Gandhi liked to say that India lives in her villages. Seeing cities as emblematic of the avarice of modern civilisation, he founded two rural settlements in South Africa and two more in India. Yet one of the many paradoxes of Gandhi’s own life was that he was profoundly shaped by cities. It was through the Vegetarian Society of London that he first learnt the value of organised collective action. It was in that society’s journal that he cut his teeth as a published writer. And it was in London that he made his first English (and Christian) friends.