View From The Mall

by Alexis Brett

One third of the world’s population tuned in to watch the Royal Wedding coverage on TV, and nearly one million people took to the streets of London on Friday, April 29th just to be at the epicenter of all the festivities. Luckily for me, I was one of those people.

The Royal Wedding is not only important because it means that Prince William, (the future King of England who is second to the throne after his father), will now have a future Queen to help him with his reign, it’s also important because his wife (Kate Middleton) is Britain’s first middle class queen-in-waiting, and some say her humble upbringing may change the future of the British monarchy forever.

The public’s fascination with Kate

Believe it or not, when Kate was growing up in Bucklebury, England she used to have posters of Prince William and Prince Harry hanging up in her bedroom. Little did she know that a few years down the road she would end up meeting her beloved Prince William while studying at St. Andrews University in Scotland and end up becoming his wife nearly ten years later.

The Brits are fascinated with Kate not only because of her simple background which most British girls can identify with, but also because she seems to have a charming aura to her that has been comparable to the late Princess Diana, Prince William’s mother. But unlike Princess Diana, Kate Middleton has a university education (she completed a degree in Art History), and also seems to be surprisingly prepared for life in the British monarchy given that she’s 28, and Princess Diana was only 20 when she married Prince Charles.

But even though Kate Middleton grew up living the simple, middle-class life, she has now become one of the most talked about women on the planet; and within a few hours of me arriving in London I noticed that Kate was the topic of nearly every conversation in the streets of London.

The day of the ceremony

I woke up at the crack of dawn (6 a.m. to be exact) just so I could grab a good spot along the royal carriage route near Buckingham Palace. (Not being a particularly upbeat morning person I was committed to waking up early because I spent close to $100 USD so I could stay at a centrally-located hostel).

Even though it was early I could almost feel the buzzing of excitement as I quickly strolled through the streets. I saw people were wearing William, Harry and Kate masks, and there were tons of people waving around Canadian flags, American flags, South African flags…even Tesco and Hello Magazine flags.

You could tell there were many people who had camped in tents overnight just to get the first row along the carriage route, some of whom were still washing their teeth by the time I got there. I heard some parents claiming that they dragged their children out of bed at 4 a.m. just to see “Wills and Kate” in the flesh, but by mid-morning they had realized that this was probably not a good idea.

I walked down towards The Mall (the long stretch of road leading to Buckingham Palace) and as soon as I found a good spot I immediately searched for the shortest group of people in line so I could take my place behind them; (I ended up standing shoulder to shoulder with these people for the next eight hours and got to know them very well).

I talked to one Londoner who said he was in London celebrating Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 and felt that it was only right to attend William and Kate’s wedding 30 years later…only this time he was celebrating with his daughter.

By 8 a.m. the crowd was awake and festive, and many would start cheering whenever police cars or even garbage trucks would drive up and down The Mall. By 9 a.m. some people in the crowd started blasting their hand-held radios to listen to the local news for pre-service announcements. Some were gossiping about who the designer of Kate’s wedding dress would be and there were even families recording their own bets about what color of dress Carole Middleton would be wearing or whether Kate’s hair would be styled up or down.

By 10 a.m. the excitement in the streets was electrifying. There were people feverishly waving their flags whenever a film crew stopped to point a camera in their direction, and some started sitting on top of the porta-potties that were lined up behind us but were soon told to get off by the police. Being a stone’s throw away from royalty

As the start of the ceremony edged closer and closer we started to see cars driving wedding guests and buses of foreign royals being escorted to Westminster Abbey. The ones who were smart enough to bring radios with them were listening through their headphones and shouting out reports about who was in the vehicle. Word started to spread that we would soon see members of the royal family being escorted to the service.

The crowd went wild as soon as the car driving Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles drove past us, but as soon as the Queen’s car came into view there was a lot of friendly pushing and shoving just so everyone could get a good shot of the Queen from their camera; (the cars were all driving very fast so this proved to be difficult). You could almost hear the gasps in the crowd when everyone saw that the Queen was wearing a bright yellow dress, as there was much talk prior to the wedding that the Queen would wear blue or red.

But immediately after the Queen’s car passed our section of the crowd started chanting “We Want Kate! We Want Kate!” And soon enough…Kate came. I couldn’t get a good glimpse of her because the crowd was frantic by this point, but I saw a corner of her veil in the backseat window. After Kate’s car drove past us teenage girls broke out into tears and sobbed about how beautiful she looked.

As soon as Kate arrived at Westminster Abbey at 11 a.m. the service started broadcasting over the megaphones and the crowd fell silent for the first time. It seemed as though the streets were at a complete standstill so people could listen to the service and sing along with the traditional British hymns.

Some members of the crowd sat down and took a cat nap or started eating the packed lunches that were in their backpacks all morning. Others were discussing how they were expecting a lot more people to show up along the route, but we found out later on that during the service policemen had blocked hundreds of people off from lining up behind us.

As soon as the couple started exchanging their vows the crowd started to get emotional and cheered as soon as they heard William or Kate’s voice.

Then when the ceremony had wrapped up the streets immediately came back to life as people started cheering and waving their flags, and some even crying as soon as they heard the sound of the bagpipes. Soon the newlyweds would make their way from Westminster Abbey back to Buckingham Palace, and as soon as the royal carriage came into sight the whole crowd went wild yet again.

People were shoving each other and getting their cameras ready, and some children in the crowd broke out into tears because the atmosphere was so intense.

This time around I was lucky enough to get a good view of Kate as she and her now-husband were being escorted back to Buckingham Palace. She was smiling from ear to ear and her eyes lit up as she waved to the crowd and scanned over both sides of the street. It seemed as though she was trying to look at every single person in the crowd as if she was still taking it all in.

Seeing the Queen, Prince Charles and even Prince William was an experience I will never forget, but seeing Kate’s big smile up close is something I will remember for a lifetime. This is truly what fairy tales are made of.

And although there were lots of complaints about how the Royal Wedding was a waste of money and that there were more important matters in the world to worry about, being in London during the Royal Wedding made me realize that this is just what the world needs right now: To forget about unemployment, rising gas costs, terrorists and war in the Middle East, and to come together to celebrate a fairy tale love story that came true for one middle-class girl from Bucklebury who ended up marrying her Prince Charming.

London Combo: Westminster Abbey with Changing of the Guard, Buckingham Palace and Afternoon Tea

About the author:
Alexis Brett is a Canadian journalism graduate who works as a freelance writer and recently moved to the UK. You can read her travel tweets @RambleOnEh.

All photos are by Alexis Brett.

by Andrea Kirkby

Some cities have grown continuously through the ages. They’re like onions, layer on layer of skin which you can unpeel all the way back to the foundations. Rome is like that, for instance, or Venice. But London was scarred forever by one single disruptive event – the Great Fire which laid the city waste in 1666. It’s a city whose history began again with Sir Christopher Wren, a city which lost its past.

So if you want to see the London that Shakespeare knew, the London where John Harvard grew up, you’ll have to look hard. But it can be found – if you try hard enough.

Of course Shakespeare would have known the older medieval buildings of London – the Tower, for instance, and Westminster Abbey. But his London was one in which the great monasteries had disappeared a generation ago, and their buildings had all been privatised – sold off to nobles and gentry, sometimes for use as houses, sometimes just as quarries for building materials.

The City, in particular, was thriving, as London became a great trading centre dominated by an oligopoly of wealthy merchants. There’s almost nothing left in the City itself of Shakespeare’s London – this was where the Great Fire started, and burned most fiercely – but if you head out along Fleet Street or High Holborn towards the Inns of Court, you’ll find a few gems of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture.

Near Chancery Lane tube station, for instance, you can find Staples Inn – a marvelous, long range of fine half timber with huge gables facing the street, and a peaceful little courtyard tucked behind. This was one of the Inns of Court in Shakespeare’s day – the Inns were later reduced to just the four that now exist. The vast majority of buildings in Shakespeare’s London were wooden, like Staples Inn – one reason that the Fire was able to take hold so quickly. Yet wooden buildings didn’t have to be humble or unpretentious – this building shows the immense size that half timber work could achieve, and it’s mightily impressive.

Visit the Victoria & Albert museum and you’ll find an even greater work of half timber – the façade of Sir Paul Pindar’s house from Bishopsgate, in the City, dated about 1600. With its fine oriel windows, expansive glazing, and rich carving, it’s a testament to Pindar’s taste and wealth – he had made a fortune trading with Venice, and was later England’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Imagine a street full of such house fronts and you’ve got an idea of what the richer areas of the City would have looked like at the time.

Another Jacobean house stands at number 17 Fleet Street, by the entrance to the Temple. This fine half timber building was erected in 1610, as a tavern, originally known as ‘The Prince’s Arms’. The way the first floor is jettied out over the street, and the projecting oriel windows, are typical of seventeenth century vernacular architecture. But the house’s real treasure is inside – Prince Henry’s Room, which contains a fine plasterwork ceiling with the three feathers of the Prince of Wales set into a fine geometrical framework.

The name commemorates the investiture of Henry, James I’s oldest son, as Prince of Wales. Had Henry lived to become Henry the Ninth, who knows how English history might have developed – Charles I would never had come to the throne, and there might never have been a Civil War; Oliver Cromwell might have remained a local worthy in Huntingdonshire and never got involved in politics. But Henry died at just eighteen.

The Middle and Inner Temple were not just centres for lawyers’ training in Shakespeare’s day – they were centres of literary culture. The poet John Donne studied here, masques by Middleton and Beaumont were performed here, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was first performed at Middle Temple Hall. Although the Temples are still working environments, occupied by barristers’ chambers, the grounds are open to visitors – like Staples Inn, another oasis of calm in the middle of bustling London.

In Shakespeare’s day, the City was the preserve of trade and commerce, while Westminster was a separate urban area, the seat of the court and of government. Both the City and Westminster were tightly regulated. So to see Shakespeare’s real home, we’ll need to go south of the river, to Southwark – which as it didn’t come under City rules and regulations, but under the personal rule of the Bishop of Winchester, became a free enterprise culture. Here were the coaching inns at the start of the main road south to Kent; here were taverns, and also brothels, bear baiting, bathhouses, and theatres. This was where City apprentices escaped to on their infrequent days off, and courtiers went slumming.

And here you’ll find the Globe Theatre. Not Shakespeare’s original – that stood on a site a few hundred yards away, in Park Street – but a reconstruction, that still hosts plays in the summer. There’s a museum you can visit, but I find it a bit disappointing. The right way to experience the Globe is the way Shakespeare’s audience did – to come to a play here. And if you want to, you can be a ‘groundling’ – standing up throughout the performance in the open centre of the auditorium; though if it rains, you may be in for a soaking.

Shakespeare Walking Tour in London

If You Go:

www.elizabethan.org/compendium/27.html – Map and history of Tudor London
www.shakespeares-globe.org

Image credits:

London tower bridge by: Diliff / CC BY-SA
William Shakespeare portrait: Martin Droeshout / Public domain
Sir Paul Pindar’s house: Henry Dixon / Public domain
Middle Temple Hall: Diliff / CC BY-SA

About the author:
Andrea Kirkby is the founder of Podtours, a company which provides downloadable audio tours of European destinations. She is also a travel writer and photographer. The Podtour of Shakespeare’s Southwark takes you through Elizabethan theatre land and can be downloaded from www.podtours.co.uk/Southwark-podtour.htm.