This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

-Shakespeare, Richard II

On a recent visit to London I spent days wandering around my favorite spots in South Kensington, Chelsea, and Mayfair, and many happy hours strolling in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. I had lunch in the Orangery of Kensington Palace, high tea at the Goring Hotel in Belgravia, and met a friend for lunch at the Savile Club.

One day, an old English friend who happened to be in town for a few days — before returning to his more affordable home base in Kuala Lumpur—joined me for a long walk through Bloomsbury, Soho, and Mayfair. We popped into the Lamborghini showroom on Berkeley Square to gawk at cars. A very young and handsome Dutchman was already there, flirting with the beautiful young woman who worked in the showroom.

"Are you thinking about buying a Lambo?" I asked him.

"Uh, yeah," he said indecisively, glancing at the girl.

"Are you a scion of an old Dutch East India Company fortune?" I asked.

'Uh, I think so," he replied.

From Lamborghini, we walked over to James Purdey & Sons to look at handmade shotguns.

"Who are your biggest customers these days?" I asked the man who worked in the main salon.

"Mostly Americans," he said.

We left Purdey's and walked to my friend's club for a beer.

"Say what you want about London, it's still an incredibly wealthy city," I observed.

"Yes, but little of the wealth you observe belongs to English people," he replied. "Few Englishmen can afford these fancy places and products on display in London. In fact, only about thirty-six percent of the population of London is ethnic English."

One night, at a swanky rooftop birthday party for a City banker, I fell into conversation with a man who took a different view of the matter.

As he told me, "Your rightwing American pundits—guys like Tucker Carlson—are totally exaggerating our problems in this country. All the chatter about excessive immigration and crime and political dysfunction is wildly overblown."