Culture, international education, and the promotion of British arts (149Cong.Rec.S3084)

If you ask me, the biggest celebrity of the United Kingdom, royal or not, will always be William Shakespeare. I was a little surprised by the limited homage paid to the playwright in London. A statue of him in Leicester Square goes almost unnoticed as people head to M&M's World (top left). And when a friend and I visited Shakespeare's Globe (top right), which is a reconstruction of the original that sat only a little ways away, we were in a small group touring the seats and stage (bottom left). Despite their appearance, the columns on the stage are made entirely from wood (bottom right), which is why the original theater burned to the ground in less than two hours after a stage cannon caught the thatched roof on fire. 

 

 

Of course, Shakespeare has to share the spotlight with other impressive icons of the arts. A beer tour I took started at Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds, where there is a monument to Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe (left), and the grave of William Blake, writer of "The Tyger" and "The Lamb" (right).

 

And London surrounds you in the works of some titans of architecture. The Temple Bar Monument marks where architect Christopher Wren's Temple Bar once stood as a stony symbol of the entrance to London from Westminster (left). Right down The Strand stands the only building that survived the Great Fire of London. The lawyers' and journalists' Wig and Pen Club closed in 2003, and it is now a Thai Square restaurant (right).

 

The bulk of the country's history -- artistic, architectural, and especially archaeological -- is housed in the British Museum (top left). The museum's pièce de résistance is the Rosetta Stone, which is swarmed so much by patrons that it can hardly, ironically, be read (top right). The most controversial display, perhaps, is the Elgin Marbles (bottom). In the 1980s, the Greek government started asking for the Parthenon sculptures, which a British ambassador removed to the United Kingdom in the early 19th century, to be returned.

  

Often, UK museums are as much pieces of art as those they contain. That is certainly true for the Tate Britain, which houses mostly British art (top left), as opposed to the Tate Modern, which has a large collection of international works. The main gallery was built on the site of the penitentiary that housed prisoners on their way to Australia (top right), but it has had many additions, including a wing that now features a sculpture made entirely of toast. Not every museum is buttoned-up, as was clear through the prints at the pop-up Mr. Men Little Miss Mini Museum (bottom left). They didn't even mind when I stroked the book covers of my youth with nostalgia (bottom right). 

 

Even the most functional buildings in the city could be included on the cover of Architectural Digest. Charing Cross is named after one of 12 Eleanor Crosses marking the funeral procession of Edward I's child bride; the monument outside the railway station is a replica of the cross from Whitehall (top). As its name would indicate, Victoria station was erected in honor of the famous queen (middle left). Waterloo station, a testament to 20th-century high-tech design, once was the UK base of the Eurostar (middle right). The high-speed train from Paris now arrives at St. Pancras (bottom left), which connects via a stunning tunnel to King's Cross station (bottom right). 

 

 

Amidst all this amazing architecture lies loads of green space, such as Victoria Embankment Gardens (top left). The park, which is near Embankment not Victoria station, puts out ping-pong tables for fresh-air fiends in the summer (top right). The hoards, however, head to Hyde Park, where they can skirt the Serpentine (bottom left). If strollers continue west into the adjacent Kensington Gardens, they will eventually come upon Albert Memorial, a monument to Queen Victoria's husband whose design was based on the Eleanor Crosses (bottom right).

 

 

Government that would resemble as closely as possible the British royalty (133Cong.Rec.)

As was probably clear in my round-up of royal residences, a big part of tourism in London relates to the monarchy. And the granddaddy of royal attractions is the Tower of London, built in the 11th century by William the Conqueror. Many people come to see the royal family jewels, but I prefer the history of buildings such as the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula (in chains), which served as the burial ground of famous traitors -- including Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard -- so the public couldn't turn their graves into martyr shrines. One notable exception is Sir Thomas More, who fought Henry VIII's subversion of the church so he could divorce; despite his private burial, More later became a saint because he chose death over relinquishing his faith. 

The fortress was once a royal residence (top), with most accommodation in the White Tower (bottom left). I was lucky enough to visit the tower in the evening without big crowds (bottom right), so I could witness the tower's nightly version of the changing of the guard, the Ceremony of the Keys (then drink in the Yeoman Warders' pub). During another evening at the tower, I immersed myself in an interactive theatrical experience about surveillance called Nightwatchers.

The span across the Thames next to the tower is the Tower Bridge (left), although many people often confuse it with the much less architecturally spectacular London Bridge. Unlike the Tower Bridge, the London Bridge doesn't have a glass walkway above the road, and it isn't a drawbridge that rises on average twice a day (right). Sadly, the London Bridge now has obtained a distinct reputation due to a June 2017 terrorist attack. 

  

The London Bridge once was the only thoroughfare connecting central London and Southwark. The bridge closed every night, creating a den of iniquity in Southwark as a base of "entertainment," including bear baiting, for overnighting tradesmen. Southwark has since shed its seedy reputation, gained mainly in the Elizabethan era hundreds of years after it was a base of religious royalty, including the bishops who lived at Winchester Palace (top left). Of course, the real seat of religious power in London is Westminster Abbey, which has hosted 16 royal weddings and numerous coronations since the 11th century (top right). St. Paul's Cathedral was active during medieval times, but it wasn't until the 17th century that Christopher Wren embarked on designing the current structure after the previous building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 (bottom). 

 

Even with its strong religious tradition, the United Kingdom maintains a mostly secular stance politically, mostly due to the Magna Carta, the rule-of-law document that was signed in 1215 at Runnymede (top left). Perhaps the most photographed symbol of the British government is Big Ben, which sits atop the Palace of Westminster, home of the UK houses of parliament (top right). A less recognizable but perhaps even more alluring government building is the Royal Courts of Justice (bottom left). Not surprisingly for the headquarters of an investigative agency, I suppose, one can only uncover Scotland Yard if he or she spies the blue plaque (bottom right).

 

 

Also unsurprisingly hidden are the Churchill War Rooms, the bunker underneath the present federal treasury and foreign-affairs building where the prime minister and his staff coordinated the country's World War II strategy. The main players would meet not in 10 Downing Street, which is just around the corner, but in the Map Room (left). Now that there's no current world conflict to address (knock on wood), the Radio Room can be rented for private events (right). 

Another one of his palaces and ... the opulence with which he indulged himself (150Cong.Rec.H1051)

Okay, prepare for an onslaught of reports about all the typically touristy things I did in London that just didn't warrant their own individual posts. According to the crowds gathered each day outside of Buckingham Palace, the Changing of the Guard is one of the hottest tickets in town. I don't like elbowing for spots, so to see the royal London residence, I landed tickets to tour the State Rooms. Sounds fancy, but you only get access to 19 of the 775 rooms in the palace, which has been in the monarchy's property portfolio since 1837, when Queen Victoria took over after King William IV. 

But still, I saw the Throne Room, where people are knighted, and the Dining Room, where royal receptions are held. (You'll just have to take my word for it as photography is prohibited inside the operational residence.) Many of the rooms overlook the gardens (top), and for an extra fee, you can tack on the Garden Highlights Tour (bottom left). Sadly, no sightings of the queen were on the agenda as this day the Union Jack flag was flying; the Royal Standard flag indicates that the royal family is in residence (bottom right).

 

Compared to the gates at Buckingham Palace, those at Hampton Court Palace look perfectly jumpable, although I wouldn't try (top left). The palace's architecture has an entirely different look than Buckingham because it was built by Cardinal Wolsey and renovated by Henry VIII 200 years earlier (top right). The palace was primarily the stomping grounds of Henry's House of Tudor, where he married his fifth and sixth wives and kept the fifth, Catherine Howard, under "house arrest" after her adultery. But the succeeding House of Stuart altered and added to the residence; for example, William III ordered the creation of the Privy Garden (bottom). 

 

I'm sure it's no surprise that signs of luxury are on display everywhere. Even the stairwells have massive painted masterpieces within them (top left). Henry VIII displayed his tapestry collection in the Great Hall (top right), where Shakespeare's theater company performed for James I. During my visit, our group unwittingly got swept up in a play as well, but we surreptitiously exited stage left so we could see the more "downstairs" parts of the palace, including the burly king's kitchen, which made enough food for 400 people twice a day (bottom left). Henry loved wine as much as food, so courtyard statues depict the morning after, with peasants still drinking or sleeping off their debauchery (bottom right).

I first passed by Hampton Court while I was doing a bike ride on the Thames Path. I rode to the palace from my flat, passing by Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, a UNESCO world heritage site due to its contributions to historical and modern cultivation (left). Their creation started in the 18th century around Kew Palace, which the royal family used as its summer residence. Just down the river on the opposite bank is Syon Park House, built in the late 16th century on the site of an abbey, where Catherine Howard was imprisoned for a year before her execution at the Tower of London (right). Today, it remains the London home of the Duke of Northumberland.

 

After riding the path from Putney to Hampton Court, through Richmond and Kingston, on another day I decided to ride the next section, from the palace to Windsor. On my way, I passed The Anglers pub, where a group of rehearsing Morris dancers blocked my path for a bit (top left). But eventually, I reached Windsor Castle, the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world (top right). The first king to live there was Henry I in the 12th century. Many royals lived, temporarily anyway, across the river at Eton College (bottom). Among its alumni are Princes William and Harry; UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and former UK Prime Minister David Cameron; economist John Keynes; poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; writers Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Ian Fleming; actors Hugh Laurie and Eddie Redmayne; and even adventurer Bear Grylls.