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Melvin J. Lasky, a London-based co-editor of Encounter, believes that "London is the only European metropolis that has managed to maintain a combination of greenness and greyness, vitality and yet a certain gentleness. Paris hasn't got it. Rome is oppressive, Berlin is a special case. And all the others are villages." London's pressures are less than in many big cities, and it manages to maintain an ease, a coziness and a mixture of its different social circles that totally eludes New York. The result, as Manhattan-born Richard Adler, editor of London's Town Magazine, puts it, is that London is "far more accessible than anywhere else. In New York, Paris and Rome, actors, writers and so on each have their own little groups, their little street packs. If you put your toe in the wrong square, you get stepped on. In London, everyone parties with everyone."
That is a quality that Londoners themselves appreciate, for, while it existed 30 years ago in the world of the old Establishment—where the dukes, politicians, prelates, publishing lords, financiers and industrialists all knew one another—it is still truer today in the new society. The London that has emerged is swinging, but in a far more profound sense than the colorful and ebullient pop culture by itself would suggest. London has shed much of its smugness, much of the arrogance that often went with the stamp of privilege, much of its false pride—the kind that long kept it shabby and shopworn in physical fact and spirit. It is a refreshing change, and making the scene is the Londoner's way of celebrating it.