skin types, including sensitive skin. It is dermatologically tested to ensure safety and efficacy. 4. Luxurious Fragrance: The delightful scent of blueberries and mint adds a touch of luxury to your shower routine, transforming it into a spa-like experience. 5. Smooth and Soft Skin: With regular use, Tatily London Body-wash helps to improve the texture of your skin, leaving it smooth, soft, and radiant. How to Incorporate Tatily London Bodywash into Your Skincare Routine To unlock the full benefits of Tatily London Body-wash, here are some tips on how to best incorporate it into your skincare routine: - Wet Your Skin: Start by wetting your skin thoroughly in the shower. - Dispense Bodywash: Squeeze Blueberry & Mint Bodywash onto your palm or a loofah. - Apply and Lather: Gently massage the body wash onto your damp skin using circular motions. - Focus on Areas: Pay special attention to areas that tend to accumulate more oil, dirt, or impurities. - Rinse Thoroughly: Once you’ve worked up a rich lather and cleansed your skin, thoroughly rinse off the body wash using warm water. - Pat Dry: After rinsing, gently pat your skin dry with a clean, soft towel. - Frequency: You can use the Multani Mitti Bodywash daily or as needed, depending on your skin’s requirements. For best results, use Tatily London Body-wash daily as part of your skincare routine. You'll notice a visible difference in the texture and hydration of your skin
Tatily London
One of the key lessons to draw from Bazalgette’s sewers is that successful long-term planning needs to be based on building adaptability, flexibility, and resilience into the original design. In his book How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand points out that the most long-lasting buildings are those that can “learn” by adapting to new contexts over time: They can accommodate different users or be easily extended, retrofitted, or upgraded. He draws an analogy with biology: “The more adapted an organism to present conditions, the less adaptable it can be to unknown future conditions.”24 This is exactly where the London sewers were exemplary. By making the tunnels double the size needed at the time, Bazalgette designed long-term adaptability into the system, just as his use of the finest building materials gave the sewers enough resilience to survive over a century of constant wear and tear. Of course, we can learn about resilience not just from cases like the Victorian sewers, but from natural phenomena such as a delicate spider web that manages to survive a storm or the way sweating and shivering help regulate human body temperature.
Roman Krznaric (The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking)
The tensions over access to the Western Wall galvanized the communal hostilities generated during the first decade of the mandate. In effect, they ended any real chance of Arab–Jewish peace in Palestine. Britain struggled to deal with the fallout. The Shaw commission, sent out to report on the 1929 disturbances, criticized Hajj Amin al-Husayni’s lack of restraint but acquitted him of incitement. More significantly, the commission warned against continued Jewish immigration and land purchase, arguing that the further dispossession of Arab farmers could only lead to more disturbances. In October 1930 the British issued the Passfield White Paper, stressing the need to deal more forthrightly with Arab concerns. It called for restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase and drew attention to the conspicuous absence of a representative legislative council. Zionist leaders were furious. In London, they voiced strong criticism of the White Paper and succeeded the following year in persuading the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, to write a personal letter to Weizmann in which key elements of the 1930 White Paper were revoked.
Martin Bunton (The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction)
Lower Third demoed “The London Boys,” which they considered a standout song, but Hatch and Pye turned it down at their weekly sales meeting. According to Hatch, the main reason was not the downbeat subject matter or the references to pill popping but that “it takes too long to get going. It would never make a single.” Its replacement was far more concise, with a simple three-chord chorus once again lifted shamelessly from “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” But while “Can’t Help Thinking about Me” thieves exactly the same three-chord trick as “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving,” it makes far better use of it, with that punchy chorus allied with a subtle verse whose minor-key chords perfectly match the foreboding lines of a “question time that says I brought dishonor.
Paul Trynka (David Bowie: Starman)
This is for women whose purses are a morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipsticks without tops, ChapSticks of unknown vintage, little bits of tobacco even though there has been no smoking going on for at least ten years, tampons that have come loose from their wrappings, English coins from a trip to London last October, boarding passes from long-forgotten airplane trips, hotel keys from God-knows-what hotel, leaky ballpoint pens, Kleenexes that either have or have not been used but there’s no way to be sure one way or another, scratched eyeglasses, an old tea bag, several crumpled personal checks that have come loose from the checkbook and are covered with smudge marks, and an unprotected toothbrush that looks as if it has been used to polish silver.
Nora Ephron (I Feel Bad About My Neck)
To Have and Have Not” It was during 1937 that Ernest Hemingway wrote the novel “To Have and Have Not” about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain who ran contraband between Havana and Key West. Things didn’t go well for Morgan as he sank ever deeper into debt. Hemingway’s book continued with Harry Morgan running his boat between Cuba and the United States, carrying revolutionaries to Cuba and smuggling Chinese immigrants and rum into Florida. The depression during the early 1930’s and the hunger experienced by the “Conchs” of Key West was Morgan’s motive for ferrying his illegal cargo between the two countries. When Ernest Hemingway moved to Cuba early in 1939, he took his boat the Pilar across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where he first checked into the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Shortly thereafter, Martha joined him in Cuba and they initially rented, and later in 1940, purchased a home for $12,500. Located 10 miles to the east of Havana, in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, they settled into what they called Finca Vigía, the Lookout Farm. After a difficult divorce from Pauline, Ernest and Martha got married on November 20, 1940. Even though Cuba had permanently become their home, they sought writing assignments overseas, including one in China that Martha got for Collier’s magazine. Returning to Cuba just prior to the outbreak of World War II, he convinced the Cuban government to outfit his boat with armaments, with which he intended to ambush German submarines. As the war progressed, Hemingway went to London as a war correspondent, where he met Mary Welsh. His infatuation prompted him to propose to her, which of course did not sit well with Martha.
Hank Bracker
Mid-June 2012 …Do you remember the arrogant male model who came to the Bahriji School to give a grooming course to us students when we were there? An evening after my return to London, while staying at Uncle James’ home, I visited one of the London sex clubs. Uncle James was in Hong Kong and I had his town house to myself before I moved to my own lodgings in Ladbroke Grove, recommended by the Nottinghill Methodist Church housing project. I was terribly lonely and needed company desperately. I ventured to “Heavens” located Under the Arches on Villiers Street, Charing Cross, a little before midnight. In 1972, this establishment was located in a large warehouse. For the uninitiated, the entrance was nondescript. It was dimly lit from the outside, and when a patron wished to gain entry, he pressed an obscure doorbell by the side of a huge aluminum sliding door. A pair of eyes would look through a peephole, checking to make sure that it was neither a police raid nor an underage client. If the patron was handsome and dressed like a macho gay man, he’d be asked for identification. Once approved, the green door would slide open to allow entry. Inside “Heavens” was a different world. Throngs of leather and denim-clad patrons checked their belongings in the tiny cloakroom next to the cashier’s booth. A small safety deposit box was then allocated upon request for each visitor to deposit his wallet or important documents for safekeeping. The safety deposit box key, attached to an elastic band together with the clothing claim tag, would then be handed to the patron to wear around his wrist or ankle. Most patrons were shirtless except for their jeans and leather pants. The uninhibited would strip down to their jock straps or sports undergarments. Their naked buttocks were ready to be in service for a night of unbridled debauchery.
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.
Edward Rutherfurd (London)
Paris, a city with a soundtrack in a minor key, is the ideal setting for this kind of self-relinquishing.
Lauren Elkin (Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London)
In the end, Airbnb’s founders realized that they wanted to take on the Samwers—and they wanted to win. But how? The key was an aggressive, all-out program of growth that we call blitzscaling. Blitzscaling drives “lightning” growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency, even in an environment of uncertainty. It’s a set of specific strategies and tactics that allowed Airbnb to beat the Samwer brothers at their own game. Just a few months later, determined to acquire the resources needed to outscale the Samwers, Brian raised $ 112 million in additional venture capital. Airbnb then embarked on an aggressive international expansion plan, including the acquisition of Accoleo, a smaller and more affordable German Airbnb clone, that allowed Airbnb to compete directly with Wimdu in its home market. By the spring of 2012, Airbnb had opened nine international offices, setting up shop in London, Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Moscow, and São Paulo. Bookings had grown ten times since that previous February, and in June 2012 Airbnb announced its ten millionth booking. “The Samwers gave us a gift,” Brian admitted many years later in our Blitzscaling class. “They forced us to scale faster than we ever would have.” By choosing to grow at a breakneck pace, Airbnb had achieved a dominant position in its market.
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
Mr Locke...took a long, slender pick from the unrolled bag and, bending over slightly, inserted it into the lock. It was a steel-cased lock with a smooth, brass knob of around three inches wide and a brass plate around the singular keyhole. Mounted into the door frame was another steel fixture, forming the second half of the lock. Recognising the type of lock, Percy knew the key’s function was to throw the lock’s bolt into dead lock, thus securing the door. Such a design would also include an internal, smaller knob sliding back and forth, drawing back the bolt. A snib, jutting out from the case on the internal side of the door, could be compressed to keep the bolt in an open position, thus allowing one to open and close the door freely. “Do be so kind as to keep an eye out for the return of our friend the constable.” Locke pulled his pocket watch out with his other hand to glance upon it. “We have nine minutes.” “This is breaking and entering!” Mr Maxwell cried, hurrying up the steps. “Miss Trent said such was forbidden by the Society.” “Unless there is a sufficiently justifiable reason for doing so,” Mr Locke replied, inserting a second pick into the lower half of the lock. “The welfare of our client is a sufficiently justifiable reason; do you not think so, Mr Maxwell?” “His welfare?” Mr Maxwell enquired, confused. Miss Dexter, wholly fascinated by what the illusionist was doing, stepped closer still. She softly enquired, “Do you suspect some harm may have come to Mr Dorsey, Mr Locke?” “I do not know but Mr Colby was very keen we should not speak with him. Furthermore, Miss Trent’s note stated her telephone conversation with Mr Dorsey was abruptly ended, by him, when another—angry—voice spoke,” Mr Locke explained. There was a sharp click as the bolt sprang back into the lock’s casing. Mr Locke smiled broadly. “Our constable friend is back.” Mr Maxwell looked panic sticken. “It’s only been a minute.” “Ah, that will be the Bow Street police station,” Locke replied as he turned the door knob. “Also, they tend to keep a closer eye upon the more affluent residences; greater targets for thieves, you know,” Mr Locke stated as he pushed the door open and ushered both Mr Maxwell and Miss Dexter inside. He’d just closed the door, after slipping in himself, when the constable reached the bottom of the steps and peered up at the porch. Mr Locke stood to the side of the door and watched as the constable, seemingly satisfied all was well, walked away. A glance down at the internal part of the lock confirmed Mr Locke’s earlier assumptions about it. His slender hand slid the smaller brass knob along to lock the bolt in place once more.
T.G. Campbell (The Case of the Curious Client (Bow Street Society #1))
Artifice and reality, he thought, examining the photographs and drawings, they combine more easily than we realise. TV shows pretend to offer realism but they hide as much as they show. Fiction, on the other hand, can contain fundamental human truths. And sometimes it’s possible to step back and forth between these two worlds just by opening the correct door, by finding the key that will unlock mysteries. So much of London is masked; unspoken rules protect the privileged, unseen codes hide the guilty. What a crafty lot we are!
Christopher Fowler (The Memory of Blood (Peculiar Crimes Unit #9))
imagination run away with itself, conjuring up images of Devlin having secret assignations with leggy blondes… I heaved an exasperated sigh. This is ridiculous! I decided I would go out for lunch myself, and then maybe have a little wander through town, do some window-shopping. That would stop me sitting at home, brooding over Devlin’s whereabouts. I grabbed my coat and keys once more and left the cottage. As I turned onto the towpath by the river and began walking towards town, I felt a sense of delight again at having found such a great place to live. Oxford was probably one of the most expensive cities to live in the U.K.: it had easy access to London and a beautiful location near the Cotswolds, not to mention its own spectacular architecture, vibrant cultural scene and shopping. I had searched in vain for somewhere I could afford and I had almost given up hope—when I had found this cottage. It
H.Y. Hanna (Muffins and Mourning Tea (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries #5))
If there is one thought with regard to the church of Christ, which at times comes to me with overwhelming sorrow; if there is one thought in regard to my own life, of which I am ashamed; if there is one thought, which I feel that the church of Christ has not accepted or grasped; if there is one thought, which makes me pray to God, “Oh, God, teach us, by Your grace, new things” – it is the wonderful power that prayer is meant to have in the kingdom. We have so little availed ourselves of it. We have all read the expression of Christian in Bunyan’s great work, Pilgrim’s Progress, when he realized that he had the key that would unlock the dungeon. (Bunyan’s book used to be read by nearly all Christians and should still be read by Christians today.) We have the key that can unlock the spiritual dungeons of London and New York and Chicago and Washington, D.C. and of all heathendom. But, we are far more occupied with our work than we are with prayer. We believe more in speaking to men than we believe in speaking to God. Doesn’t this convict us when we are too busy to pray or rush through prayer in order to get on with our work or are so caught up with work that we never sit at the feet of Jesus?
Andrew Murray (Absolute Surrender (Updated and Annotated): The Blessedness of Forsaking All and Following Christ)
With the Allies on the advance nearly everywhere and invasion talk in the air, London was a welcoming place for young airmen who were taking the fight to Hitler’s doorstep. The first stop for American airmen was usually the nearest Red Cross Club, where helpful volunteers made bookings free of charge at commercial hotels or at one of the Red Cross’s own dormitory-like facilities. After checking in and dropping off their kits, most men headed straight for Rainbow Corner. Located on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus, it was a place as close to home as a GI could find in all of England. Administered by the American Red Cross, Rainbow Corner had been designed “to create a strictly American atmosphere.” There was an exact replica of a small-town corner drugstore in the club’s basement, where ice-cold Cokes were sold for a nickel and grilled hamburgers for a dime. Upstairs, in the grand ballroom, servicemen danced with volunteer hostesses to the driving music of soldier bands—the Flying Forts, the Thunderbolts, the Sky Blazers. There was also a lounge with a jukebox and a small dance floor with tables and chairs around it. Lonely GIs dunking donuts in fresh coffee would loaf there, listening to the latest American hits. Rainbow Corner never closed its doors. The key had been symbolically thrown away the day of the grand opening in November 1942.
Donald L. Miller (Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany)
Lamb had known where he hid his spare keys: in an envelope secured to the underside of his desk. “The second most obvious place,” Lamb called it, the first being if Ho had just Sellotaped them to his forehead
Mick Herron (London Rules (Slough House, #5))
Unveiling London E-commerce Triumph: Decoding Data with WooCommerce Analytics In the bustling realm of London e-commerce, navigating the digital landscape requires not just intuition but informed decision-making backed by data. This is where the marriage of WooCommerce and analytics becomes a game-changer. In this exploration, we delve into the nuances of leveraging WooCommerce Analytics for e-commerce success in London. As we embark on this journey, the expertise of a dedicated woocommerce development in london adds a unique perspective, unraveling the potential of data decoding in the heart of the e-commerce landscape. Understanding the London E-commerce Scene This section emphasizes the importance of understanding the unique characteristics of the London e-commerce landscape. It underscores the need for businesses to be attuned to local market trends, consumer preferences, and the digital sophistication of the London audience to effectively leverage WooCommerce Analytics. The Role of WooCommerce Agency in London E-commerce Analytics 1. Proactive Data Strategy: Setting the Foundation This point explains the proactive role of a WooCommerce agency in London in establishing a robust data strategy. It involves setting up analytics tools, defining KPIs, and aligning data collection with the specific goals of London e-commerce businesses. 2. Tailoring Analytics to London Market Trends Here, the focus is on tailoring analytics solutions to capture and interpret data that is directly relevant to the ever-evolving market trends of London. A WooCommerce agency in London customizes analytics approaches to provide actionable insights for businesses in the local market. Key Metrics and KPIs for London E-commerce Success 3. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Turning Clicks into Transactions This point explores the pivotal role of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) in London e-commerce. It delves into how a WooCommerce agency in London optimizes the conversion rate by refining the checkout process, analyzing user journeys, and enhancing the overall user experience to maximize sales. 4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Fostering Long-Term Relationships The focus here is on the importance of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) analytics. It explains how a WooCommerce agency in London helps businesses identify high-value customers, tailor marketing strategies, and foster long-term relationships for sustained success. WooCommerce Analytics Tools and Implementations 5. Google Analytics Integration for Comprehensive Insights This point delves into the integration of Google Analytics with WooCommerce. It explains how a WooCommerce agency in London guides businesses through the integration process, utilizing Google Analytics to gain comprehensive insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and website performance. 6. Custom Reports and Dashboards: Tailoring Insights for London Businesses Here, the emphasis is on the creation of custom reports and dashboards by a WooCommerce agency in London. These tailored insights provide businesses with specific information relevant to their products, target audience, and market trends, enhancing decision-making accuracy. Analyzing User Behavior for Enhanced User Experience 7. Heatmaps and User Flow Analysis: Optimizing the Customer Journey This point explores the use of heatmaps and user flow analysis to optimize the customer journey in London e-commerce. A WooCommerce agency in London employs these tools to uncover patterns, identify bottlenecks, and make strategic adjustments for a seamless user experience. 8. Abandoned Cart Analysis: Recovering Lost Opportunities This section discusses the significance of abandoned cart analysis. It explains how a WooCommerce agency in London utilizes analytics to understand the reasons behind cart abandonment and implements targeted strategies to recover potentially lost sales through personalized retargeting campaigns.
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