"Make your mark in New York and you are a made man" wrote Mark Twain, encapsulating both the naked ambition of its citizens and the opportunities up for grabs in the Big Apple. Others take a more cynical approach: it's "an aviary over-stocked with ja...

Over the centuries, Paris has intrigued, revolted, scandalized and most of all captured the heart of many a visitor. For Dickens it is the "most extraordinary place in the world", for Hazlitt, "a beast of a city", and for French writers, the essence...

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford", said Samuel Johnson in 1777. Since then the capital has been characterised variously as a "riddle", a "cesspool" and a "modern Babylon", and both L...