London's not only where political power is wielded, but it's where cultural power is focused too - as a melting pot of cultural ideas and identities and at the business end of culture, from publishing to West End theatre to the BBC London headquarters.

BBC: Is London good or bad for Scotland?

Yangon has a pleasant charm and gentle energy, with vast gardens and riverside walks, the grandeur of centuries-old monuments such as the Shwedegon Pagoda, a fast-growing cultural scene of art galleries and music performances, and a melting pot population of all Myanmar's tribes as well as industrious overseas Indians and Chinese, who make up 5% of the nation's population.

CNN: From Burma to Myanmar: Land of rising expectations

That would affront the French republican notion that a melting-pot should produce a single stew, as, by and large, did earlier waves of immigration in the past half-century from Eastern Europe, Portugal and Italy.

ECONOMIST: France's Muslims