City of Wonder, Then and Still - NYTimes.com

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An aerial view of the ocean liner Mauretania as it arrived in New York, in January 1956.

OXFORD, England — SIXTY years ago I went to Manhattan for the very first time, on the ocean liner Mauretania from Liverpool, and annually since then, without a break, I have returned. This year is my Diamond Jubilee visit, and everyone, New Yorkers and outsiders alike, asks me how much the place has changed.

It has certainly changed me, I can tell you that! Look around the library at my home in Wales and you will see New York books impenetrably cluttering its shelves, including a couple I have impertinently written myself, file after file of articles, street plans and prints, and a Crumpled City map of contemporary Manhattan, printed on scrunchable fabric, which Twm, one of my three sons, has just given me as a Diamond Jubilee memento. Since 1953 New York has implanted itself irrevocably in my being and altered me forever.

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