Oh my goodness, this is pretty amazing: Karel Capek’s 1925 Letters from England start off with his impressions of London - streets, traffic, parks and so on.
It’s so quotable!
In {Czechia}, in Italy, France, the street is a sort of large tavern or public garden, a village green, a meeting-place, a playground and theatre, an extension of home and doorstep; here {in London} it is something which belongs to nobody, and which does not bring you closer to his fellows; here, you do not meet with people, and things, but merely avoid them.
