When, at the start of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, George says, “Let’s go up The River!”, nobody says, “In what direction is that?”
Billy Joel waxed lyrical about his love for Uptown Girl, Christie Brinkley, and New Yorkers knew that Joel would have to travel north up Manhattan to see his girlfriend from his home in the south of the city.
So why is it that basic geography is ignored in London?
It’s always been coming up to London, no matter where in the country one lives; if a visitor from York is coming to London, they are travelling ‘up’.
Is this simply London’s sense of self-importance, or is there another reason?
One theory is that in the early Victorian days of the railways, as the companies planned their routes and schedules, they needed to distinguish the primary direction on each stretch of track. Hence ‘up’ lines – going towards London – and ‘down’ lines – going away.
This terminology lasted at least until after World War II, and in so doing it’s stayed fixed in many minds.
So we still go ‘up west’ if visiting the West End, or ‘up to town’ regardless of the actual direction of travel.