London is a city that eats its history. If you peel back the layers of glass and steel in the Square Mile, you won’t just find Roman ruins and medieval crypts; you’ll find the remnants of a thousand years of appetites. This isn’t just a place where people trade stocks and dodge red buses. It’s a living, breathing pantry where every cobblestone has a story and every cellar once held something delicious-or dangerous. To truly understand the City of London, you have to follow your nose. From the salty tang of Roman oysters to the caffeinated buzz of the 17th-century coffee houses, the City’s timeline is written on its menus.

If you want to feel the weight of this history without actually becoming a museum exhibit yourself, you start at the heart of it all: the Bank of England. This area is the financial pulse of the world, but it’s also where some of the city’s most grand dining rooms reside. Take 1 Lombard Street, for example. Sitting right across from the Mansion House, this place is a former banking hall that screams “Old City” while whispering “New London.” Beneath its magnificent glass cupola, you can almost hear the ghosts of 19th-century clerks scratching their quills. It captures that essential City vibe-high ceilings, high stakes, and a sense that very important things are happening over very good eggs Benedict. It’s a fixture of the Square Mile’s landscape, a place where the grandeur of the past meets the frantic energy of the present.

Londinium: The Original Street Food Scene

Long before the bankers arrived, the Romans were the ones setting the table. When they founded Londinium around 47 AD, they brought more than just straight roads and bathhouses; they brought a taste for the finer things. Archaeological digs across the City-notably around Leadenhall Market-constantly turn up mountains of oyster shells. For the Romans, oysters weren’t a luxury served with a side of pretense; they were the original street food.

The Roman historian Tacitus described London as a “busy emporium for trade,” and food was the primary currency. You could walk through the forum and smell fermented fish sauce (garum), imported wine from Gaul, and spices that had traveled thousands of miles. The City was built on this trade. Even today, if you look at the street names around the Square Mile-Bread Street, Milk Street, Poultry-you’re looking at a medieval map of the City’s stomach. Each guild had its territory, and each territory had its flavor.

The Great Fire and the Rise of the Caffeine Cult

In 1666, the City effectively reset itself. The Great Fire tore through the timber-framed houses, leaving a charred skeleton in its wake. But like a sourdough starter that’s been fed and left to rise, the City came back stronger. Sir Christopher Wren didn’t just rebuild St. Paul’s Cathedral; he helped define the aesthetics of a new, stone-clad London.

Interestingly, the post-fire era wasn’t fueled by ale alone. This was the age of the coffee house. Places like Lloyd’s and Jonathan’s became the breeding grounds for the modern world. You didn’t just go for a brew; you went to hear the news, trade maritime insurance, or argue about politics. Samuel Pepys, the ultimate Londoner, famously recorded his first taste of “tee (a China drink)” in 1660. By the 1700s, there were more coffee houses in London than in any other city in the world besides Constantinople. They were “penny universities” where anyone with a coin could get an education in the latest gossip.

As the City grew wealthier, the food grew more ambitious. The “London Particular”-a thick pea and ham soup named after the yellow “pea-souper” fogs of the Victorian era-became a staple. It was heavy, comforting, and perfectly suited to a city that was increasingly industrial and soot-stained.

Narrative Dining: When Food Tells a Story

As we move into the middle of this century, London’s culinary identity has shifted again. We’ve moved past the era of bulk-feeding the masses and into an era of “narrative” dining. Today’s chefs aren’t just making dinner; they’re curators of memory.

You can see this shift in how restaurants across the capital-not just in the Square Mile-are obsessed with provenance and personal history. Even if you wander slightly west toward the refined streets of Belgravia, the influence of London’s storytelling tradition is everywhere. A key takeaway is that dining has become an autobiography. At Muse by Tom Aikens, for instance, the menu is literally built on the chef’s childhood memories. Every dish tells a story of a specific moment, a specific person, or a specific ingredient from his past. It’s a far cry from the anonymous “hot pies” cried out in the medieval streets. This trend of storytelling through plates has bled back into the City, where diners now expect to know the name of the farmer who grew their carrots and the exact coordinates where their scallops were dived.

Why do we care so much about the story? Perhaps it’s because, in a city that changes as fast as London, we crave connection. We want to feel that we aren’t just consuming calories, but participating in a legacy. Whether it’s a dish inspired by a Norfolk garden or a cocktail named after a long-lost London alleyway, the narrative is the seasoning.

Markets, Monasteries, and the Meat Trade

If you want to find the raw, visceral heart of the City’s food history, you have to head to Smithfield. This area has been a market for over 800 years. It was a place of “smooth fields” where livestock was traded, but it was also a place of public executions. The juxtaposition of the bloody meat trade and the somber shadow of the gallows is peak London.

The nearby Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, founded in 1123, is the oldest surviving church in London. Walking through its cloisters feels like stepping out of time. The monks here would have brewed their own beer and grown their own herbs, creating a quiet pocket of self-sufficiency amidst the chaos of the livestock market outside.

Today, Smithfield is the last of the great wholesale markets still operating in its historic home. It’s a place of early-morning white coats and the smell of fresh carcasses. But it’s also the site of a modern gastronomic renaissance. Tucked away right next to that ancient church is Restaurant St. Barts. It’s a Michelin-starred temple to British produce that feels utterly at home in this ancient corner of town. The dining room looks out over the cloisters, offering a view that hasn’t changed much in nine centuries. It’s a place where you can eat 15 courses of meticulously sourced British food while contemplating the “ongoing, epic churn of time,” as one critic famously put it. It captures the essence of Smithfield: ancient, unapologetic, and world-class.

The Future of the Square Mile

As we look toward the future of the City of London, it’s clear that the appetite for history isn’t fading. If anything, we’re becoming more obsessed with it. The new skyscrapers-the Cheesegrater, the Walkie-Talkie, the Scalpel-might look futuristic, but at their feet, people are still drinking in pubs that were rebuilt after the fire.

The City is currently undergoing a massive transformation into a “seven-day-a-week” destination. The bankers are still there, sure, but so are the tourists, the foodies, and the history buffs. We are seeing a return to the City as a social hub, much like the coffee houses of the 1700s. The streets are being reclaimed from cars and given back to people who want to walk, talk, and, most importantly, eat.

Notably, the rise of “Green Stars” and sustainable practices shows that London is finally learning to respect its resources as much as its traditions. We are moving toward a circular economy of food, where waste is minimized and localism is king. It’s a modern twist on the medieval guild system, where quality and provenance were the law of the land.

Conclusion

A travel guide to the City of London can never truly be finished because the City itself is never finished. It is a work in progress, a palimpsest where new menus are written over old ones. To visit the City is to join a long line of hungry people. Whether you’re standing in the shadow of the Roman Wall with a snack in hand or sitting in a high-backed chair under a Victorian dome, you are part of the feast.

The beauty of the Square Mile lies in its contrasts. It’s the sound of a high-tech kitchen humming next to a medieval graveyard. It’s the smell of roasted coffee beans in the same alleyway where merchants once traded silk. It’s the ability to find a world-class meal at Restaurant St. Barts just steps away from where ancient monks once sang their vespers.

So, don’t just look up at the skyscrapers. Look down at the pavement. Look through the windows of the basement bistros. Ask where the gin came from and why the soup is called what it’s called. London is a city that rewards the curious and the hungry. It’s a city that has survived fire, plague, and war, and through it all, it never forgot to set the table.

by Susmita Sengupta

London can be called the city of museums, or more correctly, a city well known for offering free admissions to its museums that are home to arguably the world’s greatest collections. As a frequent visitor to this multicultural city, my family and I make it a point to visit and revisit two of the most famous museums of London, namely the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. These museums hold a treasure trove of South Asian relics and antiquities as a direct consequence of British rule over the Indian subcontinent.

In a recent visit, starting at the British Museum, we decided to bypass the heavy crowds at the Rosetta Stone, the inscribed rock discovered by Napoleon’s soldiers in Egypt, and we walked past the Elgin Marbles from the Acropolis in Greece. I decided to not get tempted by the magnificently detailed carved stone panels from Nineveh or the Assyrian stone sculptures and reliefs from 7th and 8th century BC. On most other visits, these rooms are what would attract me the most, thereby depriving me of the chance to devote time to the galleries related to objects from the Indian sub-continent.

The South Asian collection at the British Museum began with Sir Hans Sloane in the 18th century and continued on with Sir Augustus Franks who used his connections to add to the collection, most notably from Sir Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India appointed in 1871. The ASI was preceded by the Asiatic Society founded by William Jones in 1784 in Kolkata, who started a periodical journal which focused on the antiquarian wealth of India. Thus the 18th and 19th centuries proved to be a ripe period for the British to accumulate South Asian antiquities.

The crowd was sparse in the gallery when we entered compared to the other halls where the world famous artifacts are present. The South Asian objects are in Room 33 and the first thing I saw after walking in was the Mathura Lion Capital from the first century CE. Discovered in 1869 in Mathura, in central India, about 112 miles from New Delhi, the capital belongs to the Indo Scythian period (200BC – 400CE). It is covered with inscriptions in Prakrit, the predecessor of the ancient classical language Sanskrit, using Kharosthi script. The capital also shows the triratana symbol, meaning the Three Jewels, emblematic of the Buddha, his Dharma and the Sangha. This was the first of the many objects present from the rich Buddhist period of ancient Indian history. The museum has an extensive collection of Buddhist figures and reliquaries on display ranging from the ancient to the relatively modern era of 13th century India. A section of the gallery is also devoted to Buddhist objects from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Japan and China.

However, the prized possession here is certainly the remnants of the Amaravati Stupa, from the 2nd century BC. The region around Amaravati located in South India, was a major Buddhist hub during the Ashokan period. Ashoka the Great, the third Mauryan Emperor (304BC – 232BC), is well known to historians as the king who devoted himself to Buddhism after the human deaths he saw in war. His rule extended from the borders of present day Afghanistan and Iran in the west to the borders of current Bangladesh and Burma to the east. Only the southern tip of India and the country of Sri Lanka was outside his reach along with the state of Kalinga (presently the state of Orissa), located to the south of his capital Pataliputra (now called Patna). Ashoka wanted to conquer Kalinga, and where his illustrious ancestors had failed, he was hugely successful. The Kalinga War of 265BC caused a huge impact on the Emperor. Buddhist texts talk about the morning after the war when he went to review the battleground. He was struck by the carnage he encountered and became a convert to peace. The years after the Kalinga War saw a proliferation in the building of stupas, monasteries, edicts and pillars by Ashoka and he aided in the spread of Buddhism beyond India.

Similar to the Elgin Marbles of the Acropolis, the remnants of the Amaravati Stupa are sometimes known as the Elliot Marbles. I walked into the Amaravati gallery and felt myself being transported to a different, serene world. All around me were intricately sculpted discs, crossbars, slabs and railings stacked and displayed high up almost to the ceiling. I could see beautifully carved limestone discs in shapes of lotus flowers and railings and crossbars carved intricately with worshippers around an empty throne, a symbol of Buddha. There were drum slabs with gorgeous carvings of events in the life of Buddha.

The Amaravati Stupa, also known as a Maha Chaitya or Great Stupa is considered to be the largest stupa in India, even larger than its most famous counterpart, the Sanchi Stupa. While the Sanchi Stupa is a major tourist attraction in India, the Amaravati Stupa suffered a different fate. Evidence has shown that the stupa built during the reign of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, remained a major religious site well into the 14th century when Hinduism had become the primary religion in India. Till about 1344 AD, various successive dynasties, helped in building and extending the stupa and its surrounding areas.

After that it fell into disrepair and remained hidden till 1797 when Colonel Colin Mackenzie, a Scottish army officer in the British East India Company made its discovery. He carried out some excavations in 1816 after being appointed the first Surveyor General of India and also made detailed drawings, a folio of which survives at the British Library. Then in 1845, another Scottish officer, Sir Walter Elliot excavated more sculptures from the site and a whole collection of these were sent to the erstwhile India Museum in London. Subsequently, the sculptures were acquired by British museum after the closure of the India Museum in 1879.

The gallery also boasts of a sprawling collection of Hindu bronzes, statues and sculptures known almost misleadingly as the Bridge Collection. I admired the dark, seated stone figure of the Hindu sun god, Surya from 13th century Orissa, part of a group of eye catching sculptures which show the nine planets or the “navagrahas”. My eyes rested on a marvelously carved, seated stone figure of Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, also from the same era, depicted unusually with five heads and ten hands. The entire collection was amassed by Charles “Hindoo” Stuart, an Irish officer in the East India Company, known for his affinity to Hinduism and Indian culture. He collected antiquities mostly from the states of Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Central India and displayed them at his home in Kolkata. After his death and burial in Kolkata in 1828, his impressive collection was transferred to England where it was sold in auction to John Bridge in 1829-30. Thus the collection was given to the museum in 1872 by the Bridge family heirs.

The next day at the Victoria and Albert Museum, we entered the South Asian galleries, and found ourselves in the era of 16th-19th century India. That is not to say, the V & A does not have ancient Indian artifacts. Here too we saw the statues and relics of Buddhist periods and early Indian dynasties. But the hallmark collection here belongs to the Mughal period (1526-1748), Rajput kingdoms and the Indian rulers defeated thereafter. The spectacular collection also includes textiles, paintings, photographs and myriad objects of decorative arts from all regions of South and Southeast Asia.

The immense collection at this museum has its beginnings in the East India Company’s India Museum, founded in 1798. The V & A, which was known as the South Kensington Museum in the 1800s, received this collection in 1879 but the India Museum was formally integrated and the name abolished only in the 1950s.

From the era of the Mughal Empire, the white nephrite jade wine cup of Emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666), builder of the Taj Mahal, caught our attention because of its exquisite craftsmanship. Made in 1657, the cup is a unique example of artistic unity from China, India, Iran and Europe. We moved on to the Akbarnama, the chronicle of Akbar’s reign (1556-1605) by his court historian and biographer Abul Fazal. It is a collection of manuscripts painted in watercolor by royal artists with Persian inscriptions at its bottom. We looked at rooms full of outfits, furniture and everyday living objects belonging to British men and women who lived in India during the Raj. We spent our time reading everything, trying to take it all in.

But we hadn’t yet seen the two most significant holdings of the museum. The first one is the solid gold throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh empire who ruled over undivided Punjab that stretched to the borders of Afghanistan from 1799-1839. The throne kept in the Sikh treasury came in to the possession of the British after Punjab was annexed in 1849.

Following this, we walked over to see Tipu’s Tiger. Considered by the museum to be one of its most precious and popular objects, this intriguing musical tiger mauling a red coated European soldier was made for Tipu Sultan, the king of Mysore, sometimes known as the “Tiger of Mysore” in South India. Tipu ruled from 1782 to 1799 and fought three wars against the British East India Company before being finally defeated and killed in his capital, Seringapatam in 1799. His treasury was immediately divided among the Company soldiers and the tiger was first displayed at the India museum in 1808. After the dissolution of the East India Company, this semi-automaton musical instrument was moved to the South Kensington museum, now the V & A and has been on display ever since. I realized that a visit to these two museums can be an enlightening as well as a poignant experience for most Indians.

Private Guided Tour of the British Museum in London
from: Viator

If You Go:

British Museum: As per the website, Room 33 is undergoing major renovation and will reopen in Nov. 2017.

Victoria and Albert Museum: Room 41 – The Nehru Gallery

Private Tour: Victoria and Albert Museum
from: Viator

About the author:
Susmita Sengupta is a freelance writer who loves to travel. She and her family have traveled to various parts of the USA, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, Middle East, Southeast Asia and India. She resides in New York City with her family.

All photos by Susmita Sengupta:
Outside the British Museum
The Mathura Lion Capital
Carved Railing Detail from Amaravati Stupa
An Intricately Carved Sculpture of the Deity Ganesh
Emperor Shah Jahan’s Jade Wine Cup
The Gold Throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
The Lacquered and Carved Musical Instrument, Tipu’s Tiger

London is noisy and teeming with tourists and horn-honking traffic. Crowds queue up in line or push and shove to see the sights. I spent three weeks there this past summer and, along with everyone else, I visited the usual attractions, queuing up in lines and pushing and shoving. But I also found that not far from the mayhem are lovely little places where you can quietly sit on a shady bench and rest and renew yourself. Here are some of the gems that I discovered.

Japanese and Dutch Gardens in Holland Park

Location: Abbotsbury Road and Holland Walk
Closest Underground: Holland Park, High Street Kensington
Website: www.rbkc.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/parks/holland-park

Holland Park is a lovely 54-acre park in an elite section of London, a few blocks west of Kensington Palace and Gardens. Stunning Victorian houses and terraces line the streets in this area, and shops, cafes and restaurants cater to an affluent clientele. The park opened in 1952 on what remained of the grounds of Holland House, a large Jacobean mansion dating from the 17th century which had been largely demolished. The northern half of the park is mainly woodland abundant with wildlife (including peacocks), and the southern part is used for sports and recreation.

The Japanese and Dutch Gardens are in the central section, surrounding the ruins of Holland House. This is a more formal area and, besides the gardens, includes an orangery now used as an exhibition space and a restaurant where the old ice house and ballroom were located. The Dutch garden was laid out in the 19th century when Holland House was in its heyday as a gathering place for socialites, artists, writers and politicians. It contains formal beds of perennial and annual plantings along with some modern sculpture and grassy areas where people lounge. The Kyoto Garden was donated by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce for the 1991 London Festival of Japan. It is a magnificent space containing all the elements of a Japanese garden—water, rocks, a bridge, stone lanterns, trees, flowers and fish. Children holding their parents’ hands walk along the stone walkway over the pond, listening to the waterfall up above and fascinated by the koi down below.

Garden of St. Michael’s Cornhill

Location: Cornhill Street and St. Michael’s Alley in the City borough
Closest Underground: Bank, Monument
Website: st-michaels.org.uk/

As you walk up Cornhill Street toward Leadenhall Market and Lloyd’s of London, a blue door on an extremely narrow church next to an even narrower alleyway will catch your eye. This is the Parish Church of St. Michael Cornhill and it stands on one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain, dating back to the Roman occupation. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672.

To get to the churchyard, walk down St. Michael’s Alley to the corner, take a left at The Jamaica Wine House and go to the farthest gate. The churchyard is laid out as a garden with lawns, flower beds, shrubs and trees and is an enjoyable place to spend some time on one of the benches or stretched out on the lawn. It is very quiet here, except for the sound of low voices coming from the wine house.

Kensington Roof Gardens

Location: 99 Kensington High Street, entrance on Derry Street
Closest Underground: High Street Kensington
Website: www.virginlimitededition.com/en/the-roof-gardens/the-gardens
Phone 020 7937 7994

This is an amazing place. It is an event venue so you have to plan your visit according to their schedule. Check their website, which they update weekly, and call before you go. The small effort is well worth it.

The roof garden was created in the 1930’s on the 6th floor rooftop over Derry & Tom’s department store, now home to many smaller stores. It consists of three lovely themed gardens on one and a half acres. The Spanish garden is small and formal and brings to mind Spain’s Alhambra. It has lovely tiles, arches, wicker sofas and chairs, throw pillows, palm trees, a Moorish sun pavilion and panoramic views over London’s skyline. The brick-walled Tudor garden is made up of three courtyards and vine-covered Tudor-style archways and is often used for weddings. And the English woodland garden has a big variety of trees, a running brook, a giant chess set and a pond stocked with fish. There are over 70 full-size trees up here, families of ducks in the brook, and four resident pink flamingos. Kensington Roof Gardens is a spectacular and extraordinary landmark that has won many awards over the years and you should not miss it.

Millenium Courtyard of Southwark Cathedral

Location: Montague Close
Closest Underground: London Bridge
Website: cathedral.southwark.anglican.org

Sitting in the cloister-style courtyard, you are surrounded by lovely grassy areas, benches, trees and shrubs, and a giant chess set. Birds chirp and people talk in low voices. Looking up, you see the spire of a gigantic new building, the Shard, in stark contrast to the architecture of the 15th century church.

The Cathedral is on the south bank of the Thames, close to London Bridge and Borough Market. For over 1,000 years, Christians have worshiped here—it was a convent in 606, a priory in 1106, a parish church in 1540, and a cathedral in 1905. It is the oldest Gothic church building in London and has some exquisite stained glass windows, a 13th century wooden effigy of a knight and a chapel dedicated to John Harvard, founder of Harvard University who was baptized here in 1607. William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens worshiped here, and it is believed that Shakespeare was present when John Harvard was baptized.

Lunchtime Concerts at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Location: Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square
Closest Underground: Charing Cross, Leicester Square
Website: www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/

This church is home to The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a world renowned chamber orchestra, and three high-quality choral groups. You may be lucky to catch one of their free lunchtime concerts or a rehearsal for an evening concert. Leaving the mayhem of nearby Trafalgar Square, I was there mid-afternoon on a Saturday and delighted in the music coming from a group of talented artists practicing for the Vivaldi concert that night.

There has been a church in this spot since medieval times. The current church was designed by James Gibbs and completed in 1726 in a simple neoclassical style that has been copied throughout North America. The window behind the altar is of a stylized cross and is very unique and controversial. The pipe organ was acquired in 1990 and is considered one of the finest in London, and the acoustics in the church are superb. Handel and Mozart performed here. Downstairs in the crypt is a gift shop and bookstore, a cafe and restaurant, and a brass rubbing center where families can enjoy the Victorian craft. St. Martin’s ministry is committed to social justice, humanitarianism and international issues, and it uses the medium of music to increase appreciation and understanding of other cultures. This church has it all, providing fuel for the mind, the body and the soul.

Little Venice and Regent’s Canal

Location: North of Paddington Station and Regent’s Park
Closest Underground: Warwick Avenue (Little Venice End) and Camden Town

Little Venice is a charming area around Browning’s Pool, a picturesque basin of water where the Grand Union and Regent’s Canals meet. It is an affluent area surrounded by multi-million pound homes. It also is a tranquil and serene place where you can relax at one of the waterside cafes or pubs or just sit on a bench and lazily watch the world go by. Charming houseboats painted in purples, oranges, reds and blues are moored here and a floating cafe is docked at the side of the lagoon.

After taking in picturesque Little Venice, you can stroll Regent’s Canal along a paved walk that follows the canal all the way to Camden Lock and beyond. It is peaceful here, traveled only by the occasional walker and narrow barges that take passengers to destinations north and west of Little Venice.

Private Tour: London Walking Tour

About the author:
Elizabeth von Pier is a retired banker who travels extensively throughout the world. In her retirement, she has written and published articles in travelmag.co.uk, WAVE Journey, Travel Thru History, hackwriters.com, and GoNomad. Ms. von Pier lives in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Photos by Elizabeth von Pier

A Royal Residence Through The Ages

by Susmita Sengupta

Henry the VIII, who has not heard of him? The English monarch who ruled England from 1509 – 1547, is famously known to everyone as the king who had six wives, and forged the path for English Reformation in his quest for marriage to Anne Boleyn. Also known as Henry Tudor, he was born to Henry VII and Elizabeth York, at Greenwich Palace, in Greenwich, London in 1491.

Hampton Court Palace, located in East Molesey, Surrey, is one of the many palaces of King Henry the VIII but only one of the surviving few. This is the place from where the King and his advisers first sent out letters to Rome threatening to break up with the Catholic Church. This is where he married Kateryn Parr, the final Queen Consort. Henry’s son Edward VI was also born here.

But first here are some details about King Henry the VIII and his political and matrimonial saga. After the death of his brother Arthur, at age ten he became Henry VIII, king of England. At the age of seventeen, he married his brother’s widow, Katherine of Aragon, in the year 1509. Katherine and Henry had one surviving child, Mary but Katherine was unable to provide him with a male successor. Henry’s eyes were now on Anne Boleyn, his queen’s lady-in-waiting. In order to marry Anne, Henry in 1527 began seeking annulment of his marriage to Katherine. It was a long struggle as is well documented in history which culminated in Henry marrying Anne in 1533. For this marriage, Henry broke away with the Catholic Church and the Church of England was formed with the king as its head.

Anne became the mother of Elizabeth I who would go on to become one of the greatest monarchs of English history. In 1536, Anne was executed on charges of adultery and conspiracy against the king. Henry then married Jane Seymour who provided the longed for male heir. Edward VI ascended the throne at barely ten years of age and ruled for about six years before he died of illness. Jane Seymour, Edward’s mother died within two weeks of childbirth and Henry after two years, in 1540, married Anne of Cleves. The marriage, a diplomatic effort, did not work out and it was dissolved within six months. She was awarded the title of “The king’s sister”. Henry’s next wife was Catherine Howard, first cousin to Anne Boleyn and lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves. This was once again a love match and Henry and Catherine were married that same year soon after the annulment with Anne of Cleves. The King at forty nine was in love with the teenaged Catherine and lavished gifts of jewels and land to her. Catherine Howard suffered the same fate as her cousin Anne Boleyn as she too was executed in 1542 on charges of adultery. The sixth and last wife of Henry VIII, Kateryn Parr, married him in 1543 and outlived the King who died in 1547. Kateryn Parr passed away in 1548.

On a sunny September morning, my family and I boarded a train from London’s Waterloo station to Hampton Court Palace. By the time we reached Hampton Court, the train had emptied out, thereby showing me that not too many tourists traveled to see this palace. It was a short walk from the station to the large, gilded gates of the palace and we arrived at a virtually empty ticket entrance. This was certainly in stark contrast to the crowds at Tower of London and we were happy to be away from the pressure of the heavy tourist areas of the city.

We started our visit at the rose garden, also next to which is the kitchen garden. These are but two of the various gardens that cover about sixty acres of landscaped gardens along with about 750 acres of royal parkland. One would need an inordinate amount of time or multiple visits to see all the different garden areas such as The Maze, the Great Vine, the Orangery, the Fountain court gardens to name just a few, all of which would make for a delightful outing for garden enthusiasts. But we were pressed for time and so we decided to focus on the palace instead.

The Hampton Court Palace which started out as a manor in 1494 was rebuilt in a grand manner by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor for Henry VIII. The king took over the palace in 1528 after Wolsey fell out of favor with him because of his failure in procuring an annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. The palace would now become a Tudor royal residence, an impressive edifice with all the hallmarks of Tudor architecture.

There was the fabulous gatehouse with the still functioning astronomical clock with its Renaissance bas reliefs. I realized that the palace is clearly divided into parts, each highlighting the eras of the different monarchs who occupied it. Therefore, the palace also has a distinct Baroque side as it functioned as home for later Stuart and Georgian rulers.

We made our way through the Tudor side, stopping to admire the grandeur of Great Hall, impressive with its ornately carved hammer beam roof and walls covered in elaborate, medieval tapestries, a hallmark of English Gothic architecture. This was followed by the Chapel Royal, a truly, magnificent prayer room with its sumptuously gilded blue pendant vaulted ceiling. The chapel, a splendid specimen of the Tudor style also had renovations done 150 years later in the Baroque form by the famed architect Sir Christopher Wren, builder of the magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. While reading the leaflet about the chapel, I discovered that the altar cross that we were seeing was made by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect famous for planning the city of New Delhi in India and also a lot of its buildings.

The kitchens of Henry VIII are the largest such from Tudor England, built by the king to feed his six hundred or so courtiers. There were various rooms filled with mock meat, fish, pies, various kitchen implements and pottery giving us a true picture of the hustle and bustle of everyday kitchen life in medieval England. We finished our tour of the Tudor kitchens after visiting the wine cellar; now better understanding the voracious food habits of Henry VIII and his companions that most of us are familiar with through movies and television shows.

After a bit of a rest, we decided to tackle the Stuart and Georgian portions of the palace. The Stuart sections are associated with the rulers James I (1566 – 1625), Charles I (1600 – 1649) and William III (1650 – 1702) and Mary II (1662 – 1694) the joint monarchs. These are the Baroque sides and the stark difference in the interiors and architecture from the Tudor Perpendicular Gothic style is immediately apparent. I was intrigued to see the difference in the scale between the State Apartments and the Private Apartments of William III. What caught my eye was the spectacularly eye catching display of arms and armors on the walls of the Guard Room. We saw the stunning Privy Gardens from the windows of the Privy Chamber of William III’s State apartments. The Privy Garden is the most accurate restoration of a Baroque garden with its raised terraces, pyramidal topiaries and intricately carved grass turf where the cut out spaces are filled with gravel.

The highlight in the Georgian apartments is the dining room of George I (1660 – 1727) where I first encountered the art of starched linen napkin folding. Folded cloth was turned into folded art depicting animals, trees, architectural shapes and such displayed on dining tables in European courts. Thus this predominantly German art followed the Hanoverian George to England.

Hampton Court Palace turned out to be quite a serene, wonderful trip to discover the lifestyle of Tudor and later England if one wants to spend a few hours away from busy London.

Private Hampton Court Palace Tour from London

If You Go:

Hampton Court Palace is 35 minutes by train from London’s Waterloo station. The palace gates are a short walk away from the station.

Lots more information is available on the palace’s website.

A new addition is the Magic Garden for families which opened in May 2016.

About the author:
Susmita Sengupta is a freelance writer who loves to travel. She and her family have traveled to various parts of the USA, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, Middle East, Southeast Asia and India. She resides in New York City with her family.

All photos are by Susmita Sengupta:
Cobblestoned palace exterior courtyard
A view of the garden with its beautifully manicured yew trees
The Anne Boleyn Gate with its pre-Copernicus astronomical clock
The Great Hall of Henry VIII
The magnificent Privy Gardens

by Lynn Smith

For those people who have a passion for literature, history and London, a London guided walking tour will combine all these interests. There are several such tours available, led by knowledgeable guides, most of whom have been trained by the London Tourist Board. The tours are also reasonably priced.

Several months ago, on a visit to London, I opted to take such a tour and chose the Bloomsbury walking tour as I have always been fascinated by Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group.

I met the tour guide outside Russell Square Underground and we began the two hour walk from there. It was a beautiful summer’s day which allowed us to see the green and pleasant squares at their best.

Bloomsbury is in the Borough of Camden and is bounded on the north by Euston Rd, Gray’s Inn Rd on the east, Tottenham Court Rd on the west and High Holborn on the south side.

The area has a fascinating history. The name Bloomsbury is a corruption of “Blemonde” which was the name of Baron Blemonde, William the Conqueror’s vassal who received the land from William in the 11th century.

In the 18th century, Bloomsbury was open country and was considered to be very healthy. In 1660 the Earl of Southampton built his house there and laid down an attractive square in front of the house. The borough took shape as more aristocrats discovered the area; the Duke of Montague built a stylish house on the site of what is now the British Museum and the great landowning family of the Russells, the Dukes of Bedford, Gordon and Brunswick all built their mansions in the area.

In the 19th century, Bloomsbury lost some of its glamour – trade and industry moved in and the area was no longer considered to be fashionable. The British Museum was erected on its present site in 1823 and London University began in 1827.

The arrival of the Bloomsbury Group in the early 20th century gave the area its reputation as an intellectual, artistic and somewhat Bohemian area – a reputation which is still considered relevant today.

Virginia Woolf (born Stephen, 1882 – 1941) was the third child of Sir Leslie Stephen and his wife Julia. Virginia’s siblings were Vanessa, Thoby and Adrian. The family lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, a large house always filled with children, friends and family.

The Stephen children grew up in a literary household – Sir Leslie was a journalist and had a well-stocked library, to which Virginia had unrestricted access.

When she was thirteen, Virginia’s beloved mother died and this traumatic event caused her first mental breakdown; this was followed by another breakdown when her father died in 1904. After Sir Leslie’s death the Stephen children decided to leave Hyde Park Gate (with its unhappy memories) and move to Gordon Square, in the heart of Bloomsbury, just north of the University of London.

Gordon Square is on the corner of Gordon Rd and Tavistock Place. No. 46, the house the Stephen children moved into, in 1904, was a large, elegant building, fronted by the pretty garden square. The Stephens’uncles and aunts, however, frowned on the move as Gordon Square was not considered a desirable address.

Gordon Square soon became a meeting place for Thoby Stephen’s Cambridge friends. Other visitors were Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant and later, Leonard Woolf. Virginia and Vanessa both took part in the lively discussions at these meetings, which could be described as the beginnings of the Bloomsbury Group.

After Thoby’s death from typhoid in 1906 and Vanessa’s marriage to Clive Bell shortly after, Virginia and Adrian left Gordon Square and rented a house at 29 Fitzroy Square.

Fitzroy Square

Although still in the Borough of Camden, Fitzroy Square is not strictly Bloomsbury but Fitzrovia, just further south of Tottenham Court Rd. The area was originally developed to provide houses for the aristocracy and many elegant mansions were erected, designed by Robert Adam. Building began in 1792 and was eventually finished in 1835.

In 1907, when the Stephens moved into 29 Fitzroy Square, the area consisted mainly of offices, workshops and lodging-houses. These unpretentious surroundings suited the brother and sister; they carried on with the Gordon Square intellectual get-togethers and the circle soon grew. An important addition to their gatherings was Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) – that eccentric and Bohemian patron of the arts, who lived in nearby Bedford Square.

The years at Fitzroy Square were eventful ones for Virginia – her two nephews (Vanessa’s sons) were born in 1908 and 1910 and in 1909 she accepted Lytton Strachey’s proposal of marriage but, by mutual consent, the engagement was cancelled almost immediately.

When the lease of 29 Fitzroy Square came to an end in 1911, Virginia and Adrian leased a four-storey house, No 38 Brunswick Square, which they shared with Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant. While living in Brunswick Square, Virginia became engaged to Leonard Woolf and they were married on 10 Aug. 1912. The Woolfs went to live in Sussex where Virginia had taken a five-year lease on Asheham House. It was to be another twelve years before Virginia moved back to Bloomsbury.

The intervening years 1912 -1924

During the years that Virginia was living elsewhere, she published four books and had, unfortunately, another serious mental breakdown from which she was slow to recover. The Woolfs moved to Hogarth House in Richmond and in 1917 they bought a hand-press – and so began Hogarth Press; soon they were printing pamphlets, books and slim volumes of poetry, mainly the works of the Bloomsbury Group.

In January 1924 Virginia bought the lease of 52 Tavistock Square and the Woolfs, together with the Hogarth Press, moved into their new premises in March, where the Press was established in the basement. Tavistock Square was part of the Russell family, the Dukes of Bedford’s estate and No 52 was a typical terraced house.

The years spent at Tavistock Square were Virginia’s most productive and she became much sought after as a guest speaker at various prestigious universities.

Today, Tavistock Square is surrounded by a number of famous buildings, all of which are worth investigating. The Square was also the scene of the suicide bombings in 2005, in which 13 people were killed.

Mecklenburgh Square was Virginia Woolf’s final Bloomsbury residence. Like Brunswick Square, Mecklenburgh Square was part of the grounds of the Foundling Hospital and was named after King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg.

The 2 acres of gardens are beautifully laid out, with lawns, trees and pathways. The gardens are only open to the public on two days a year. The rest of the year, the gardens are only open to resident key-holders.

No. 37 which the Woolfs leased, was once again, a large terrace house facing the square. They operated the Hogarth Press from No 37. The house was badly damaged during the bombing of London in 1940.

In 1941, Virginia, fearing another onslaught of her mental condition, committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Ouse.

A walk through Bloomsbury is certainly an experience not to be forgotten. There is so much of interest – graceful, elegant architecture, quiet, peaceful gardens and the all-pervading atmosphere of intelligentsia.

It is no wonder that the Bloomsbury Group put down roots here and kept returning to the area throughout their lives.

After my walking tour was over, I certainly felt that I’d come to know Virginia Woolf and her group on a much more personal level.

References: 1975. Lehmann, John. Virginia Woolf and her World. London: Thames and Hudson.

If You Go:

♦ Contact www.walklondon-uk.com or www.walks.com for information about the tours, what is on offer, where to meet, etc.
♦ Wear comfortable shoes, take an umbrella and something to drink if it is hot.
♦ Don’t forget your camera and be prepared to walk for a good couple of hours, although the pace is not fast.
♦ The guides are knowledgeable and enjoy answering questions. Now is your opportunity to get answers to those questions you’ve always wanted to ask.
♦ Make the most of the tour and enjoy it.

Photo credits:
Gordon Square, London by Paul the Archivist / CC BY-SA
Virginia Woolf by George Charles Beresford / Public domain
Bloomsbury group blue plaque by Edwardx / CC BY-SA
Gordon Square park by Stephen McKay / Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
Tavistock Square by Ewan Munro from London, UK / CC BY-SA

Browse London Historic Walking Tours Now Available

About the author:
Lynn is a retired librarian who lives in Durban, South Africa. She lived in London for some time many years ago and has returned to visit several times in the past few years. Her last visits overseas were to Eastern Europe where she fell in love with Prague and Budapest. When not travelling, Lynn enjoys writing articles for the internet and does freelance editing and proof-reading. She is a keen gardener and shares her home with her six beloved cats.

by Becky Garrison

According to my UK friends, only tourists visit the Tower of London (aka Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress). But just as they frequent Times Square whenever they come to New York City, I had a hankering to play tourist for a bit and visit this historic castle located on the River Thames in Central London.

This massive twenty-one-tower complex built by William the Conqueror shortly after he came into power in 1066 served a variety of functions, including a fortress against foreign attack, a repository for the crown jewels, and a refuge for the royal family in times of civil disorder. However, the Tower of London remains notorious as the site for some of England’s bloodiest bits, a living testimony to the hell that happened when certain royals ruled the roost.

In preparation for my mini-historical trek to the Tower, I uploaded the soundtrack from Spamalot onto my smartphone. Listening to how Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill put me in the right frame of mind to visit England’s most infamous house of horrors.

Instead of heading straight for the tower, I decided to stop at the London Bridge station and then walk across Tower Bridge. Despite this landmark’s medieval appearance, this famous drawbridge didn’t grace the London skyline until 1894. As I surveyed the growing mound of ant-like figures converging on the Tower of London, I began to wonder if perhaps I should heed my UK hosts’ advice and just skip this site. But given I already had my press ticket in hand, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Once I entered the complex, I found myself accosted by a gentleman dressed in regal robes. At first I thought he was another out of work actor looking to play dress-up but I soon learned he’s a bona fide Beefeater, the Yoemen of the Guard who formed the Royal Bodyguard since at least 1509. While he proved to be quite the expert guide, after getting elbowed one time too many by some twittery tourist, I set out on my own.

After I passed by Traitor’s Gate, the famous entry to the Tower where prisoners would enter from the River Thames to the Tower, I took a counterclockwise tour of the various towers. Passing by a sequence of cells and chapels, I almost felt as though I was traversing through a medieval monastery. That is until I stumbled upon a display of torture instruments clearly designed to stretch someone into submission.

I made sure to stop by and see the greatest working collection of Crown Jewels— scepters, orbs, swords, Oh My! Though to be honest, I found myself more impressed by the armor worn by a succession of kings, most of whom appeared to be quite short of stature.

In recent years, the Tower underwent a thorough “out, damned spot!” removal program. The last execution at the Tower transpired when an eight-man firing squad shot Corporal Josef Jakobs in 1941, the same year that Hitler’s Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, was held there briefly. Even the famous Bloody Tower now glistens in the golden sun. A pastoral patch on the Tower Green marks the spot where the more prominent prisoners, such as two of Henry VIII’s wives (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard), lost their pretty heads. All that’s left now are a few implements of torture ensconced in glass cases. Let’s hope they stay that way.

Private Guided Tour: Tower of London

If You Go:

The Tower of London Official Website:

About the author:
Becky Garrison is a freelance writer who has authored six books including Jesus Died for This?: A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Christ, with a seventh book in development. In addition to penning a book on pilgrimages for Zondervan (a subsidiary of Harper Collins), she has written articles about destination travel and travel products for several publications, including 52 Perfect Days, Yahoo, Sportsology.net and Killing the Buddha. Visit about.me/BeckyGarrison

All photos are by Becky Garrison:
1. Site of the scaffold were Anne Boleyn was executed.
2. The Sir Walter Raleigh Room.
3. The Portcullis.

London, England

by Helen Moat

Early evening in London and its dark and cold, just a few weeks off Christmas. Whilst people are thronging the pavements of Oxford and Regent Street, I’m making my way down Grace’s Alley, a quiet paved lane somewhere between Tower Bridge and St Katherine’s Dock in Wapping.

As the London traffic hums faintly in the distance, I stop outside an old crumbling building, the walls oozing patchy brick-red and mustard-yellow; a cracked wooden double door bearing the last remnants of faded paint. Surrounding the door frame, the stonework is exquisitely sculpted. It feels as if I have stumbled into a Dickensian scene.

Wilton’s, the world’s oldest surviving music hall, was opened in 1858. If its disintegrating walls could talk, they would have a few tales to tell. It began its life as a sailor’s club (and possibly a brothel); then became a music hall. The burlesque lyricist and performer, George Leybourne, aka Champagne Charlie stepped onto the stage here, as did the dancers of the risqué can-can (only to be promptly banned). Sadly, Wilton’s only initially survived a short 20 years as a music hall. In 1877, the hall had to be rebuilt after a disastrous fire. Soon after, this place of twilight glamour was closed down and it took on a series of very different functions from Methodist mission hall, soup kitchen, refugee centre, safe house (from the fascists) to a sorting house for rags.

It was the only building in the area to survive the Blitz. But for years, Wilton’s lay empty, neglected and forgotten but for the ghosts of the past. In 1997, Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw (of Harry Potter fame) reopened it with an impressive stage production of T.S Eliot’s Wasteland. It is presently managed by Wilton’s Music Hall Trust, a dedicated team of people, who are determined to breathe life back into this magical, living piece of Victoriana.

It’s an almost impossible task, and the building (in its unsafe state) has come very close to closure. When I was there, I could see daylight appearing through the rafters in places. There were unsafe electrics, leaking plumbing, and floorboards in the bar so rotten that the number of people permitted at any one time restricted. The whole of the second floor was boarded up, unfit for public use. Even the stone walls were eroding in places. Yet, it’s this forgotten, neglected state that’s given Wilton’s its indescribable atmosphere. It has the feel of Miss Havisham’s mansion in Great Expectations – as if someone had stopped the clock on time and left the building in a state of decaying beauty.

Money has started to trickle in to save this extraordinary building. The custodians of Wilton’s are determined to stop further deterioration and make it safe, but they also want to ensure that the haunting atmosphere contained in its faded glory is kept intact.

I head upstairs and into the Great Hall. I’ve walked into a Victorian fable. From the gallery a hundred fairy-lights cascade outwards from the centre of the ceiling. Yet more fairy-lights line the gallery’s railings. Pastel frescos fill the peeling walls between great arches. The gilt banister is decorated with delicate, intricate detail. A red silk curtain drapes the stage. Musician and artiste Duke Special enters the stage, eyes black with kohl, long dreadlocks, draping shirt cuffs and velvet jacket. To his left sits a string quartet: Behind him a projector screen. For two hours, he sings and plays the piano – songs he has written to accompany the black and white photos of the renowned early twentieth century American photographers, Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand. The music (commissioned by the Met Museum in New York) is heart-wrenchingly moving, the images haunting. The beauty and timelessness of the music and the photographic images fit perfectly in this magical, ethereal building. A great deal of thought is put into the theatre pieces and concerts that are produced at Wilton’s. The art, like the building, is sumptuous. So the next time you are in London, take the tube out to Wapping and to Wilton’s Music Hall and step back in time. Book a tour, or better still, one of their exceptional shows. You won’t regret it.

If You Go:

More info on Wilton’s Music Hall, Duke Special and Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand at:
www.wiltons.org.uk
www.dukespecial.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_VdxPtlnso
www.sphericalimages.com/wiltonsmusichall/index.html (Virtual Tour)

Private London Music & Art Tour

About the author:
Helen Moat is a British teacher and travel writer. She has won several travel writing competitions, including runner-up with the British Guild of Travel Writers, and has been published in The Daily Telegraph. Her greatest passions in life are music, travel and writing (not surprisingly). Find other travel pieces by her at:
moathouse-moathouseblogspotcom.blogspot.com

All photographs by Gail and Michael Watts.

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.

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.

London, England

by Angela Kirkby

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Egyptologist. I adored the mummy cases in the British Museum, bright gilt and the intensely saturated blue of lapis lazuli; the faces with their serious kohl-outlined eyes, the dreadlocked wigs and little fake beards. I loved the huge porphyry and granite statues of long dead kings. I wanted to dig up tombs, and climb pyramids, and read the Book of the Dead.

Well, that’s the British Museum for you. Lots of Egyptian bling and Pharaonic excess; but not, perhaps, much of a feel for the way most Egyptians lived their everyday lives. (Though there is a cute toy lion on wheels in one of the rooms, with a hinged jaw that would have gone up and down when a little Egyptian child pulled it across the floor.) To get the sand of Ancient Egypt right between your toes, you’ll need to visit the Petrie Museum.

Sir Flinders Petrie was the first professor of Egyptology in the UK, and is considered one of the founders of scientific archaeology. He was the first to use seriation as a means of dating Egyptian artifacts, and his excavations included work at Amarna, Tanis, and Abydos. He saw himself as ‘a salvage man’ – he’d been appalled by the destruction of ancient artifacts, and was concerned to save what he could.

Besides, he wasn’t just interested in the Pharoahs. When he excavated at Fayum, he was particularly interested in late Roman era burials, which had not been properly studied before, and it’s down to Petrie that we have such a fine collection of Fayum mummy-portraits. It was on this dig that he also found the Pharaonic tomb-builders’ village – evidence of working class Egyptian life. It’s his work, together with that of Amelia Edwards, who founded the chair of Egyptology at UCL and gave her own antiquities as the nucleus of the museum, that created the core of this collection.

I’ve been told that the Petrie museum contains 80,000 separate objects. I couldn’t begin to count them. But hold that number in your head and just think, if you had to collect 80,000 objects to represent your own life, what would you include? A Tetrapak of milk? An iPod? One of those coffee mugs with ‘Dad’ written on it, or perhaps a much loved fountain pen, or an old pair of trainers? You’d end up with a fascinating collection of bits and pieces – some bling, some fine art, some things that we find utterly boring but which, in 7,000 years’ time, will come to seem amazing and rare. 80,000 objects, 7,000 years old; these are huge numbers.

And it’s true that as soon as you step into the museum, you’re overwhelmed by the sheer size of the collection. It’s piled up, heaped up, hugger-mugger, not displayed in that nice minimalist way modern museums seem to love.

But the thing that really amazes me in the Petrie is how quickly – despite those big numbers – you find a single object, and suddenly you can feel the past actually there with you. You can almost taste it, smell it, touch it. For instance, there’s a piece of linen dating from about 5,000 BC – one of the earliest textile remains ever found; its sheer age makes it precious. Or there’s something I find absolutely fascinating, an architectural drawing of a shrine that dates from 1300 BC; thin, faded lines on papyrus, yet it seems to me I can almost trace the way that scribe’s hand traveled over the surface.

There are pots and pans, there are ancient sandals and socks and hair curlers, there’s a horse harness and if the horse got sick, there’s a veterinary papyrus explaining how to heal various animal hurts – the only one of its type that still exists. There’s a gynecological papyrus, too, the oldest known – the ancient Egyptians might not have had Prozac or CAT scans, but their medical knowledge was more advanced than you might think.

There are things that look silly, like the gilded toe cover for a mummy from the early Roman period. Ordinary Egyptians couldn’t afford golden coffins, so they made them out of papier maché – or rather, cartonnage, textile wrappings with plaster laid on top. If you were reasonably well off you had an entire lid made out of cartonnage – if you weren’t, you got a mask, a breastplate, and yes, those toe-covers.

One of my favourite macabre displays anywhere sits in a corner; the four thousand year old skeleton sitting upright in a huge earthenware pot.

And there’s one exhibit that particularly appeals to me because of its amazing beauty – and because I want to wear it; a painstakingly reconstructed, calf-length beaded dress.

Unlike many collections, the Petrie Museum contains artifacts from every period of Egypt’s history. There are prehistoric mace heads, for instance, in gleaming polished stone. (Later, the mace became a ceremonial weapon, often decorated with scenes of the victorious Pharaoh. In prehistoric Egypt, though, it was still a functional weapon; even so, some of these pear-shaped or disk-shaped maces are of astonishing beauty.) From later Egypt come Coptic textiles, with bright colours and lively designs. The collection includes more recent artifacts from Islamic Egypt, and the museum has even started to amass a small selection of objects from the present day.

The Petrie museum isn’t just a space full of interesting objects. It’s a research collection, and it takes outreach very seriously, too. Recently, it’s been working with black and north African communities in London – the acquisition of modern artifacts partly stems from a desire to put Ancient Egypt in a modern perspective, and is one of the results of this programme. The Petrie museum has also taken part in LGBT history month for the past three years, with talks on alternative sexuality in ancient Greece and Egypt, and most recently with an LGBT ‘trail’ through the collection.

The museum hosts some really quirky events, too. For instance if you want to give yourself the shivers, you can attend a Hammer Horror film screening – starring, naturally, a malevolent Egyptian mummy. (I wish they’d show Carry On Cleo, though.) There are object handling seminars; one a little while ago gave attendees the chance to hold a two-thousand-year-old basket and work out how it had been woven. The title of a talk last year shows just how intimately archaeologists now know the people of ancient Egypt – “Pinch pots and nappy rash – early childhood at Lahun”.

Or you can learn how to knit Coptic socks. (I’m not kidding.)

The whole collection – or at least, as much as the curators can manage to put on display – is crammed into just a couple of large rooms. The museum doesn’t look like much on the outside – apparently it was once a stable – and it won’t win prizes for interior décor, but it’s just stuffed with things, in stunning abundance. You don’t visit this museum so much as you explore it; staff will even give you a torch so that you can penetrate the dark recesses of some of the display cases.

That will change, I’m afraid; there are plans for a new museum to display the whole collection. But for the time being, if you want to pretend to be Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ankh (sorry!), this is the place to be!

Private Guided Tour of the British Museum in London

If You Go:

The Petrie Museum, University College London, Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT
Closed Sunday and Monday; Tuesday – Friday 13:00 – 19:00 and Saturday 11:00 – 14:00

About the author:
Andrea Kirkby has been traveling since the age of nine and has racked up four continents and over 30 countries. Having tired of a career in financial markets, she is now a full time writer and has less free time than ever.

Photo credits:
Petrie Museum exterior, both hieroglyphics and statues by Nic McPhee  
Museum interior by Ann Wuyts
All photos are licensed under the Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license