Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
The area between David's flat in The Vale Acton and Chiswick is full of interest (and nice houses).....here film studios. But on our first full day we were off with him to Brighton - boarding our train at London Bridge. After a stroll through a dispiriting town centre and a bleak walk along the grey promenade we reached The Lanes which is a quirky and cheery area where we wandered looking for lunch. We made our way to the Royal Pavilion and paid a very hefty £51 for three of us to enter. And inside is the sumptuous fantasy palace built for the extravagant Prince of Wales later King George IV. In 1815, George commissioned John Nash to begin the transformation from modest villa into the magnificent oriental palace that we see today. This stage of the construction took a number of years. Nash superimposed a cast iron frame onto Holland’s earlier construction to support a magnificent vista of minarets, domes and pinnacles on the exterior. And no expense was spared on the interior with many rooms, galleries and corridors being carefully decorated with opulent decoration and exquisite furnishings. Our walk back to the station showed a different and much much better side to Brighton than that experienced on our walk down. On the Sunday we visited Richmond where we had booked lunch. It is always a pleasure to stroll round the very affluent town......... and along the river..... Lunch at the Rock and Rose was good........ Our post-lunch walk was to the top of Richmond Hill and its terrace. On Monday F and I made for the British Library to see its Treasures exhibition. An imposing building of course as it should be for perhaps the largest library in the world (certainly in terms of its collections). The busts show four individuals whose collections of bookks formed the basis of the Library....Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Joseph Banks, Thomas Grenville and Sir Hans Sloane. The exhibition was full of interest - here a leaf from the manuscript of Scott's 'Kenilworth' written in tiny hand (paper was expensive, and Victorians sometimes cross-hatched to make maximum use of their note paper). an annotated score by Handel...... Dickens' Pickwick Papers.... Here Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen with correcyions by Seigfried Sassoon - Owen's 'draught' replaced by 'draft' for instance..... A film script for My Beautiful Launderette...... The Fourth Century Codex Sinaiticus, priceless as it is the earliest surviving manuscript to contain the whole of the New Testament. I loved this almost cartoon version of the Bible from medieval Padua......these were very popular amongst wealthy laypeople apparently..... The Wycliffe Bible in English...... Tyndale's compact New Testament..... Modern illustrated books.... The Magna Carta exhibition was well done......... But we weren't finished.......Michelangelo Da Vinci's notes for a spiral staircase... A First Folio Shakespeare....and lots more. All gave us an appetite. A pity then that the Peyton restaurant within the Library was so uninspiring........ The streets of central London are always a joy to walk around with so many styles of buildings on display....... Next stop a very brief visit to the British Museum..... The display on Alexander The Great and the Assyrian civilisations was monumental...... and Greek and Roman statuary is always eye-stopping...... We thought we better see the Parthenon Friezes again before they disappear back to Greece! After an amazing display of late Roman silver...... We moved along to Medieval Europe....here the Lewis Chessmen of course...... The Sutton Hoo helmet....... and from the same burial more astonishing craftsmanship on this buckle...... The largest cache of gold coins ever discovered in Britain is the Fishpool Hoard (over 1200 coins). Costly medieval jugs.... On our way out we admired the platform shoes of this Roman. The statue was bought by Charles Towneley of Burnley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Keith & Frances SmithArchives
August 2023
Categories |