London is a very old city even by European standards. The Roman conquerors of Britain founded Londinium (London) in 43 AD by settling and fortifying two small hills on the river Thames. More than a thousand years later, another conqueror turned the city into capital. This was William of Normandy, who defeated the last Saxon ruler of England in 1066.

For a start, William the Conqueror completed and had himself crowned in Westminster Abbey. Every British monarch had been crowned there since, right up to Queen Elizabeth II.

William did more than transform London into royal capital. He and his nobles and their countrymen who came later imposed their Norman French on the country's original Anglo -Saxon language and thus created English as it is spoken today.

Both the richness and the maddening lack of maddening logic of present - day English are the direct result of this transplant.

The Normans weren't exactly gentle rulers, but the nation they created did pretty well. No one, for instance, has ever successfully conquered Britain since William's time.

London is the home of mankind's second oldest parliament (Iceland has the oldest). And when King Charles I tried to defy its representatives, they had his head cutt off. It happened long before the French did the same to their monarch.