The Ukulele Lady has a business trip to London next week, which mean I have a free hotel room and four days pretty much to myself.
I’m not a London neophyte, have hit the big sites like British Museum, National Gallery etc., but I still don’t know the city as well as, say, Paris or Vienna, and I suddenly got hit with a “damn, am I missing something I shouldn’t be?” vibe.
What I like:
Art (I’m more of a Tate guy than a Tate Modern guy. I’m going back to the Tate to pay a visit to Dadd’s “Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke” and other assorted Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Also planning a re-visit to the V&A.)
Music (I’ve planned whole vacations in Germany and Austria around concerts and operas. Already been to the Foundling Museum to see the Handel stuff. Probably not up for a major concert commitment, but would stop in at a recital or something. Last year stopped at a church on Fleet St and heard a lovely violin soloist)
Graveyards and memorials (Done Brompton and Westminster Abbey. Will probably visit Sullivan & Dr. Johnson at St. Paul’s. Considering Highgate if only to see Karl Marx)
Food (have reservations at fancy places. How about street grub, local fare, more arcane possibilities?)
Books and Bookshops (Hatchard’s was closed last time I was there, so doing that…also antiquarian booksellers on Cecil Court.)
Weird shit in general (visited St. Pancras rail station for the architecture, was charmed by the Betjeman memorial statue and the freakin’ enormous “The Meeting Place” statue, especially the girl’s most excellent ass. May visit Freemason Hall; heard there’s a museum open to public)
I love reading the little blue historical markers. “Captain Fucking BLIGH lived here?”
Ghosts and evil spirits (Will probably go back to the infamous House on Berkeley Square, which I think has a bookshop in it now)
World War I (Already been to Imperial War Museum since the rehab. Been to Cenotaph and hissed at equestrian statue of Haig the Butcher)
We will be staying just south of Kensington Gardens. Please advise!
SciFiSam is the resident expert on London’s museums, so I’ll just mention the Wallace Collection. For classical music, you should visit St Martin’s, just of Trafalgar Square.
Thank you for the tip; I hadn’t heard of the Wallace Collection. Wow.
(The galleries at Somerset House, off the Strand, are more up my alley with the Cezannes and Van Goghs and GOD DAMN is that Manet’s “Bar at the Folies Bergere”? Who knew THAT was here?)
I was in St. Martins-in-the-Fields last year for the Doris Lessing memorial. I’ll go back to check on music!
That could be a big mistake. The eastern half of Highgate Cemetery, which is where Marx is buried, is the boring bit. More interesting and far more evocative is the western half, but that requires going on one of their (excellent) guided tours. Depending on your taste, Holly Village, which is a short walk away further down Swain’s Lane, might equally count as “weird shit”.
If you want to get out of the city a bit there is Brookwood Cemetery also know as the London Necropolis. It’s about 40 minutes by train from London Waterloo station.
Guided tours, especially ones you book in advance, are a deal killer. What if I wake up that morning and think “I have to go all the way to Hempstead this morning? Screw that.”
Brookwood looks cool, but as a longtime New Yorker I’ve never understood the “get out of the city a bit” mentality. I’m in a world-class city for four days; if I suddenly need to look at a tree, I’ll go to a park.
Have you climbed St. Paul’s Cathedral, right to the top? You need to be fairly fit and have a good head for heights as you climb up between the inner and outer skin of the dome. There are also some really tight passages to go through before you pop out into the glorious sunshine (yeah, right!) for some of the best views of the city.
I enjoy both acrophobia and claustrophobia, so this sounds like a bad option. I climbed to the top of the Volkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig a few years ago – the architect neglected to include a stairway to the top, so the contractor SQUEEZED it in – and it almost killed me.
Westminster Abbey for the famous headstones. St. Paul’s for the architecture. Tower of London to see the Crown Jools (and where many lost their heads). Buckingham Palace just to see where the queen shacks up. Many of the gardens, including Kew, Kensington, Hyde, etc. Just remember that London is enormous, and you’ll spend a lot of time on the tube getting from one locale to another.
Just about half a dozen stops (maybe 40 minutes journey) by train from Waterloo is Brookwood Necropolis
It actually used to have its own special funerary train terminal, built on the side of Waterloo station (you can still see traces of the Waterloo Necropolis station entrance from the road - the southwestern corner of the station frontage on Waterloo Road is noticeably a little more ornate than the rest of the station, but that’s pretty much all.
I’ve been to London several times, so those are all under my belt.
Last year I went back to Westminster Abbey to enjoy the tombs once again, having not been inside since 1980, and it was easily worth the return trip. I seemed to know a lot more stuff at 54 than I did at 19, which exponentially increased the pleasure.
I’ve rambled through most of the major parks – I like the Watts statue of “Physical Energy” and the Albert Memorial in Kensington. Last year I first noticed there the thundering enormous equestrian statue (at the head of Queen’s Gate road?) of the British Imperial Officer of whom I had never heard. Looked like the Jumanji dude.
I should mention that I adore Huge Scary Statues. London has many!
**Mangetout: ** The second recommendation of Brookwood. Maybe I should rethink it.
To reiterate, I’m looking for more offbeat pleasures. New York is full of them, and I’m familiar with other big cities’ versions. I wanna get away from the beaten path.
American, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Austrian cities are full of delightfully bizarre shit. Since the King of Eccentrics will always be an Englishman, I need to see what London has on offer.
If you’ve ever read Peter Ackroyd’s novel Hawksmoor, about a Satanic architect who is building a series of London churches in the early 1700s and including a human sacrifice in each, you’ll understand why I LOVED visiting the old church in Spitalfields.
On my first trip through Ireland, I spent a lot of time seeking out and admiring examples of Harry Clarke’s early 20th century stained glass…Clarke was a decadent romantic influenced by Aubrey Beardsley, but his work was in sacred buildings. Picture a louche John the Baptist and a femme fatale Virgin.
I hope I’m being more clear about my depraved and morbid aesthetic. Or to be gentler on myself, “grotesque and arabesque,” thank you Mr. Poe.
I didn’t spot the first recommendation. By all accounts Brookwood is quite an interesting bit of history.
While we’re on the subject of ‘get out of the city a bit’ - I know you said you didn’t want to, but I can very heartily recommend the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill - easily accessible by underground, then overground (and the views from the overground on the way there are quite interesting) - it’s a slightly quirky traditional Victorian ‘collection’ museum - interesting in its own right - but the museum garden also has a stunning view, across a foreground of treetops, of the landmark buildings of central London - including St Paul’s, The Shard, The Gherkin and 20 Fenchurch Street
Cool - I hope you enjoy it - I have to say, I found it met my expectations of a traditional museum far better than did the Natural History Museum in Kensington. The latter is a great museum, but has gone a bit modern and is full of ‘interactive journeys’. When I go to a museum, I want to see cases full of beetles neatly pinned in rows, dammit.
On the day I went there, it was a day of isolated, but heavy rain showers - we walked around the inside of the museum during a downpour, then came back out into the garden when it stopped - when we got up to the bandstand on the top of the hill, we were in full sunshine, but the central city was under dense cloud and heavy rain - we stood and watched as the clouds moved along and the towers of glittering steel and glass were variously revealed and hidden by shafts of sunlight and columns of dense downpour - it was quite breathtaking. Of course, I can’t guarantee rain like that on the day you visit, but this is England, so it’s a 50/50 bet.
Shame though because this was going to be my tip also. It really is very good. And it’s not *very/I] squeezy or eyrie-like. It’s a fantastic view of London and a really hands on and behind the scenes way to see an old building.
The Science Museum is full of all sorts of insanely cool stuff, like Stephenson’s Rocket locomotive, the Apollo 10 Command Module, and a steam engine made by James Watt (yes, that James Watt).
On the very top level are several aircraft, including a Supermarine Seaplane, and the Vickers Vimy that Alcock & Brown used to cross the Atlantic.