Paternoster Row was a street in the City of London in which clergy of the medieval St Paul's Cathedral would walk while famously chanting the Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster being its opening line in Latin).

It was devastated by aerial bombardment during the Blitz of World War II, suffering particularly heavy damage in the night raid of 29-30 December 1940, later characterised as the Second Great Fire of London, during which an estimated 5 million books were lost in the fires caused by tens of thousands of dropped bombs. Prior to this destruction the area had been a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Trübner & Co. was one of the publishing companies on Paternoster Row.

It was replaced with Paternoster Square, the modern home of the London Stock Exchange, although a City of London Corporation road sign still exists in the square near where Paternoster Row once stood.

Coordinates: 51°30′53″N 0°5′53″W / 51.51472°N 0.09806°W / 51.51472; -0.09806

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irishsatirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640-1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick), of Frisby-on-the-Wreake. His father, a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. Swift's father died at Dublin before he was born, and his mother returned to England. He was left in the care of his influential uncle, Godwin, a close friend and confidante of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.