The full English breakfast dates from the Victorian era, and many cafes in London serve a full English breakfast throughout the day.

From the 1940s, London became home to many immigrants, primarily from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, [89] making London one of the most diverse cities in the world. You can make mobile payments with devices such as phones, watches, key fobs, stickers or wristbands. A rare population of melanistic, black fallow deer is also maintained at the Deer Sanctuary near Theydon Bois. It remained until 1853, when the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg sold the property to South Eastern Railway. Citywide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities.London is notorious for its traffic congestion; in 2009, the average speed of a car in the rush hour was recorded at 10. The fortifications failed their only test when the New Model Army entered London in 1647, [67] and they were levelled by Parliament the same year. The UK's domestic counter-intelligence service ( MI5) is headquartered in Thames House on the north bank of the River Thames, and the foreign intelligence service ( MI6) is headquartered in the SIS Building on the south bank. London has Britain's busiest stationby number of passengers— Waterloo, with over 184million people using the interchange station complex (which includes Waterloo East station) each year. There are Sikh communities in East and West London, particularly in Southall, home to one of the largest Sikh populations and the largest Sikh temple outside India.

The majority of primary and secondary schools and further-education colleges in London are controlled by the London boroughs or otherwise state-funded; leading examples include Ashbourne College, Bethnal Green Academy, Brampton Manor Academy, City and Islington College, City of Westminster College, David Game College, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, Leyton Sixth Form College, London Academy of Excellence, Tower Hamlets College, and Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens, and the national library, the museum now has 7million artefacts from around the globe. If you use a mobile payment associated with a non-UK bank card, your card may not work or you may be charged overseas transaction fees.First held in 1862, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (run by the Royal Horticultural Society) takes place in May every year. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague.

London has numerous venues for rock and pop concerts, including the world's busiest indoor venue, the O 2 Arena, [394] and Wembley Arena, as well as many mid-sized venues, such as Brixton Academy, the Hammersmith Apollo and the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Southend Airport, east of London in Essex, is a smaller, regional airport that caters for short-haul flights on a limited, though growing, number of airlines. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Some features of Cockney include, Th-fronting (pronouncing "th" as "f"), "th" inside a word is pronounced with a "v", H-dropping, and, like most English accents, a Cockney accent drops the "r" after a vowel.National Health Service ambulance services are provided by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) NHS Trust, the largest free-at-the-point-of-use emergency ambulance service in the world. The first gay bar in London in the modern sense was The Cave of the Golden Calf, established as a night club in an underground location at 9 Heddon Street, just off Regent Street, in 1912 and became a haunt for the wealthy, aristocratic and bohemian. The GLA has responsibility for the majority of London's transport system through its functional arm Transport for London (TfL), it is responsible for overseeing the city's police and fire services, and also for setting a strategic vision for London on a range of issues. Within the City of Westminster in London, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. It has no specific geographical correlate, [235] although it is also traditionally defined as the standard speech used in London and south-eastern England.