London: Truth and Reconciliation

[SHiRO]

Great shots!

[M II A II R II K]

Some fantastic photography there, National Geographic worthy.

[Troyeth]

I was just in London!

If my London thread is a fraction as nice and accomplished as yours I will be immensely satisfied.

London is a great city and you captured it so freely and playfully. Lovely photographs!

[Bedhead]

Thanks everyone! LSyd - I've added Napoleon's horse to part one on the previous page.

Time for Part 2 - first some music.
http://youtu.be/9p__WmyAE3g

[Bedhead]

PART TWO: TROUBLESOME COLONIALS


Westminster: Imperial Theme Park














 

























Westminster. Home of Britain’s imperial heroes, from Nelson to Churchill. Even George III gets a statue.





But wait. Who’s this?



V - Washington

Just after World War I, the people of Virginia donated a statue of George Washington to the people of London to mark the newly strengthened bond between the two nations.

London’s authorities then had to figure out what to do with it.

A place in front of the National Gallery, in the hallowed ground of Trafalgar Square, was chosen. The National Gallery argued that any inscription should carry the name of the sculptor, Jean-Antoine Houdon, more prominently than the name of the subject – emphasising the portrait’s status as a work of art, rather than a memorial. It was overruled by the Ministry of Works.

Eventually, the statue was unveiled by Lord Curzon, Foreign Minister, ex-Viceroy of India and arguably the most pompous politician in the history of Britain. Faced with the task of welcoming a hero of the American Revolution into the Valhalla of the British Empire, he followed the old adage: if you can’t beat them, join them, saying:

“Gladly and proudly I accept this effigy of one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived”

There is a story that the statue stands on soil especially shipped in from Virginia, to honour Washington’s promise that he would never stand on British soil again – I hope this tale is true, though I haven’t been able to pin it to a really reliable source.

For example, the earth on which the statue stood wasn’t mentioned when its location was debated again in the 1960s; its final resting place was settled by Lord John Hope with the words:

“I think that on the whole it is probably better to leave Washington where he is. He is only a little way down the road from George III, who has, in fact, turned his back on him.”

[Bedhead]

Washington is not the only American hero to be celebrated in London. Just down the road from his statue is the house where Ben Franklin lived, now a shrine to the great man.

VI – Benjamin Franklin

And over on the other side of town, in the City, is a memorial to William Penn, who once served time in London’s notorious Newgate Prison for his Quaker beliefs, but is now celebrated at the entrance to the Anglican church where he was baptised.

VII – William Penn

One of the few founders of modern America not to be celebrated in London actually wrote his most famous work, The Rights of Man, while he was living here. Statues of Thomas Paine can be found all over the world, but to find any trace of him at all, we have to go to Bankside.

[Bedhead]

Bankside: Very Civilised

[Bedhead]

VIII – Thomas Paine

There are no permanent monuments to Thomas Paine in London – not even any streets are named after him. But in 2009 a play about his life called A New World was performed in the Globe Theatre.

I was very excited. The poster for the play, with all its colour and intricate artwork, could be Paine’s monument in our quest to uncover prodigal London. So you can imagine how deighted I was when I saw that the poster looked like:

No matter, though. The Globe itself, a replica of Shakespeare’s theatre built by the American actor Sam Wanamaker is a far more appropriate monument to Paine.

The informality of the Globe – the way the audience can lean on the stage like a bar – makes it an intensely democratic place. The audience is lit by the same light as the performers, and its reactions are as important and interesting as the performance.

There is also a certain pleasing symmetry in the way Paine’s life is celebrated in Wanamaker’s theatre. Paine left England to find liberty in America, and here his life is played out in a theatre built by a man who came to England to escape McCarthyism. London’s history has a habit of folding the centuries together to unite like-minded people.

[Bedhead]

Pimlico: Stucco Island

[Bedhead]

IX – Jomo Kenyatta

Just to the south of Westminster Abbey, sandwiched between the Brighton-London mainline and the Thames, lies the purpose-built suburb of Pimlico, named after Ben Pimlico, a man who sold beer.

The neighbourhood has had a chequered past, and at times it has slipped into slum status. Today, though, it is replete with yummy mummies and expensively restored terraces. Only a few scruffy newsagents and laundrettes tell of humbler times.

In the 1930s, Pimlico was going through a similar phase of gentrification, hauling itself out of the slum status it had endured at the turn of the century. It was then that Jomo Kenyatta, a student of social anthropology, moved into a terrace on Cambridge Street in the heart of the neighbourhood.

In the 1940s he returned to Kenya and began to campaign for independence from Britain, becoming head of the Kenya African Union. Despite being a moderate, Kenyatta was arrested at the beginning of the Mau Mau rebellion and in 1953 he was sentenced to seven years hard labour, followed by indefinite imprisonment. He was only released in 1961, when he led Kenya’s negotiations for independence, and he became President in 1964.

Kenyatta, like many post-colonial African leaders, ruled Kenya as a one-party state, at times using force to suppress opposition. However, he was generally an effective ruler, remembered today as a father of the nation.

His incarceration did not make him a bitter man. My grandfather was one of the architects who worked on Nairobi’s parliament buildings, which were completed shortly after independence. When it came to ceremonially handing the President the keys to the new building, my grandfather reached inside his pocket – to find nothing. After a furious search through his other pockets, he came to the cold realisation that he had left the keys in the office. He gave Kenyatta a sheepish look, only to be greeted by a huge wink from Kenya’s new leader.

In 2005 English Heritage marked Kenyatta’s memory with a blue plaque on his old digs in Cambridge Street.

[Bedhead]

Kensington: Victorian Razzmatazz

[Bedhead]

X Cetshwayo kaMpande – King of the Zulus

The 1870s saw the notoriously bloody Zulu Wars, in which tribesmen armed largely with spears and cowhide shields faced the machine guns and cannons of the invading British Empire. The Zulus surprised the British with their courage and organisation, repelling the first invasion before succumbing to a second, much larger force.

The Zulu King, Cetshwayo kaMpande was captured and exiled to the well-healed London suburb of Kensington. Here, suited and booted, he fitted in quickly with high society, charming both Queen Victoria and the London public.

The British, finding the Zulus harder to rule than they expected, tried to reinstate Cetshwayo as King in the 1880s, with mixed success. He died, possibly of poisoning, in 1884.

On the house in Kensington where he once lived, behind cherry blossom and scaffolding, you can now see a Blue Plaque to the Zulu King – South Africa’s first prodigal son of London.

XI & XII Jan Smuts & Nelson Mandela

South Africa’s second unlikely hero came from a very different background to the Zulu King, but began his career in similar vein, fighting the British Empire in the Boer War of 1899-1902. Like Cetshwayo, he learned to charm the British, negotiating peace with them and playing a significant role in both World Wars. He was Prime Minister of South Africa between 1939 and 1948, and was also a leading figure in the drafting of the United Nations Covenant.

In Westminster, outside the Houses of Parliament, where this section of our travels began, a statue of Smuts was erected in 1956.

In many ways, as a statesman and war leader, Smuts was a kind of South African Washington. Yet, as a supporter of racial segregation, he is also seen as a white supremacist and part of the establishment that imposed apartheid. As Mandela put it, remembering an early trip to London:

"Oliver and I saw the sights of the city that had once commanded nearly two-thirds of the globe. Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament. While I gloried in the beauty of these buildings, I was ambivalent about what they represented. When we saw the statue of General Smuts near Westminster Abbey, Oliver and I joked that perhaps someday there would be a statue of us in its stead."

It took a long time to happen. In the 1980s, Mandela was reviled by some MPs in the ruling British Conservative Party. Terry Dicks asked “How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?” while Teddy Taylor simply said, “Nelson Mandela should be shot”. Thatcher herself said the ANC was a “typical terrorist organisation”. But in 2007, a statue of Mandela was erected in Parliament Square, just a few dozen yards from General Smuts.

[LSyd]

awesome. thanks for the updates.

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[Patachou]

Fantastic thread, Superb!

[sopas ej]

Great thread! Really nice pics and enjoyable commentary!

I really like London. I'm really looking forward to the Olympics in 2012, too!

[Bedhead]

Thanks for the comments, Lsyd and Patachou!

Sopas ej, thanks - I think the Olympics will show London off at its best. Hopefully some of the tall buildings u/c now will be mostly ready by the time the event comes round, to give people something new to look out. The marathon course in particular should look great.

At the rate I'm turning up candidates for this thread, it might still be around by 2012!

Next update in September...

[muppet]

nice one bedders, man I work at the NHM!

[Bedhead]

Cool, that must be a great place to work.

[ifeeldope9779]

great thread and great composition. my cousin is trying to get me to go out with him to london and this just makes it more convincing

[Robert Pence]

Wow! Dense and visually rich and technically excellent!