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London Days
Non-residential events to inform and inspire • These London Days explore the art, architecture and history of the most varied and exciting city in the world. • They are led by carefully chosen experts who provide informative and enlightening commentary. • Meticulously planned with special arrangements and privileged access being significant features. • Radio guides enable lecturers to talk in a normal conversational mode while participants can hear without difficulty. • All are accompanied by an administrator to ensure arrangements run smoothly. • These are active days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus. • See the final page of this booklet for booking details. Trial trip on the Underground Railway in 1863, wood engraving c. 1880.
London’s Underground Railway A History and appreciation of the Tube Thursday 12th March 2015 (lb 263) Thursday 30th April 2015 (lb 304) Lecturer: Andrew Martin Shanghai has more track, Paris and New York have more stations, but London has by a clear margin the oldest urban underground railway in the world: 2013 was its 150th anniversary. It is also by far the most complicated, having started messily as several independent and often competing enterprises; contrary to sensible practice, strategic planning by unitary municipal government came towards the end of the process, not in advance. Modern London was shaped by the Tube rather than vice versa. Motivation and management has been various: commercial and philanthropic, entrepreneurial and Keynesian, expansionist and defeatist. The first ‘cut and cover’ lines, in trenches under existing roads, were vigorously promoted by a socialistic solicitor. The ‘deep level’ tube lines were pushed Book
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through by a maverick American, while the suburban extensions between the wars fulfilled the utopian ideals of a dour Yorkshireman who came bitterly to regret the urban sprawl they spawned. Now, after decades of relative neglect, investment and improvement are on an unprecedented scale. The day is led by Andrew Martin, journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: a Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012). During the 1990s he was ‘Tube
“It was a most stimulating and well organised day – a real treat.” Participant on a London Day in 2014
Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. He stresses that his approach will not be drily academic or technical but anecdotal and affectionate, highlighting the human stories, the architecture and design, the overlooked detail and the downright odd. Among the places and themes examined are the first ever stations, still in use and little
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changed; the even earlier Brunel tunnel under the Thames, mother of all modern tunnels, opened 1841; the subtle beauties of Leslie Green’s tiled stations of the early 20th century and the revered modernist architecture of the 1930s; and the architectural bravura of the 1990s Jubilee Line Extension. The day is not all spent below ground, and by special arrangement there is a visit to London Transport’s historic headquarters at 55 Broadway. Start: 9.00am at Baker Street Station. Finish: c. 5.00pm at Southwark (a short walk from Waterloo). Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy trains and a considerable time on foot; standing or walking. There are a lot of station steps as well as a flight of 100 which are steep and narrow within 55 Broadway. Price: £195 (Freedom Pass holders will be refunded £9). This includes all Tube travel, lunch and refreshments. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
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Examples of Arabic design, from ‘The Grammar of Ornament’ by Owen Jones, 1865.
Islamic Art in London
Sculpture in London
The Poetic Landscape
The V&A and the British Museum
Art in streets, squares & parks
From Claude to Turner
Tuesday 20th January 2015 (lb 210) Lecturer: Professor James Allan
Thursday 21st May 2015 (lb 337) Wednesday 19th August 2015 (lb 418) Lecturer: David Mitchinson
Thursday 16th April 2015 (lb 351) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon
Two of Britain’s greatest museums provide a London treasure-house of Islamic works of art. The first is the V&A. One of its original aims, in 1852, was to inspire British designers and manufacturers. And its Islamic collections did just that, one of its most notable recipients being William de Morgan (1839–1917), the great lustre ceramicist. Today, the Islamic gallery, focused on the famous Ardabil carpet, houses an awesome assemblage of Islamic works of art, including ceramics, tilework, metalwork, woodwork, glass, rock crystal, textiles and carpets. It also has a valuable educational group of cases which display the four elements so common in Islamic art – calligraphy, geometry, the arabesque (‘inspired by plants’), and figural art (‘images and poetry’). The day will start with these to form an initial understanding of Islamic art and what aesthetic or religious principles have helped to fashion it. Moving through the gallery, art and design are put into their Islamic cultural context, while enjoying the different designs displayed, particularly on carpets and textiles, as well as learning about individual pieces. The British Museum’s Addis Gallery offers the visitor an incredibly rich collection of Islamic ceramics and metalwork, as well as some works of art on paper. The development of Islamic art in the different media is traced and the techniques explored which enabled them to evolve and develop, and to have such an impact on Italian Renaissance ceramics and design. Start: The Victoria & Albert Museum, 10.15am. Finish: The British Museum, c. 4.30pm. Price: £185. This includes lunch and refreshments and one journey by Underground. Group size: maximum 12 participants. Book
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Thousands of tons of bronze and stone adorn London’s streets and open spaces in the form of memorials and works of art. Many aspire to be both, with varying degrees of success. Only a small minority are sculptural masterpieces. Artistic worth determines the selection for this day, and months of diligent sifting has resulted in twenty-five or so major works scattered across central London, from Hyde Park corner in the West End to Bishopsgate in the City. The day is led by David Mitchinson, writer, lecturer and former director of the Henry Moore Foundation. The focus is the twentieth century, with a little spillage into adjacent decades at both ends. Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, Elizabeth Frink, Charles Sargeant Jagger and Fernando Botero are among the sculptors whose works are studied. Many Londoners and visitors will have seen at least some of them; not many, we venture to suggest, have really looked at them long and hard and felt their power and their beauty. Most are on display in public places but one, a Reclining Woman by Henry Moore, is accessible only by special arrangement. Travel is by Underground and taxi. Participants need to be able to cope with quite a lot of time on foot, standing or walking. Lunch in a good restaurant and morning and afternoon refreshments are included. Start: 9.00am, The Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner. Finish: c. 5.15pm at Oxford Circus. Price: £170. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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J.M.W. Turner, on seeing a landscape by Claude Lorrain, burst into tears and exclaimed ‘I shall never be able to paint anything like that’. This day explores how the greatest of British Romantic landscape painters, Constable and Turner, strove to outdo the poetic visions, and magical effects of light, of 17th-century landscapists, among them Claude and Poussin. The National Gallery in London has the finest collection of 17th-century landscape in the world, while Tate Britain displays the largest collection of Turner. The day opens with the former, where we shall explore Claude’s creation of an intensely imagined poetical world, rich in effects of sunlight and melting distances, and touching in his response to classical myth. Here, too, are Poussin’s graver, sublime landscapes, and works by ‘savage’ Rosa which evoke fear and horror. After time in the galleries of British landscape painting, among them Turners and Constables, the afternoon is spent at Tate Britain to appreciate afresh the creative impact of these Old Masters on Constable’s naturalistic scenes, and on Turner’s evocations of a mythical, Arcadian Italy, and of the overwhelming forces of nature, of storm, mist and deluge. Turner, in his will, directed that two of his works should be hung side by side with two by Claude. His wish has been honoured, and perhaps, at the end of the day, we shall each be able to form a view on whether his initial tears of despair were justified. Start: National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing 10.15am. Finish: Tate Britain c. 5.15pm. Price: £190. This includes lunch at the National Restaurant, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments and one taxi journey. Group size: maximum 12 participants. Te l e p h o n e
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The Genius of Titian National Gallery & Wallace Collection Thursday 26th February 2015 (lb 249) Thursday 12th November 2015 (lc 528) Lecturer: Sheila Hale Titian’s genius was recognised early in his career, and by the time of his death in his eighties (1576) the esteem in which he was held probably exceeded that attaching to any other living artist in previous history. Moreover, his star has never waned since, contrary to the usual pattern which sees even ‘great’ artists cast into the shadows for a while by the capricious wheel of taste. Such was his prestige that in his maturity rarely did even the grandest of Venetian nobility manage to commission a picture from him, even though Venice was his only long-term place of residence as an adult. Only the greatest elsewhere in Italy were so honoured – the Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino, and the Pope – and, beyond the peninsula, the most powerful rulers in Europe, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II of Spain. It follows that subsequently paintings by Titian were to be found only in the most illustrious princely collections or, when the balance of financial power shifted towards the mercantile and manufacturing nations, in the national galleries only of the most prosperous powers. Even leaving aside the 3 or 4 which are disputed, London’s National Gallery has 15 unquestioned Titians, a total exceeded only by the Prado in Madrid and the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. There is one other on public display in London, Perseus & Andromeda in the Wallace Collection (10–15 minutes away by taxi). Sheila Hale is author of the magisterial and much acclaimed Titian: His Life (2012), the first biographical study of the artist published since 1877. She brings to the day a lifetime’s study of Venice and of the Renaissance. Start: The National Gallery, 10.15am. Finish: Wallace Collection, c. 5.00pm (nearest underground stations Bond Street or Marble Arch). Price: £185. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch and a taxi journey. Group size: maximum 12 participants.
The Italian Renaissance In the National Gallery Tuesday 28th April 2015 (lb 273) Tuesday 10th November 2015 (lc 527) Lecturer: Antonia Whitley London’s National Gallery possesses the finest collection of Italian Renaissance paintings outside Italy. Unlike most other national collections in Europe, it was formed (over nearly 200 years) by connoisseurs and art historians rather than princes and nobles whose less discerning eyes allowed the admission of a proportion of second- and third-raters. There’s Book
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The National Gallery, steel engraving c. 1840. no dross on show in Trafalgar Square. Antonia Whitley has led numerous tours for Martin Randall Travel, all predominantly with Renaissance subject matter. There are four sessions in the galleries of about an hour each. While most paintings commissioned then were of a religious nature, the call for portraits and mythologies speak of the burgeoning humanistic interests of patrons. Meaning, context, scale and innovation and what it was that marked out images by the great masters in this period will all be considered. Between the sessions there are leisurely adjournments to the calm and quiet of The National Gallery Dining Rooms, the excellent restaurant. With no more than twelve in the group, radio guides to eliminate problems of audibility, and the presence of an MRT staffer to oversee the arrangements, this should be a highly agreeable and efficacious way to enhance your knowledge and appreciation of Renaissance painting. Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: 5.15pm. Price: £180. This includes lunch at the National Restaurant and mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 12 participants.
“The lecturer developed what I already knew and opened new perspectives; very refreshing and stimulating.” “A very interesting and worthwhile day.” Participants on ‘The Italian Renaissance’ in 2014.
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Memorials of the Great War
Wednesday 29th April 2015 (lb 305) Tuesday 12th May 2015 (lb 324) Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Because they are ubiquitous, memorials of the First World War are seldom noticed. This itinerary takes in some of the most affecting and poignant examples in central London. Themes of heroism, endurance, bravery and sacrifice are much in evidence while suggestions of victory, triumph and aggression are mute. Collectively they constitute a threnody for the loss of a generation and of the termination of a Golden Age. Bronze, stone and stained glass; individual and group memorials; the selection reflects a wide variety of mood, design, style and genre. All were unveiled in the 1920s, the greatest period of memorial construction. There was no government funding for any of them, being paid for by private and public subscription. Beginning in Embankment Gardens, the itinerary winds through the City before returning to the West End and the National Portrait Gallery (lunch is here). Hyde Park Corner, Hyde Park, Marylebone and Platform One at Paddington Station continue the rollercoaster of artistic and emotional expression. The leader, Antonia Whitley, is best known as an art historian of the Renaissance, but in recent years she has taught an MA course in the war studies department of King’s College London and has developed a speciality in art and memorials associated with WW1. Start: 9.30am, Embankment Underground Station. Finish: c. 5.10pm, Paddington Station. Price: £195. This includes refreshments and lunch and transport by private coach. Fitness: travel is by private coach, but there is quite a lot of walking. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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Seven Churches & a Synagogue Some of London’s finest historic buildings Thursday 26th March 2015 (lb 301) Thursday 17th September 2015 (lc 510) Lecturer: Giles Waterfield Tuesday 23rd June 2015 (lb 370) Lecturer: Jon Cannon As the most populous metropolis in the west until well into the twentieth century, and as capital of a nation notorious for its multitudinous shades of churchmanship, it is not surprising that London possesses the largest number of churches and the greatest variety of ecclesiastical architecture to be found in any single city. Subjectivity must play a role in selecting these seven, as do logistics, but it is fair to claim that they are among the best of their kind. This is an extraordinarily fascinating day, enriching aesthetically, historically and spiritually. There are two mediaeval buildings, the imposing Romanesque remnant of the abbey church of St Bartholomew the Great and the glorious Gothic of the Knights Templars’
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church. Wren’s ingenious domed church of St Stephen Walbrook, the faultless St Mary-leStrand by Gibbs and the magnificent Anglican Baroque of Christ Church Spitalfields by Hawksmoor are outstanding examples of the classical phase of architecture – as is the Bevis Marks Synagogue of 1699, one of the City’s little-known treasures. Butterfield’s All Saints Margaret Street is a seminal masterpiece of the Gothic Revival, of which the sublimely lovely St Cyprian’s, Clarence Gate, by Sir John Ninian Comper, is one of the last great examples. The speaker concentrates on the essentials, highlighting what is distinctive and significant about the architecture and decoration and pointing out only the most distinguished artworks and furnishings. Time at each building does not allow for detail that is of merely local interest. Thus the day provides immersion in the beauty of greater things. Start: 9.15am, St-Bartholomew-the-Great in the City (tube station: Barbican). Finish: c. 5.45pm, Baker Street Station. Fitness: travel is by private coach, but there is quite a lot of walking. Price: £205. This includes lunch (at Middle Temple Hall, the finest Elizabethan interior in London), refreshments, one admission charge and a donation to each church. Group size: maximum 24 participants.
St Mary-le-Strand, watercolour publ. c. 1920. Above right: Handel, steel engraving c. 1830.
Handel in London Tuesday 14th April 2015 (lb 279) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore The 26-year-old Handel scored a sensation in 1711 with his first London opera, Rinaldo. A year later he settled permanently in the English capital, already the largest city in the world. As a contemporary noted: ‘His return to London was hailed by the musical world as a national acquisition, and every measure was adopted to make his abode pleasant and permanent.’ Indeed it was. Handel immediately became the de facto resident composer of the Haymarket opera company and Queen Anne granted him an annual pension of £200, an arrangement continued by George I. Long before he took British citizenship in 1727 he was being acclaimed as Purcell’s undisputed successor as Britain’s national composer. The day begins at Russell Square with a short walk to Bloomsbury and the remarkable hall of the Foundling Hospital where Handel’s own performances of Messiah raised huge sums for the hospital. As well as being the original setting for Handel’s resplendent Coronation Anthems in 1727 and his funeral music for Queen Caroline, Westminster Abbey is Handel’s place of burial, beneath the magnificent Roubiliac monument. The Handel House Museum in Brook Street, where the composer lived from 1723 to his death, houses inter alia a superb collection of Handel-related paintings. From the composer’s own parish church, St George’s in Hanover Square to Wigmore Hall where the day ends with a concert of a selection of arias, duets and instrumental music from Alcina and Il pastor fido performed by Sophie Bevan, Daniel Taylor and the London Handel Players. The evening performance does not finish until c. 9.30pm. Start: 1.00pm at Russell Square Underground Station. Finish: c. 9.30pm at Wigmore Hall, Marylebone. Price: £220 (Freedom Pass holders will be refunded £9). This includes refreshments, supper, travel by Underground and taxi, special arrangements and topcategory tickets for the evening concert costing £35. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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Arts & Crafts Art, architecture & decoration from Bexleyheath to Chiswick Wednesday 22nd April 2015 (lb 339) Wednesday 13th May 2015 (lb 346) Lecturer: Michael Hall
The Old Cheshire Cheese, watercolour publ. 1924.
The London Backstreet Walk From Hyde Park to The Tower Tuesday 19th May 2015 (lb 329) Thursday 8th October 2015 (lc 505) Lecturer: Giles Waterfield Tuesday 5th May 2015 (lb 328) Wednesday 16th Sept. 2015 (lc 504) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp Tuesday 16th June 2015 (lb 349) Lecturer: Martin Randall This walk is predicated on two beliefs. The first, platitudinous if rarely put to the test, is that the centre of London is not so large that people of ordinary fitness couldn’t walk everywhere. The second would perhaps be greeted in some quarters with scepticism: that one can traverse the capital from Hyde Park Corner to the Tower of London without walking along main roads for more than a couple of hundred yards in total. This is London seen from parks, gardens, alleys, backstreets and pedestrian zones. As the crow flies, it is exactly 3⅓ miles, but as avoiding traffic requires some circuitous deviations the distance walked is 8 or 9 miles. The route – which is far from obvious, as may be understood – is laced with delights and surprises. Many famous buildings are passed or glimpsed, but largely the interest lies in unexpected clusters of pre-20th-century architecture, picturesque vistas and intriguing Book
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“The lecturer was ideal: witty, eloquent, opinionated, and well informed.” Participant on ‘The London Backstreet Walk’ in 2014.
alleys, patches of parkland and well-tended gardens, recent architectural behemoths and mediaeval street patterns. Some special arrangements have been made to enter a few buildings en route. Champagne at the Savoy and lunch in the grandest Elizabethan hall in England (but at the 19th-century Great Hall, Lincoln’s Inn on 8th October) are among the treats. But the main point of the day is to provide the satisfaction of accomplishing a unique and fascinating journey through the heart of the most vibrant, varied and fascinating city in Europe. Start: 9.00am, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Arch. Finish: Tower Hill Station at c. 5.40pm. Price: £190. This includes refreshments and lunch, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
For a long while Art & Crafts was the acceptable face of Victorian art. Sales of William Morris wallpaper boomed while many major Victorian buildings succumbed to the wrecker’s ball. Fortunately, loathing of all things Victorian has now largely evaporated, but creations which fit into the Arts & Crafts category – not so much a style as a basket of ideas and attitudes – still stand out as exceptionally appealing and intriguing. The day provides a splendid survey of this dissident and even subversive phenomenon, with excellent examples in many media. It begins with the 1859 Red House at Bexleyheath – as did the movement – and ends with a 1902 wallpaper factory in Chiswick. (Among the present occupants are Martin Randall Travel, and participants are invited in for a drink.) For its instigators, the movement was as much about politics and economics as a matter of aesthetic preference. They championed craftsmanship and craftsmen and excoriated industrialisation and machine-made artefacts; most added a dollop of Utopian socialism though with varying degrees of commitment. A.W. Pugin was the precursor, Ruskin its prophet and Morris the high priest. Arts & Crafts emancipated the designer to the status of artist, strove to give everyone access to beauty and, despite a persistent and rose-tinted view of the Middle Ages, achieved liberation from historic styles while incorporating exotic influences. Along the way it entwined with Art Nouveau, held hands with the Aesthetic Movement and, according to a view which superficially seems perverse, gave birth to international modernism. Start: 9.00am at Tower Place East, London EC3. Finish: c. 7.00pm at Hammersmith station. Price: £215. This includes transport by coach and Underground, lunch at the V&A, morning, afternoon and evening refreshments, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 15 participants. A William Morris design in ‘Pen Drawings & Pen Draughtsmen’ by Joseph Pennell, 1889.
Fitness: this is a serious hike, so please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time and have the stamina for 9 miles (though there are 4 refreshment breaks). The terrain is fairly flat but there are steps (one flight has 57). Stout shoes are of course advisable – but no trainers please: they are specifically forbidden at the lunch venue.
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Dixon Jones Architects of cultural London Tuesday 21st April 2015 (lb 281) Lecturer: Sir Jeremy Dixon The Royal Opera House, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Kings Place: every reader of this will be familiar with at least one of these, and many of you will know them all. Apart from being among the most illustrious cultural institutions in Britain, they have something else in common, which is that they have been transformed to some degree, or built in their entirety, by the architectural firm Dixon Jones. The partnership was formed by Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones for the Royal Opera House refurbishment in the 1980s. Cultural projects, university buildings and commercial developments in sensitive urban sites form the bulk of their work. Conjuring up additional space within an unalterable footprint, easing circulation and transforming services, inserting uplifting, light-filled structures – Dixon Jones have significantly improved the lives of both artists and audiences in London. Jeremy Dixon himself is our guide for this day, for which some very special arrangements have been made. It begins at a place which is not itself a cultural institution but which runs between several of them, Exhibition Road
King’s Place, London (photo ©Richard Bryant).
in South Kensington, which the partnership transformed in 2012 into one of London’s most enjoyable streets. Also included is Quadrant 3, the redevelopment as offices of the former Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly Circus, the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the Crown Estate.
Great Railway Termini Paddington, King’s Cross & St Pancras Stations Thursday 18th June 2015 (lb 369) Thursday 24th September 2015 (lc 511) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp Two eyebrow-raising assertions: the railways were a Georgian invention, all the ingredients being in place before 1830; and the twenty-first century is witnessing a golden age of rail travel. The first is indisputable fact, if surprising to contemplate; the second is likely to provoke an unprintable retort from many a daily commuter. However, few would quibble with a statement that the greatest achievements of railway architecture and engineering are Victorian. But seeing and appreciating magnificent stations such as those studied today is to a large extent possible because of enlightened intervention in the last ten or twenty years. The adaptation and upgrading of ageing infrastructure to meet modern requirements has been a major achievement, but so has the restoration and cleaning of historic fabric. And the sensitive addition of new structures of the highest quality of design has been a triumph. Largely the creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paddington is well preserved and in some ways the most appealing of London’s termini. King’s Cross has always been admired for the majesty of its unadorned functionality, Book
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Start: 9.30am, South Kensington tube station. Finish: c. 5.45pm, Kings Place (5 minutes from King’s Cross). Travel: one journey by tube, three by taxi, but there is quite a lot of walking. Price: £205. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
but recent removal of twentieth-century clutter enables it to be better appreciated than for a century. And in 2012 the station acquired a magnificent new lattice steel foyer, the widest span in Europe apparently. The 240 ft span of the St Pancras train shed far surpassed any previous structure in the world and its conversion for use as the Eurostar terminus, completed 2007, created one of the most exciting sets of public spaces in Europe. The contiguous Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott is perhaps the best-known of all Victorian buildings. The day is led by a leading authority on 18th–20th-century architecture. Start: 9.30am at Paddington Station. Finish: c. 4.45pm at St Pancras Station. Price: £190. This includes refreshments, lunch, travel by underground and special arrangements. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
“First rate lecturer and highly efficient tour manager. The itinerary was very well chosen.” Participant on ‘Great Railway Termini’ in 2014.
Illustration: St Pancras Station, wood engraving c.1880. Te l e p h o n e
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‘Wren’ in the City
Hawksmoor
Parish churches and St Paul’s
The six London churches
Tuesday 9th June 2015 (lb 357) Tuesday 28th July 2015 (lb 407) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp
Wednesday 20th May 2015(lb 340) Tuesday 21st July 2015 (lb 405) Tuesday 13th October 2015 (lc 502) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp
Before the Great Fire of 1666 there were 107 parish churches in the City of London. Only 22 survived; 23 were not rebuilt; 52 were rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. This is a major achievement, one without parallel. Given that very few churches were built in England after the Henrician Reformation, and that pure Classicism was still a rare accomplishment in these isles, it fell to Wren virtually to invent the post-mediaeval English church. Wren was England’s greatest architect; that was the orthodox verdict for much of the twentieth century. Recently scholars have shown his role as architect of the City churches to have ranged from dominant to nothing at all. Of the six parish churches entered on this walk, only two were definitely designed in their entirety by Wren himself, while two are certainly by others. Nevertheless, his management of the rebuilding project, and his undeniable contribution of ingenuity, inventiveness and beauty, leaves his genius little diminished, and the subject of the City churches even more interesting. Only 23 ‘Wren’ churches survive, and most of those are considerably changed. Intact survival, authenticity and atmosphere determine the selection for this walk. Oh, and Wren did a cathedral. This was also a heroic struggle against parsimony, prejudice and hostility, but nevertheless within forty years there arose one of the world’s great ecclesiastical buildings, and Britain’s finest classical construction. The day incorporates some special arrangements including ascent to the triforium (141 steps) and a view of the Great Model.
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) dropped from public consciousness while Wren and Vanbrugh did not. In so far as he was known before the 20th century he was reviled for just those qualities which lead to passionate attachment to his creations now – boldness, massiveness, Baroque vigour, dissident classicism and sculptural imagination. Yet he is probably an even greater architect than his documented buildings show; it is highly likely that he is the author of some of the finer parts of buildings long attributed to others. He was Wren’s assistant for over twenty years, and also collaborated with Vanbrugh. The Baroque flowering of Wren’s late works should probably be ascribed to Hawksmoor,
Bulletin 9, 2015 while his professionalism and artistry were key to turning the soldier-playwright into a great architect. Taken together, his greatest achievement remains the six London churches built in accordance with the 1711 Act of Parliament. This specified fifty new churches; only twelve were built, not least because Hawksmoor’s extravagant ambition absorbed an undue proportion of the funds. Remarkably, they all survive, though one is a (well-preserved) shell after the Blitz. The journey by coach takes in St George’s Bloomsbury, St Mary Woolnoth, Christ Church Spitalfields, St George-inthe-East Stepney, St Anne’s Limehouse and St Alfege Greenwich. Thomas Archer’s contemporaneous St Paul’s Deptford is also included. Start: 9.20am, Holborn tube station. Finish: c. 5.20pm, Greenwich; the ferry to Tower Hill, Embankment and Westminster (c. 35 minutes) is recommended. Price: £205. This includes travel by coach & ferry, lunch, refreshments and donations to the churches. Group size: maximum 20 participants.
Start: 9.20am, Blackfriars Underground Station. Finish: c. 5.15pm, Bank Station. Walking: c. 2 miles. Price: £195. This includes lunch, refreshments, admission charge and donations. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Right: Christ Church Spitalfields (Hawksmoor), from ‘Some London Churches’, illustrated by G.M. Ellwood, publ. 1911. Book
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Mediaeval Art in London The Principal Museum Collections Thursday 16th July 2015 (lb 538) Lecturer: John McNeill Most traces of mediaeval London have been erased by iconoclasm, bombardment, conflagration and, last but not least, three hundred years of outfitting the city for its role as the world’s leading commercial centre. But that is to reckon without the presence of some of the best museums in the world – and the role of luck in ensuring unexpected survivals. This day is concerned with what is now considered to be art, not with archaeology or architecture, and allows a view of most of the best European artworks which survive from around ad 500 to 1500 (Renaissance items excepted). The recently opened Mediaeval and Renaissance Galleries in the Victoria & Albert Museum provide a brilliant display of a range of artefacts which makes it one of the best mediaeval museums anywhere. All techniques and materials are represented: sculpture in stone and ivory; gold, silver and iron; textiles and tapestries; glass, pottery, enamel, paint. Though smaller, the mediaeval holdings at the British Museum have also benefited from recent re-display. A distinguishing feature here is Byzantine art. Outstanding are the Lewis Chessmen, painted fragments from Westminster Palace and the celestially exquisite Royal Gold Cup. The altarpiece from Westminster Abbey, now in the Abbey Museum, is but a fragment, but what remains justifies claims that it is the finest panel painting surviving from thirteenthcentury Europe. The Courtauld Gallery has a remarkable collection of early Italian painting and Gothic ivory carvings, while the National Gallery has the finest holding of early Italian painting outside Italy.
Ancient Greece In the British Museum Wednesday 9th Sept. 2015 (lc 536) Thursday 3rd December 2015 (lc 537) Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth A product of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment, it is appropriate that the British Museum should be housed in a building modelled on Ancient Greek architecture – indeed, it is the grandest example of the Greek Revival in the country. It is equally appropriate that it houses one of the greatest collections of Greek art and artefacts outside Greece, given that the Classical world was the first and for long the primary object of antiquarian study and literary exegesis in Europe. It is the case that Britain had a special if controversial role in the creation of modern Greece. The exceptionally wide range of its holdings enables the day to begin two millennia before the Classical period and to finish with Roman copies of Greek sculpture made hundreds of years after the originals. The day consists of four sessions in the galleries of just over an hour each, with relatively leisurely refreshment breaks. The first session looks at Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, and at the Geometric and Archaic periods which saw Greek civilisation emerge to greatness again after the mysterious extinction of the earlier civilisations. The second session is largely devoted to the peerless sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, the so-called Elgin Marbles, famously – infamously – the highlight of the collection, and among the most fascinating and beautiful creations in western art. Lunch is at the British Museum, after which there is a little back-tracking to look at the development of pottery from the Archaic to
Bulletin 9, 2015
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the Classical periods, almost the only evidence of the glories of Greek painting that remains. Finally comes the Hellenistic period, Alexander the Great and after, especially the remarkable monuments from Lycia, the Nereid Monument and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Start: 10.15am. Finish: by 5.30pm. Price: £185. Group size: maximum 12 participants.
Detail from the Parthenon Frieze, engraving 1883.
Start: 10.15am at the Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington. Finish: c.6.00pm at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square. Price: £195. This includes two journeys by underground railway and two by taxi; admission charges; lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
“Without the stimulus of this London Day I might never have crossed London to see the V&A galleries, and might have continued to walk straight past the Mediaeval Gallery at the Courtauld on my way to the Impressionists. A real treat.” Participant on ‘Mediaeval Art in London’ in 2014. Book
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