London is a city of contrasts, where famous sights and almost palatial homes can rub shoulders with the worn and neglected. Just as its people are diverse and eclectic, so too are its buildings.
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The year that has just past will remain long in all our memories, no doubt, and not for the best of reasons. A year ago the new coronavirus was just seeping into our consciousnesses and we had no idea how it would turn our lives upside down. We certainly know that now!
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Angels typically fly or float in the air, but not this one. The Angel of the North is firmly rooted in the ground, in recognition of the miners who once toiled beneath this spot. Whether you arrive in Newcastle or Gateshead by road or by rail, you'll be greeted as you approach the city by this amazing figure of an angel with outstretched arms, who appears to be watching over travellers.
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Imagine this. You were born by the shores of the Mediterranean. Your childhood summers were hot and your winters temperate. But now you are grown, and you are a soldier, posted to the furthest reaches of the Empire where icy winds blow down from the north and snow falls in the winter months.
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Brightly coloured beach huts are a quintessential part of the British seaside. Along with ice cream, sandcastles, fish and chips and the unpredictable weather they evoke childhood memories for many of us of summer by the sea.
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I have lived in Ealing for 39 years, and in our present home in South Ealing for 34 years, but I never knew until very recently that Margot Fonteyn lived near here, or that Agatha Christie’s parents are buried in our local cemetery. I didn’t know that Spencer Walpole, who was Home Secretary under three different Tory governments in the mid-19th century, is also buried there.
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For those who like a coastline to be photogenic rather than picturesque, and who are more interested in exploring than lying on a beach, Dungeness is close to perfect. But don’t come here expecting to swim, to eat ice cream and to make sandcastles. Dungeness is for fishermen, walkers, photographers and lovers of the wild and windswept. Oh, and it just happens to be Britain’s only desert.
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When the architect Sir John Soane built his weekend retreat, Pitzhanger Manor, in what was then rural Ealing, his aim was to design a showcase for his own idiosyncratic architectural style with its stripped classical detail, radical colour schemes and inventive use of space and light. Here he would entertain some of the most influential people of the day.
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'Here terrible portents came about over the land of Northumbria, and miserably frightened the people: there were flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air.'
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‘Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese...’ Wallace in ‘A Grand Day Out’
