Over the last three-and-a-half centuries this glamorous, twenty-four hour city has attracted a multitude of thinkers, poets, novelists and playwrights, many of whom have brilliantly encapsulated its unique spirit through verse, prose or the ultimate wisecrack.

'Make your mark in New York and you are a made man' wrote Mark Twain, encapsulating both the naked ambition of its citizens and the opportunities up for grabs in the Big Apple. Others take a more cynical approach: it's 'an aviary over-stocked with jays' (O. Henry), 'a sucked orange' (Ralph Waldo Emerson) or 'fantastically charmless and elaborately dire' (Henry James). Over the last three-and-a-half centuries this glamorous, twenty-four hour city has attracted a multitude of thinkers, poets, novelists and playwrights, many of whom have brilliantly encapsulated its unique spirit through verse, prose or the ultimate wisecrack.