Shepherd’s Bush: a grey, malodorous, overpopulated district, the opposite of its name, in west London.

Writing in the Financial Times, Paul Theroux wrote about places with evocative names which are "disappointing." ArchBlog's very own Shepherd's Bush got a mention:

"A place name can bewitch the traveller. The name Singapore cast a spell on me until I lived there for three years in the 1960s without air conditioning. In Remote People, Evelyn Waugh talks about the deception of names. “How wrong I was, as things turned out,” he says, “in all my preconceived notions about this journey. Zanzibar and the Congo, names pregnant with romantic suggestion, gave me nothing, while the places I found most full of interest were those I expected to detest – Kenya and Aden.” Here are some place names that have misled the credulous traveller

Shepherd’s Bush: a grey, malodorous, overpopulated district, the opposite of its name, in west London. The traveller not wise to the truth of this squints and mutters, “Where is it?”, while gazing at the greasy cafés, kebab shops, Australian mega-pubs, cut-price emporiums and honking traffic."