London: 8 stories from its residents

London, already one of the world's most admired cities, will make even more headlines this July when it hosts the Summer Olympic Games. And while millions will see the city on their TVs during the summer, its residents know it best. Writer Craig Taylor spoke with various people living in London for his book "Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now – As Told By Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It." The title says it all. Here are 8 stories about living in the European city from those who know it well.

1. A new arrival from Uganda

By Chris McKenna

Jane Lanyero, a 22-year-old from Uganda, had to leave the country when she and other students at her university started writing newsletters blaming the government for atrocities. Lanyero arrived in London and was supposed to go to a bed and breakfast, but quickly found herself stymied by the train. "You're told to follow the Circle Line, then change to the Metropolitan Line, then change to this line, when you get to this station, you can change to that platform," Lanyero said. "You go up, you come down, you come out.... It took me four hours to get from the mainline trains into the Underground station."

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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