The famous travel writer Pico Iyer called England, “that funny little country” – I would add, “which is so fascinating” to it. This funny little country, which is so fascinating, has a charming capital… and that is London!
London Eye
The next day we started early to explore London. We got down at Westminster, where you have both the Houses of Parliament and the BigBen, which is under restoration now. We went along the imposing statue of Queen Boudicca, the Queen of East London who committed suicide with her two daughters when defeated by the Romans.The queues at the London Eye were long, but we had fast track tickets. Once we entered our capsule, it was a great feeling to be lifted into the air slowly, almost imperceptibly. From up above, London looked even more majestic. We could see and identify almost all the iconic buildings that glittered in the golden sun. Marguerite said that “Cupid Capsule” has a licence for weddings where many get married. In other capsules, you can celebrate birthdays, conferences with champagne, canopies etc.
Thames River Cruise
It was a smooth walk into the cruise boat from the gigantic Ferris wheel. We sat on the deck in the warm sun to enjoy beautiful vistas of the city. But soon it started to drizzle so we had to retreat into the closed part of the boat. Through the blurred glass window, as the raindrops formed tears, I saw the Somerset House where Dickens’s father John worked as a clerk for the Navy Pay Office; ‘The Anchor Pub’ where Dickens sat and drank and got inspired (you can see that my ‘Dickens Walk’ was spilling over to the next day!); Cleopatra’s needle; St Paul’s Cathedral where the fairy-tale wedding of Diana and Prince Charles took place; Tower of London – where King Henry VIII had two of his queens beheaded (Anne Boleyn & Catherine Howard); Shakespeare’s Globe and many more iconic structures.
Victoria & Albert Museum
Fondly called V&A, this is where a large collection of rare Indian artefacts is housed. Marguerite stated coolly that all those treasures were looted from the Indian subcontinent during the British rule. According to Shashi Tharoor, there’s a pretty long list if one has the time to explore, but even in my limited time, I spotted quite many. Though I felt sad that we were stripped of our great wealth, later I consoled myself that millions of people get to see and appreciate our art and our past glory - after all, no one can deny that they belonged to us: the artisans who have crafted them, they were all Indians. I saw some amazing sculptures by Rodin.
Shakespeare’s Globe
During my previous visit to England, I was at “Stratford upon Avon” and had some emotional moments going around Shakespeare’s house. I spent six hours at “Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre” attending a guided tour, going around the museum, and later watching his play.First, about the tour - a young and lively Emma Woodhouse guided us with expertise and elegance, throwing light on the history of the Globe.
Globe was built in 1599 (owned by actors), where Shakespeare’s plays were mostly first produced, including his four great tragedies. In fact, he designed most of his plays keeping the Globe in mind. Its circular shape reflected the gatherings of crowds in a circle around the actors in town marketplaces; the concept of a scaffold with three levels of galleries surrounding a circular yard was copied from a similar arrangement for audiences of existing bearbaiting and bullbaiting houses; the stage, a platform mounted in the yard, was the kind of thing that travelling companies set up in inn yards. Seating in the form of degrees (wooden benches raked upward to the rear), along with the roofing over the topmost gallery, provided all the comfort short of a cushion that Elizabethans expected.
A few rooms were reserved for the most privileged on the stage balcony itself. The yard around the stage accommodated more than thousand people who hailed from the lower strata of society and paid a penny to stand and watch a performance. Called the “Penny stinkers”, the standing crowd drank orange juice (orange smell conceals the stench of urine and other unpleasant fluids, as these people hardly bathed regularly) and threw the peel on the actors who were performing badly. There was no amplification at that time, so all the dialogues were repeated thrice, on all sides.
In 1613, the theatre burned to the ground, its thatch accidentally set alight by a cannon during a performance of “Henry VIII”. The Globe was pulled down in 1644, two years after the Puritans closed all theatres, to make way for tenement dwellings. In 1970 the American actor Sam Wanamaker reconstructed a replica of the Globe, retaining the old shape but a few compromises were made to satisfy the constraints of fire-safety regulations. The innovations were mainly in the fresh painting and decoration of the stage area.
As Emma spoke in soft tones, we listened to our audio systems and watched that evening’s play being rehearsed on the stage. The actorsfenced and fought, quarrelled and loved, danced and died, most of them wearing jeans, tights and windcheaters – still, it was fun watching them.
That evening when I sat in their candlelit indoor theatre, watching “All’s Well that Ends Well”, I felt I was in a sanctified space – I could feel the Bard’s scholarly presence.
(The author is a documentary filmmaker and travel writer; she blogs at
vijayaprataptravelandbeyond.com)