Londinium

I’ve had a long relationship with the capital city of the UK - not quite as long as the title of this blog suggests, I hasten to add: I don’t go back to Roman times, although one of my favourite novels, ‘London’ by Edward Rutherford, does – it traces the history of the city for over a thousand years by following fictional families – thoroughly recommend it.

No, I was virtually unaware of the place except as a name on a map and in history books until I was ten, when our Norfolk primary school thought it would be ‘a good thing’ for us innocent rural souls to widen our experience of life, and arranged a day trip. Not to Camden market, a few high rise flats, a crack den and an underground rave to complete the day, as they could have done, but to the Tower of London and the Science Museum. Relatively tame on reflection, but we were ten – and our mums had to give permission. And I had enough problems trying to convince my mum I would be safe: perhaps the teachers were wise to avoid the crack den after all.

“You might get lost - London’s a big place,” was the first objection. How she could know this I’m not sure – the furthest from home she had ventured was Frinton-on-Sea, in deepest, darkest Essex.

There is an apocryphal tale of a Norfolk lorry driver sent to London with a cargo of wooden planks. He successfully navigated his way as far as Liverpool Street Station, which everyone in East Anglia knows is London, then stopped and accosted a passer by.

‘Excuse me, do you live in London?’
‘Yes mate,’ came the reply.
‘Good,’ said the driver. ‘I’ve got some wood here for a Mr Jones. Can you tell me which house is his please?’

Although I’ve since come to love the Science Museum, my only memory of it is walking time and time again through this new-fangled automatic door contraption – just imagine, some day in the future, we could have a door that opens whenever you approach it! Just like on The Prisoner…. (though I’d not seen that at the time).

My other abiding memory of the day is driving through streets crammed with buildings, people and traffic – more than I’d ever seen in my life. And loving the buzz that emanated from the very tarmac, the vibrancy and the life-giving force. The Tower and its history has been a passion of mine ever since that day, when I dazedly retraced the steps of Elizabeth I on her walkway outside the Bloody Tower, marvelling that I was seeing the same vista as that long ago young princess. London does that – it puts you in touch with history.

Which is why I moved to live near London, and probably partly why I was drawn to and married a Londoner. Not just a Londoner indeed – a genuine ‘Orl roight mate’ Cockney, bless him. I’ve learned to see the Mile End Road as a second home – especially since we found out (after years of me boasting about my pedigree Norfolk breeding) my nan was actually born in Bermondsey.

I was back at the National Portrait Gallery recently to lap up more history – I love to gaze at paintings of my heroes down the ages, pondering on the fact that when the paint touched the canvas, they were actually in the room. Brings them closer, that thought. Paintings seem more personal than photographs; it’s not, as so often quoted, the camera that takes a bit of the subject’s soul – the artist’s brush captures it so much more effectively. And – as Dorian Gray attests – the best paintings portray the artist’s emotions as well as the subject’s.

There are a few favourites I visit every time: the Romantic poets, clustered in one room: Byron looking proud and handsome, Keatshead down, reading, looking simultaneously absorbed and defeated; Wordsworth towards the end of his life, now very much part of the establishment he once railed against. Mary Woolstoncraft and her husband William Godwin look possessively across the room at their daughter and son-in-law.

I also visit John Wilmot posing with his monkey, which sits on a pile of books. I’m told the monkey represents Milton, the laureate, hence the laurel crown held above its head. The image always however symbolises for me the monk and the monkey – psychological terms representing the superego and the id – the highest and lowest thought processes of humans. Which summarises Wilmot’s life and poetry perfectly.

This visit I spent more time than usual with the Shakespeare portraits, intrigued at the possibility of a new one having been discovered. And while perusing that exhibition I was drawn to Ben Jonson. I'd never really looked at him previously and I was struck by the fact that he doesn’t look like I expect a poet and playwright to look: to bluff, too hearty, not sensitive enough. Though yes, the sort of writer who can start a play with ‘I fart at thee’! He reminds me of Tom Baker – not so much as Dr Who but as the legless sailor in Blackadder II. Well, if nothing else, I could now advise on who should play Ben Jonson should anyone decide to make a biopic….