This week's Newsweek cover features a picture of a grubby London street and the headline Grimsville, UK. The report inside, concerning the state of the capital after the August riots, describes a city full of angry young men and bleak, terrifying housing estates, including one "said to be so badly infested with vermin that toddlers treat cockroaches as pets". It's a far cry from Newsweek's 1998 cover, which proclaimed "London Rules" and called it the world's coolest city.
Foreign perceptions of London are usually fickle and always maddeningly specific – it's either the capital of Cool Britannia, a terrorists' playground, a city in thrall to royalty, the magical town where Harry Potter buys his school supplies or, latterly, a burned-out, riot-torn wasteland. It's hard to believe any two of these views could be of the same place, or that you could get to one from another by public transport.
For residents it's hard not to bristle at any portrait of London – be it praiseworthy or damning – that is so narrow as to be unrecognisable. One shouldn't shy away from criticism, of course, and it's hard to overplay the impact of the riots (I made them sound as bad as I could on a recent visit to America) or of the poverty and anger that fuelled them. But the idea of toddlers keeping cockroaches as pets is news to me. I'm not saying it doesn't happen; I just don't think of it as representative.
A spokesman for Boris Johnson condemned the Newsweek story by saying that London was still a world leader in "finance, cuisine and culture", which sort of misses the point. The Newsweek cover may look like a hatchet job, but the story itself is pretty fair and measured, and outlines a deep societal malaise that is not solved by having loads of nice restaurants.
"It's an American magazine," said the mayor's spokesman. "They are not seeing London as we see it." And that's true. It's not that London isn't any of these things, but that's it's all of them: a royalty-obsessed, riot-torn world leader in cuisine, culture, binge-drinking and hosting the Olympics.
In a way it's flattering that America even cares. Fat chance, actually – the Grimsville, UK, cover is only on the international edition. The US Newsweek cover says "Let's Just Fix It!", in relation to a story on American self-reliance.
