Dear London

(My 2002 photo of the Palace of Westminster)

Back in July, a YouTube video from Letters Live popped up in my subscriptions featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, inviting everyone to write a letter to London. As you may have read here or on Substack, I love to write letters. What you may not know is that I also love to enter free contests. I’ve never won anything outside of work, but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming. 

I thought about what I wanted to say to London for about a month, and it all came together one Sunday, flowing out in something unexpected. It wasn’t to the calibre of a noteworthy or award-winning letter, like they read on Letters Live, but it was honestly all I had to say to London on August 24, 2025.

There were over 3000 entries and five shortlisted, so if you want to read the sort of thing Benedict Cumberbatch and the people at Letters Live were looking for, you can find them here. Here's what poured out of me on August 24:

Dear London,

I have loved you from afar since I was a child. You see, I was raised by Tom Baker, at least the Tom Baker who played Doctor Who and filmed at BBC Television Centre in White City. He greeted me every afternoon when I arrived home from school because my other parents didn’t get home from work until later in the evening. Tom’s sparkling eyes and quick wit shaped me into the person I am more than he could ever realize. Mainly because I’ve never written to him, and we’ve never met.

 

I grew up landlocked in middle America, longing to live in Tom’s London, so much so that in two times of great stress during my university years, specifically the spring of 1985 and the summer of 1986, I spoke with an English accent I’d learned from Tom and his time-travelling friends. Perhaps there was something ancestral in my brain, because 416 years ago, my tenth great-grandfather left London—or was it the Isle of Wight—for the colonies. Maybe the accent slipped out because Tom is the same age as my father and much less emotionally distant. 

In any case, I’ve done my best to make it back to London, first on a week-long tourist visa with my wife in 2002, where I was sidetracked from visiting Tom by my love of art and culture at the Tate Modern, my love of time by the Greenwich Meridian, and the constant challenge of finding something to eat with flavour. The Tube strike that week didn’t help either.

In 2006, I pledged an oath of allegiance to the Queen when I became Canadian and hoped, to no avail, that it would make it easier to return to the London of my youth. That same year, I worked to secure an intracompany transfer to Sandwich, driven by the yearning that once settled with a work visa and employment secured, I could live in Greater London, say Bexley, hop on the A2, and commute to Kent. 

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I found work in London proper and finally met my adopted father. 

Time went on, as it does, and I read of wonderful places we’d missed during our week in London, like Kenwood Ladies’ Pond. I pictured the two of us dipping into the cool water among other women, surrounded by the peaceful heath. The BBC radio and TV stories ignited such a longing to be there that it hurt. A pain unlike anything I’d ever felt. 

Soon, stories of transphobia began sweeping the UK headlines, and despite my years of hormones and surgeries, I felt unwelcome in a place that had once been my secret home. I remain hopeful that the human rights and decency I enjoy in Canada will eventually reach London and the UK in time for me to experience the pond and Tom’s fatherly embrace. 

With love,

Allison (A.M.) Kirsch