London, part 1

     We spent four days in London this past weekend, taking a bus there on Friday morning and back Monday night. We saw probably 8 of the 10 consensus must-see places. London is a great, varied, lively city, full of commerce, tourism, history, and chock full of high and pop culture, often on the same block. We were surprised by the number of tourists, mostly Europeans and Brits, here now at the end of January. The stretch from the Palace of Westminster (the houses of Parliament and Big Ben) to the London Eye across the Waterloo bridge was packed every time we ended up in that area. The picture below is a little deceiving with the mostly empty sidewalk on the Waterloo bridge—we were all on the other side of the street, with many taking this same picture.

 

     In that part of town is also the single greatest spot for us in London:  Westminster Abbey

            

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/

 No other place can capture so much history of Britain—its kings and queens, poets and writers, explorers and scientists, musicians and artists, and so on. What a treasure. In one corner is the grave of Elizabeth I, buried with Mary, her sister and rival, in another is a statue of Shakespeare, looking every bit the greatest man of letters—I'm showing my interest in the late Tudor era, but one could fine similar examples throughout the centuries in various corners and chapels. We took the audio tour, with Jeremy Irons speaking ever so elegantly about Britain’s regal heritage. It took almost two hours and one sign of just how rich the place is that great monuments for people like Isaac Newton or Captain Cook aren’t even mentioned. And it’s not all just statues and plaques. The building is magnificent inside and out, though you can’t take pictures of the inside.

     Down the street is the Churchill museum and the government WWII underground offices; this might have been the most surprising experience for us. We hadn’t really expected much, but found it hugely informative and entertaining—Churchill’s famed appetite for good food, alcohol, and cigars, for example--and quite moving.  These people worked long hours for long years in tight quarters with the understanding that a direct bomb hit would bury them. We are looking forward to seeing Churchill’s boyhood home, Blenheim Palace, which is near here and opens back up in March.

 

     Just a little farther down the street were the Horseguards across from St. James Park.  We didn’t stay for the actual changing of the guard but did see them parade past after finishing their tour. It was a sign of the power of British traditions that downtown traffic was stopped for probably ten minutes while this group of horses and riders left the scene.

     Buckingham Palace is at the other end of the Park. We didn’t stay for that change of guards either. The crowd was substantial, and one must arrive long before to get a clear line of sight. We were told that on a good summer’s day, there can be 15,000 people waiting to see the spectacle. No offense intended, but we’ll spend our time elsewhere; once again so much to see and do.

     The juxtaposition of old and new that we saw some in Bath and a little (very little) in Oxford, is seemingly everywhere in London. From the London Eye, the skyline is full of cranes as well as historic spires and new skyscrapers. The bulk (yes) of the big new buildings are on the south side of the Thames or east toward where the recent Olympics were held, but also in the “City” near St Paul’s and the Tower of London. Locals have given the most prominent structures nicknames like Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Prawn, Walkie-Talkie, and Shard (of glass, which became the official name of that building). Almost every view from inside the Tower of London has a impressive building of glass in the background.

     Despite the soaring structures in the neighborhood, the Tower of London remains an impressive place. We were too late for last year’s red poppy installation honoring the dead of The Great War; what a sight it must have been.

 

     Even today, the moat and the outside walls are impressive, and one can quickly imagine an earlier time when this was an impregnable fortress. Inside, we joined a tour by a Yeoman Warder (no longer, and never should have been, called a Beefeater according to our guide Steve).  Informative and entertaining, but much of the attention was on beheadings, with Anne Boleyn, inevitably it seems, taking center stage. We also learned Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer to Hitler, was also a prisoner here in 1941. It was a cold Sunday morning and since we are likely to be back with friends and family, we didn’t tour everything, but we did see the crown jewels. So many precious gems and gold that it is almost numbing, but only almost. We didn’t see a number of rooms or places that we remember from past tours—the princes’ rooms, Elizabeth’s rooms, and so on. Maybe next time, but we felt that maybe the Tower has had to adapt to the crowds the place now attracts.

     London isn’t all historic buildings and skyscrapers.  We spent some time on Saturday at the Portobello Market along with many other visitors.  We just got a few blocks and shops in before we had to turn back for other events. This is a place that is going to take some time. We knew we were on foreign soil when jerseys for sale were not LeBron or Brady but Rooney and Ronaldo.

  

 

     And on Sunday we experienced Brick Lane markets, along with a mob of young Londoners. Vintage galore and vinyl records everywhere (suddenly those boxes in our basement don’t seem quite such a waste of space). We went up and back past all the food stalls trying to decide what to choose. Others in the crowd seemed to be able to stop at each one. But the best image was the line out the door of Cereal Killer Café, which is run by identical twins from Belfast and offers over 100 cereals—line up for your chance to eat cereal!?

     The museums, and galleries, and theatres will have to wait for another entry. This one is getting a little out of hand. But as a nod to the richness of the visual culture all around us, I’ll leave you with one last picture, on the side of a building, taken while on our Jack the Ripper walk: 

Bath

     It’s been a week of travel and it's time to catch up a little--a short blog now and a longer one later about our four days in London over the weekend. On Wednesday the 21^st, we rented a car and drove to Bath, detouring through some southern Cotswold towns on the way. For those waiting to hear of my driving skills:  It all went ok, but it’s not something I’m going to brag about and it’s not something I plan to do on a weekly basis. Left side of the road, ok; stick shift, fine; Oxford’s narrow street full of bikes at night, not good. But everyone is still alive. If we can take trains and buses, that’s a better way of travel—for all concerned.

     It was a rainy day in Bath, so we didn’t walk as much as we expected. The Jane Austen self-tour, for example, will wait for another time. Bath is very much a tourist town, primarily centered around the ancient Roman baths. But it is also a bustling town of daily local commerce. Between the ancient and modern, however, there is lots of evidence throughout the town of the late 18^th and early 19^th century, when I think Bath may have had its greatest days, Georgian architecture and the Regency period. The place is full of big beautiful town homes, most notably the Royal Crescent, built just about the time some American colonists were getting restless and wanting more independence.

     For me, there is an interesting contrast between these places and the buildings of Boston, Philadelphia or even Williamsburg (I know the latter are reproductions) from the period.  England was the world power—the British Empire—and it shows in this arch of grand houses high on a hill with a great green space before them. Sure, I’m projecting, but there is an imperial confidence in this scene, even if the king was starting to show signs of madness about 100 miles to the east and now most of these houses are carved up into flats.

We’ll be back.

Oxford bearings

     We have been in Oxford for ten day, and I suppose it is time to record some first impressions, partly to compare them with one or three months from now.  We have seen a lot, walking 3-4 miles each day, but there is much more to see. We have not ventured much beyond the city center. It is hard to sum up our experiences or find a defining image—and the best images are already well distributed; see Wikipedia for a start at pictures and information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford

The Oxford Castle is just down the block and the former Lion Brewery—founded in 1743!-- is even closer (unfortunately it closed in 1998). The street is now residential, with converted warehouses and industries, like The Old Bakery next door. At the end of the street flows one of the branches of the river Thames and we cross over the “Quaking Bridge” when heading toward city centre.

former Lion Brewery

Thames River

     The part of the city centre closest to us (Bonn Square, Westgate Centre, western end of High Street, Cornmarket) is commercial. Lots of clothing stores, some coffee shops, and banks on the corners.   We took a tour with some of the students, and while on Cornmarket, the guide advised that “if you are ever homesick, look around and you’ll feel like your home.” In our view as we looked around were McDs, KFC, Burger King (now a Canadian company), the Gap, and Starbucks. No photo needed.

     A little farther down High Street, about a half mile from us begins a row of colleges: Lincoln, Oriel, Queens, University (the first college, thus called University, and Bill Clinton’s college), and Magdalen (pronounced maudlin), which is one of the premier schools in all sorts of ways at Oxford. We have learned that one of the great rituals of the year at Oxford is when the boys and men Magdalen choir sings from the rooftop of the college tower at 6 am and the street is filled with festivities—and the nearby bridge filled with drunk undergrads trying to jump into the river Cherwell. We hear the police valiantly try to stop them, since the 15-foot fall ends in about 2 feet of water.

Magdalen College

     We went to the Magdalen Chapel Sunday night to hear the choir in evensong. It was an impressive experience: A dozen young boys and college students on each side of the aisle across from each other in this dark, Gothic chapel lit by candles and filled with organ music. Wine was served afterward, but—uncharacteristically—we passed it up and headed home.

     The north/south axis for Oxford is St Aldate’s, where Christ Church is located and the aforementioned Cornmarket St. Cornmarket is a pedestrian street for a block—all the better to shop in—then turns into St Giles. The Carfax Tower is at the crossroads of High and Cornmarket/St Aldate’s. Whew, not sure anyone is going to follow that paragraph but that intersection is the central crossroad and a key landmark.

Carfax Tower, center of Oxford

     The other important crossroad, and the more significant one for academics, is in the northwest quadrant of the city centre, about ¾ mile from our flat. Of course, while there are two roads crossing, there are 4 named streets, each changing names at the intersection. Where Broad/Holywell intersects with Park/Cattes, the Bodelian Library sits. One of the great libraries of the world, the Bodelian is a complex of building with lots of floors underground, plus a huge warehouse twenty miles south, where they can retrieve a book you order in the morning by that afternoon. Nearby are Blackwell’s bookstore (another academic shrine); the Radcliff Camera, the principal reading rooms of the Bodelian and possibly the most photographed building in Oxford; the Sheldonian Theatre; and another four college libraries within a stone’s throw of the Bodelian. So many books—the library recives about 1000 items every week--so little time.  We received our Bodelian library cards in a bit of a ritual, where a member of the Admissions Office (to the Bodelian) in her academic robes lectured on the history and centrality of the library, then awarded us our cards after proper identification. We also had to sign a pledge we would “kindle” no fire in the library. Kindle is not the reading device, but rather a dangerous habit some scholars had of trying to stay warm before central heating. Thus the pledge.

Radcliffe Camera is the domed building, more Bodelian library behind it

 

     The people we have met have been unfailingly friendly when asked a question or for help.  Couple quick examples: The woman in the grocery was amazed that I couldn’t buy a bottle of liquor on a Sunday in the US, chalking it up to another instance of a very strange country but with good people. Kate had to try make sense of my directions when I wrote St George rather George St, and a handful of people went out of their way to solve the problem (my map had gotten her to George St, where she was headed) as the strangers explained St George was a long ways away.

     We are feeling comfortable. Plan to get behind the wheel this week and drive on the wrong side of the road (which side is that?). Stay tuned.

picture of the Bodelian is from http://prato12.blog.sbc.edu/files/2011/07/bodleian-library-large.jpg

food

     The course I am teaching is about globalization, from cultural, economic, historical, and political perspectives, with food in Britain and the U.S. as the example. While I have learned a fair amount from books about British foodways, especially in the historical context of the American Colonies and the Raj in India, I’m enjoying exploring the contemporary food scene as part of my thinking about this course. I don’t consider myself a foodie, but the course is a good excuse to head off to markets and restaurants and pubs.  So, this topic is likely to have multiple installments. Stay tuned.

     Like the U.S., Britain--and it seems very apparent in Oxford—is undergoing a significant locovore (eat local food) movement. Our first meal In England was at the Jam Factory, a lovely restaurant and art gallery around the corner, which featured a special on pheasant—shot locally that morning. We had just arrived, feeling a bit worn out, so we settled for something less. But it was a great introduction to the food scene.

     Over the past week, we have been having lunch in pubs and sampling what might be considered traditional English fare:

Fish and chips with mushy peas at St Aldate’s Tavern. Fine pub on a busy street, but not remarkable.  Fish and chips may be quintessentially English (at least in the past century) and it is offered at each pub we've visited so far, but the fish-n-chip shop and as a street food it seems to have pretty much disappeared--I'll admit that's a assertion that really needs further review.

    Bangers and mash (with sweet potatoes chips on top) and a turkey casserole at Turf Tavern. Food was very good. The gravy for the sausage and potatoes was from stout and mustard—yum--going to have to try to duplicate that at some point.

The Turf Tavern (yes, that's grass on the roof) is a fun place that claims to be the oldest pub in Oxford, and it feel like it could be. A bunch of small rooms and low ceilings. It was a mix of locals and tourists. Good cask ales and a couple of ciders on tap. They also had Goose Island IPA—this is the second American craft brewery offering we have come across. We also saw a sign in front of a pub for Devil’s Backbone, which is a brewery by Wintergreen Resort in Virginia (we didn’t go in—not traveling across the Atlantic to drink our local brew).


     A Sunday beef roast with sausage and mashed potatoes in the background, at Eagle and Child: 

This is the place where the Inkings—C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein and other Oxford writers hung out. Lots of small rooms, with plenty of charm and pictures of the literary lions all over. The beef roast was a disappointment, but after seeing signs at almost every pub and restaurant that morning for Sunday roasts, I felt it was a must for my exploring British food traditions. Again, the sauce with the sausages was excellent; may be that one can’t go wrong with bangers and mash. We will continue to test that. 

       Steak and mushroom pie and brie and cranberry sandwich:

     Today we got out of the rain and warmed by a fire at Kings Arms. A great pub, with a mix of large open spaces and small rooms. We sat on a couch by the fireplace (the fire glows in the background in the picture).  After the tough beef roast and the tough steak pie, I may have had my fill of cow in Britain. Kate loved her sandwich however. Youngs on tap; only ok bitter (roughly a pale ale in the US) and special (vaguely similar to Amber Ale).

     There are ethnic restaurants all around but so far we have been at the pubs or eating at home, and we haven’t really ventured out of the city centre yet where more ethnic restaurants await.  We haven’t even had Chicken Tikka Masala, now the most common dish in Britain—and a British, not Indian, invention. More on that at some other time after we’ve had some here.

     There is a farmers’ market the first Thursday of the month. We missed the January one, but look forward to February. There is also a weekly Wednesday market, but it is more flea than farmers' market.  We plan to get to the Cotswolds the first Saturday of February for a local food festival. And there are a number of “real food” markets in London that we will need to explore before the class begins.  So much to do.

Christ Church (and) College

     On Friday, January 9, we walked through much of central Oxford. The highlight was a tour of Christ Church College and Cathedral, one of the—maybe the—most famous, prestigious, and wealthiest of colleges of Oxford. It is the school of British Prime Ministers (thirteen of them) and the location for stories and movies from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter as well as the inspiration for many verses. Christ Church has about 550 undergrad and grad students, large by Oxford standards. It has wonderful buildings (the Tom Tower, below, designed by Christopher Wren, is one of Oxford’s landmarks); they are surrounded by beautiful gardens, lush sporting grounds (from croquet to soccer/football) and an expansive meadow notable for its herd of cows.

 

 

     It also has a rich history. It was created in 1525 by Cardinal Wolsey as Cardinal College. However, Wolsey fell out of favor a few years later with King Henry VIII, when he couldn’t get Henry’s first marriage annulled (tangent: you can always remember the fate of Henry VIII’s wives with the rhyme, “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived). Henry took over the College and called it (you guessed it) Henry VIII College. A few years later, he renamed it Christ Church as part of his creation of the Church of England.

     From the start, the College and Cathedral were created and developed by funds garnered by the English reformation and the dissolution of Catholic monasteries. About 100 years after Henry VIII, the royal and religious disputes continued to shape Christ Church  when it became the home of Charles I during the English Civil War—Charles lost his head over his war with Parliament.  Speaking of lost heads, one of the acts of Henry VIII as head of his new church (sorry, I know I’m jumping back a century) was to deface or cut off the heads of all images of Catholic saints—he was purifying a church that had become idolatrous. Even the images of the children of a saint honored in the Cathedral lost their heads:

Even a beautiful stained glass window portraying the murder of Thomas Beckett wasn't spared--the head was replaced with a plain piece of glass (one could argue that at least the window was spared). 

     The Cathedral is central to the College, though students no longer have mandatory attendance. I don’t think I’d ever known that the dean of the College must be from the clergy. Is Christ Church a religious college—in a way that even Notre Dame U or Brigham Young U aren’t? In a week that has been dominated by news of murder and mayhem in Paris caused in the name of religion, there was a certain disquieting feeling when listening to the violent history of the Cathedral at the center of the College.  

 

     We didn’t get to see the Great Hall, which has been the inspiration for a number of other college great halls, including Hogwarts. So maybe my experience would have been different if that secular (if maybe magical) site had been included. The Great Hall is closed until March—maybe I’ll update this post then. We didn’t even get to climb the great stairs where students are greeted by the Dean—or at least that’s how it goes in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (ok, this part of the blog entry is for my grandchildren). This is what we saw of the stairs:

 

     After the tour, we went to a lovely nearby café for scones, clotted cream, coffee, and tea. We are getting acclimated.

institutions

Today we toured the Oxford Castle and peered inside the gates of All Souls College (it was closed today to visitors, but is open some other days). It wasn’t an intentional juxtaposition, but thinking about it afterward, we couldn’t have created a greater historical contrast.

Oxford Castle dates back to 1071 and the Norman invasion of Saxon England. They built an impressive fortress, but after the English Civil War of the 1640s, it became a prison and remained one until less than 20 years ago. It is as a prison that it is most famous. It was a barbarous place for almost three hundred years, with murderous conditions and treatment. I’m not going to recount either here, but the tour guides take a certain pleasure (an understandable defense) in describing these. It's a good tour: I learned some things and got the answer right to the one quiz question we were asked, but the history is really grim.

On the other side of downtown Oxford stands All Souls College, a monument to learning and to privilege. It is a gorgeous place, and while the treatment of students in the centuries past may also have been outrageous from our modern perspective (undergraduates were the servants of the "fellows"--professors and graduate students) , it wasn’t Oxford Prison by any standard. It has been a site of learning  since 1438.  It now admits a few gifted graduate students from around the world and has a very fine faculty. Hardly all souls--some souls are said to be over haunting the Castle.

 

That the prison is now an upscale hotel and the college is still a college may be a sign of human progress. I believe it is (though the commercialism of turning a prison into a hotel could be another entry). Let us aspire to the lofty spires rather than dark dungeons and battlements.