you've got charles yerky, he's american and a great robert baron, adventurer of the tube network, you've got -- >> rose: what do they have in common. >> they've got in common that they were brilliant characters who came up with something, whether it was the idea of mercy or pioneer of elizabethan drama or passing the blues music back to america as keith richards did, or whatever. they came up with something that or dr. johnson who wrote the first dictionary of the english language. they came up with something that was of important cultural or historically for what i think is a programmatic theme. london, whether you like it or not, new york is a great transatlantic mirror of london. >> rose: come on. >> london, i'm proud to be a new yorker by birth. >> rose: that's a very interesting thing. you were born here. how did that happen? >> the details i think will be familiar to most people, but i wanted to be with my mother at the time obvious here. she was here in new york. my parents were students then, my mother was in columbia university. so i was born -- >> rose: so you're an american. >