
You've seen them all over the city: discs, tablets, cameos and plaques commemorating the great and the good of London Town. Every Tuesday we track down a London plaque (Blue or otherwise) and put it centre stage on the The Daily Constitutional. This week…
On Saturday last we looked to Doctor Johnson and his most famous quote for our Culture Sandwich.
Today we look to the man, without whom, many of these quotes would be lost to us. Such as this one:
"Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it."
"That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help."
At the age of nineteen, Boswell took the decision to convert to Catholicism, thus enraging his Calvinist parents. To escape their ire, he fled to London – a fate worse than Catholicism to the average Scots Calvinist – and took up the life of a libertine. His Life of Johnson, featuring as it did actual conversations with his subject (unique for its time) blazed the trail for modern biography.
Meet Boswell and other colourful Scots on the Scotia Nostra Walk – Scots in London this evening for St Andrew’s Night – meet at Embankment Station 7.30p.m.
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