The 311 Steps

A couple of days ago, I climbed the Monument, and I've got the certificate to prove it! Trust me, this is an achievement - there are a lot of stairs. 311 stairs to be precise. See:

The Monument was set up to commemorate the destruction which occured during the Great Fire of London in 1666. Despite the fact that everyone knew it was going to be a bad year (1666, you see), only a couple of people died in the fire. It was the immense property damage that was the real issue, plus the fact that the parts of London which hadn't been razed to the ground were covered in ash for weeks afterward. 

However, on a positive note, Christopher Wren got a free hand in designing many of the new buildings in the City - St Pauls is one of his, as is the Monument. Here is the perfect place for a footnote - when people in London talk about going to the City, they don't just mean the city of London as a whole, but a specific place within London, namely the business district. Historically, the City refers to the part of London that was encircled by the Roman wall, and for some reason, the name has stuck. Crazy I know, but hey, I don't make the rules.

And what really makes me think that Chris W. was an all-round cool guy is that, if the Monument were to fall (eastwards, I think), the golden flames at the top would land in the exact spot that the Great Fire began - a bakery on Pudding Lane.

The other awesome thing about the Monument is that there are amazing views from the top, at a fraction of the price of the London Eye. Granted, you have to climb to the top yourself, but since climbing all those stairs will guarantee you a P. Middy style derriere, its a win-win. Here are some of my photos from the tipidy-top:

Looking up the Thames to the Tower Bridge.

The City.

So high above the ground!

Looking North (roughly)

Apart for the bad camera quality and a little smog, ENJOY!

Walk on the Wild Side

Ok, so one more tale of Kensington Palace, and one that I think is particularly interesting - the story of Peter the Wild Boy.

Peter was a boy who was found wandering alone in a forest near Hanover in 1725 - he couldn't speak, he could climb trees really fast and he survived on nuts and berries. He managed to escape once, but they managed to catch him again and were about to ship him off to an asylum when George I had him brought to London as a gift for his daughter. The court, and indeed, the whole of the country, was fascinated by this feral boy, and he was actually a huge celebrity in his time. Peter was given a tutor, but never learnt to say anything more than his own name, and was, for all intents and purposes, treated as a pet - he even had a collar with his name on it, in case he wandered off. However, he was treated well by the court, and when they eventually grew tired of him, they sent him to live in the country, where he lived very happily until about the age of 70. He even developed a taste for gin, and when drinking, would sing little songs.

Initally, it was thought that Peter was autistic, but now the theory is that he suffered from Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, a genetic defect, which would explain his mental difficulties, as well as some aspects of his physical appearance, like his cupid's bow mouth. I kind of love Peter, he is a weird little anomaly in the otherwise smooth veneer of palace life.

Knitted throne - awesomeness to the EXTREME!

Just one more Kensington Palace story, its the last one I swear. And if you laugh at this, you will know that you are a true history nerd. When George I came to rule England, after the death of Queen Anne, he planned a beautiful speech, where he intended to introduce himself to the English people by saying: "I have come for the good of you all". What a beautiful sentiment.

However, what he actually said was: "I have come for all your goods". And in a thick German accent (as displayed here by the amazing Sarah Chalke). It went down like a fart in a spacesuit. Can't you just picture it. Ah, history, you gotta love it!

The Guilded Cage

So let me once more distract you from more important matters to regale you with stories of my trip to Kensington Palace.

At the moment, Kensington Palace is being refurbished, so they have set up an awesome exhibition in one of the wings. Its kind of hard to explain - the rooms are decorated thematically to represent seven princesses who were in some way connected to the palace. There are no information signs, with dates and pictures on, instead you have to talk to the people posted in the rooms (called the Explainers) and get information from them. Its all Gothic inspired (with a little bit of steampunk mixed in), and its amazing. Let me take you back to that day....*wavy time travel lines*

The Enchanted Palace

The first of the seven princesses is Mary of Modena, in the Room of Royal Sorrows.

The bottles are supposed to contain the tears she cried after the many miscarriages she experienced trying to produce an heir for her husband, James II. When she finally did fall pregnant, almost everyone thought that she was faking it. One of her ladies in waiting apparently attempted to touch her stomach, and Mary slapped her across the face for even daring to doubt.When the baby was finally born, the palace gossip was that Mary's baby had been born dead, like all the others, and a replacement (a boy, obviously) had been smuggled into the bedchamber in a bed warming pan.  However, James II was deposed not long after and replaced by William of Orange, so the issue of whether the baby was the true heir to the throne was never really an issue after that.  

Then comes Queen Anne, in the Room of the Quarrel.

Anne wasn't very beautiful or very interesting, in fact she was so boring that the photo above isn't from her room because her room was so boring (the photo is actually from the Room of the Children, a really creepy room dedicated to royal children, who were seen and not heard). However, Anne did have an interesting and beautiful best friend, Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Malborough. But Sarah got a bit above herself, thinking that her relationship with Anne would keep her safe. Anne realised she was been taken advantage of, and demanded that Sarah show her the respect that she deserved as a Queen - they had a huge argument and never spoke again. Even queens fall out with their best friends.

Now we get to a much more exciting princess - Caroline of Brunswick in the Room of the World.

George IV, when he married Caroline, was in fact already married, but the marriage hadn't been approved by the King, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and his wife was Catholic, so the marriage was invalid (the whole Catholic thing still exists today - if Kate Middleton had been Catholic, she wouldn't have been able to marry Wills).  With his first marriage invalid, George needed a newer, more repectable, non-Catholic bride, and for some reason, the choice was left up to his first wife, Mrs Fitzherbert. She chose someone she thought George wouldn't like, on the logical assumption that a man who hated his wife would be more faithful to his mistress. And she was right - George's first words on seeing his future wife were: "Jesus Christ, get me a brandy" (I appologise for the language, but in the interests of historical accuracy, I have to leave it in). He then spent the next three days as tight as an owl, had to be propped up at the altar and then spent most of the wedding night asleep next to a fireplace. Apparently, George and Caroline were, how do I put this delicately....more than just friends only three time, and George wrote in his diary that Dutch courage was the only way he could overcome his repulsion to his bride. What a classy guy. However, these three encounters did lead to the birth of Princess Charlotte.

George and Caroline lived separately for the rest of their lives,and Caroline was only allowed to see her daughter once a week and never alone. George continued his classy ways several years later when he had Caroline investigated for adultery in the Delicate Investigation (no joke, that is actually what it was called). The committee of leading politicians found no evidence of Caroline's infidelity, but settled out of court - Caroline was given a whopping 30,000 pounds per year (later raised to an astronomical 50,000 pounds of tax-payer money) if she left Britain and never returned. Caroline kept to this agreement until George's coronation, when she turned up at Westminster Abbey, with a legitimate request to be crowned queen. Armed guards, with their bayonettes pressed to her throat, prevented her entry, until the doors were locked to keep her out. She died weeks later of a stomach complaint, and there were many who suspected that George had her poisoned to keep her from embrassing him further. There were riots when Caroline's funeral cortage was prevented from travelling through the middle of the city, and three members of the public were killed by armed cavalry. Caroline was immensely popular with the British public, mainly because they hated George so much (and rightly so).

Next, we turn to George and Caroline's daughter, the beautiful, free-spirited and vivacious Charlotte, in the Room of Flight.

Charlotte didn't like her father very much (shocking I know, I mean, he was such a nice guy), and nor did she like the man her father picked as her husband - William of Orange (Charlotte thought he looked like a frog). She ran away to her mother's house (hence the Room of Flight), but was convinced to return to her father. She cunningly managed to put William off by accepting his proposal on the condition that her mother had to come and live with them (the mother in law card, putting men off since time immemorial!). Somehow, Charlotte managed to convince her father to let her marry the man she truly loved, Leopold, who was a titled, but dirt poor, Germanic prince. Apparently, they were perfectly matched - not only was he a bit of a looker, he was the perfect counterbalance to her high-spiritedness. A Jane Austen-esque marriage for a true Jane Austen heroine.

Tragically, their happiness was not to last. Charlotte died giving birth to a stillborn baby boy after 50 hours of labour. Her death was caused by the woefully misguided medical opinion of the day - in order to stop Charlotte's nine pound baby from getting any bigger, they forced her to fast and bled her daily, meaning that she was unbelievably weak by the time it came for her to give birth. Several weeks later, the doctor who had attended Charlotte, had another woman die in exactly the same circumstances, and he went straight downstairs, pulled a gun out of his bag, and shot himself in the head. After Charlotte's death, the whole country went into intense mourning - shops shut for three weeks and London ran out of black cloth.



There was one positive thing to come out of Charlotte's death - the lack of a direct heir eventually resulted in the accession to the throne of Britain's longest serving monarch, Queen Victoria in the Room of the Sleeping Princess.

It was in this very room  that Victoria was awoken by her mother at 2am to learn that her uncle had died and she was now Queen of England. Victoria had quite an unhappy childhood, manipulated by her mother who saw Victoria as a vehicle for her own power. But all that changed when she met her cousin Albert and fell in love. Because of her higher status, it was Victoria who had to propose to Albert, and they then enjoyed 21 years of happy marriage with nine children. However, Albert died at the age of 42, and Victoria never really recovered - she wore black for the rest of her life, isolated herself from the public and for many years, made her servants put hot water and fresh towels in Albert's room each morning. Aside from her rather rigid views on morality, Victoria was one of the greatest monarchs Britain had ever seen, ensuring that the sun never set on the British Empire. She cemented her legacy by marrying her children and grandchildren into almost all of the European monarchies, most famously her granddaughter Alexandra was married to the Tsar of Russia and was killed, along with the rest of her family, during the Russian Revolution.

This brings us to the last two princesses, who share the Room of the Dancing Princesses:

Princess Margaret

Note the Red Shoes reference.

and Princess Diana

Princess Margaret (the sister of the current Queen) was a groundbreaker in the royal family - hers was the first royal wedding broadcast on tv and she also was the first royal divorced since 1901. Both she and Diana essentially lived the same life - both had their lives closely followed by the press, were praised for their dress sense and criticised for their lovers. Diana's story is more well known, but it mirrored Margaret's in many respects.

The common theme that runs through the lives of all of these women is that love was fleeting, something that their status made almost impossible to obtain. They lived beautiful, but ultimately tragic, lives.

This exhibition has brought to life, not only the lives of those who lived there, but of the building itself. The Gothic feel, combined with a history which one couldn't invent if one tried, has resulted in a beautiful and fascinating exhibition which I would recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in history.

Hopelessly Devoted to You

The other day, I spent many an hour in Kensington Palace, Kensington Garden and Hyde Park. So many hours in fact that I have many pages and pages of exciting tales for you! So I have decided to split them into several brillant and compelling episodes.

First, the Albert Memorial.

I wandered through the south gate of the Kensington Gardens, on a beautiful and uncharacteristically sunny October day, past the rollerbladers (who apparently had not been informed that the 90's were over), I came upon the stunning memorial to Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria:

This is a Taj Mahal kind of monument - Albert and Victoria are clearly one of the greatest love stories of all time. I don't think anyone can deny that putting up a masive gold statute of your husband screams "I love you" (the gold actually had to be covered up during the Second World War for fear it would attract German planes). Victoria was devastated when he died after 21 years of marriage, and never really recovered. However, the monument isn't about Victoria (more on her later), but its about Albert. Here he is up close (sorry about the scaffolding):

One of Albert's greatest qualities was that he was hugely supportive of Queen Victoria but, at the same time, managed to maintain his own interests and projects. He was a great supporter of public causes, especially health care and education - the fact that all nine of his children survived to adulthood, an extremely remarkable feat, was attributed to his modern ideas on health care. He was also a leading figure in the creation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, celebrating innovation and culture. The monument reflects this - Albert is flanked by friezes of areas of development, like agriculture and engineering. He also wasn't unfortunate looking. He was also rather modest, as he had told his wife not to put up any statues of him after he died. However, if anyone deserves a proverbially large gold statue dedicated to him, I think its Albert - the greatest combination of husband and best friend.

Off with her Head!

Now that we have strayed into the territory of the gruesome, yet fascinating, I can now regale you with the tale of my trip to the TOWER OF LONDON:

And some pretty darn gruesome stuff went on. There were, of course, the murders of the princes in the Tower - apparently they found the bodies of two children when they were renovating a couple of years ago. And the last person to be executed in the Tower was during the Second World War, when a German spy who badly mishandled a parachute jump into the English countryside. And there was also the zoo, where all the animals that had been gifted to the monarch were kept. Not particularly gruesome you might say, but when I say that the public were allowed to get up close and personal with the animals, I think you'll see where I'm heading. One lady lost an arm to a tiger and a small boy was badly savaged in the monkey room. There were casualties on both sides - an ostrich died after someone, under the misaprehension that ostriches ate iron, fed it a nail.

Also, there are several hundred bodies buried underneath the chapel. The phrase 'buried' is a little tenuous - they simply lifted the flagstones in the chapel and squashed the body underneath. Usually in the dead of night. This meant that the chapel floor had a slightly undulating appearance. The only three women who were executed on the Tower grounds are buried there - Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey (incidently, all three dispatched by the Tudor dynasty).



The chapel is on the left, underneath the tree.



Actually, only seven people in total were exectuted within the Tower grounds - the rest were held in the Tower, but their heads parted company with their shoulders on the hill outside where the excited public would gather and watch, probably while eating a picnic lunch. The best execution story is definately that of the short but stormy relationship between the Duke of Monmouth and his executioner Jack Ketch, but I'll let you find that one out on your own. Needless to say, drinking and executing don't go hand in hand.





But not all of the Tower's history is bloody. Apart from zoo, the Tower for many years housed the Royal Mint (in the houses in the photo above), until the Industrial Revolution made this impractical.  Now, of course, the Royal Jewels are kept here, under the watchful eyes of the Queen's Guard:

The White Tower, the oldest building right in the centre, houses an awesome museum of arms and armour throughout British history - the jousting armour of Henry VIII is, unfortunately, irrefutable evidence that he didn't look anything like Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

The White Tower

 And now, the Beefeaters actually live in the houses that make up the outer wall - talk about making history come alive!

So, if you are in, near or around London, the Tower is a MUST SEE. A bit pricey, but there is so much to see - I was there for almost five hours and I didn't see everything. My advice: do the tour. They are taken by the Beefeaters who, obviously, know everything there is to know about the Tower (it is literally their home).

The Godless Scum of Gower Street

Here is my uni:

Its pretty flash Harry. It looks especially nice because of the MIRACULOUS warm, sunny weather. This weather is so uncommon at this time of year that people at still pulling on their woolly vests in the belief that it is a mirage or some sort of CGI trick. The dome at the top is actually the centre of the main library, which is also pretty flash. There are no power points, but it looks like something out of Harry Potter.

UCL was founded under the princpals of Jeremey Bentham, who espoused that education should be open to all, regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs (having a female contingent was something that rose to popularity a little later). And since, at the time, you could only attend uni (Oxford or Cambridge)  if you were Church of England, this meant that a lot of people were driven from the steps of higher education. And so UCL found its niche - delivering education to the godless. This, plus UCL's location, is also how the UCL students got their nickname - The Godless Scum of Gower St.

In consequence of his role in the creation of UCL (although he only provided the philosophy, not any practical assistance), Jeremy Bentham is held in god-like esteem. Here he is:

And when I say "this is Jeremy Bentham", I really mean it. This is his body, preserved and on display in the South Cloisters at UCL. Thats not his real head. The real head was placed in box and is kept underneath this display after it fell off and was later stolen by UCL's arch rivals Kings College London. You don't get history like that back home!