Mind Your Language | 23 October 2004

The suburbs are perhaps not so despised as they were in my youth, now that every house costs £1 million. And I was delighted to learn that my friend and columnar neighbour Christopher Fildes is next month publishing a selection from his City and Suburban pages under the title A City Spectator (£12.99). ‘City and Suburban’ comes from Milton, or almost so, for in Paradise Regained the poet writes of ‘Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts / And eloquence, native to famous wits / Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, / City or suburban, studious walks and shades.’ John Betjeman used the phrase for his column in The Spectator in the 1950s; I’m glad it has been preserved.

The English word for the suburbs narrowly escaped being suburbles, a pleasingly bubbly sound. Chaucer uses the word in the form subarblis in the prologue to the ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, a sufficiently shady spot.