VENICE

The thought of taking a Ryanair Flight always creates mixed feelings. They have a reputation after all.  Marilyn researched our trip, found the flight, bought our tickets online and printed off our boarding passes all whilst sitting at home at our home desktop. 

So we flew in across the Alps, rugged, wrinkled and snow covered towards Trevisso Airport, Venice’s second airport these days. Trevisso is a Ryanair created second airport for Venice, about twenty-five miles from the wondrous city. A reasonably quick, forty-minute bus trip took us to the bus station on Venice Island itself. We travelled through the brutalist world of industry, edge of town superstores, railway lines and concrete motorways. The bus suddenly left behind the concrete reality of the mainland and  took us out into a watery world across a long causeway with fishing nets staked out in the shallow waters and in the distance a glimpse of the swollen domes of Renaissance churches. 

The Rialto Bridge across The Grand Canal.

We arrived at the bus station and as soon as we stepped out, there in front of us was the beginning of the Grand Canal.There were motor launches and our first sight of a blue and white striped jumper clad gondolier standing squarely in the stern of his burnished black lacquered gondola. I was expecting him to burst into a resounding operatic chorus of “One cornetto. Give eet to me…” but he didn’t. The whole of the three days we were in Venice I didn’t once hear a gondolier exercise his operatic lungs. Maybe singing gondoliers are just a myth.

Gondolas, cafes and restaurants on The Grand Canal.

With only hand luggage, walking through the alleyways and along the canal side pathways of Venice was not a problem. The map that came with our Rough Guide guidebook about Venice was a problem though. The names of the canals, bridges and alleyways on the map didn’t correspond with the actual names of these places. I nearly threw the map away. We found  the best thing was to follow the compass on my i-phone. We could say with some confidence that  we wanted to head, north or east or west and so we kept turning down alleyways, hitting dead ends often, retracing our footsteps taking another turn and eventually, mostly, mainly, we got to where we wanted to go. Sometimes it was pure luck we got to our intended destination, I must admit,but we saw sights and had unexpected adventures along the way. We would never have come across the gondola boatyard intentionally, with gondolas being built, repaired and fitted out on a ramp set amongst a huddle of dilapidated orange brick buildings with twisted roofs of undulating tiles and creosoted wood panelled walls.

A gondola boatyard.

Our hotel was in the Dorsoduro district of Venice on the south bank of the grand Canal. We were a mere 100 metres from the Pont del Academia and about three hundred metres from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Peggy Guggenheim  collected European and American art and this collection is one of the most important of this genre in Italy. It is situated in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, the home Peggy Guggenheim lived in.  It fronts the Grand Canal but at the back there is a small intimate canal with local housing and small shops along it.

The Grand Canal from Pont del Academia with the Peggy Guggenheim museum on the right.

Venice lives up to its photograph. It is absolutely beautiful. There is a Venetian style. The windows of so many flaking crumbling buildings have a mixture of Moorish and Christian Gothic features. Venice is most decidedly Christian with so many beautiful Roman Catholic churches with gilded and elaborate interiors. You could drown body and soul in all that Catholic symbolism. Your every sense is assaulted with pure medieval beauty. But taking into account how Venice developed and became such a trading powerhouse you can easily understand how it absorbed influences from the places it’s far reaching and powerful tentacles stretched. In the architecture and most obviously in its window designs you can see it.

 A Venice alleway.

Now, about all this apparent material wealth tied up in so many Catholic churches the world over, not just in Venice. It used to be a siren call. “ The Catholic Church has all this wealth. Why can’t it sell all this stuff and use the money to save Ethiopian drought victims or feed the poor of the world?"

Who would want to buy a gold jewelled encrusted chalice or one of the fine Tintorettos sprinkled around the many churches of Venice and how would a ceiling by Veronese be got rid of? Works like this you find in many of the fine churches in Venice. How do you turn this stuff into money? They are not there for art experts to contemplate as art or for us to treat them like museum pieces or the churches as  museums and galleries or as a source of wealth. They are a form of prayer and worship. The best artists, the finest craftsmen, the best materials, designers and architects produced this work to the best of their ability to praise god. Their work was their prayer. The Catholic Church did not and does not benefit from these things in a financial way. They do not make the church rich. These things are prayers and have spiritual meanings. But of course you might have a different viewpoint to me!!!!!!

 One of the many many churches in Venice.

We strolled around Venice looking at all the fashion shops. All the great fashion houses have their shops here, Gucci, Christian Dior, Channel, Givenchy, Gaultier, Versace, Armani and many others too. These shops are like art galleries and the fashion on show in them are like works of art. They are spectacular to walk past, window shop in or timidly and warily walk into. However the prices Wow!!!! A handbag for over 1000 euros? You must be joking! Shoes at nearly 2000 euros a pair!! Phew!!!!!! And those are the less expensive side of haute couture.

Then there were the shops that sell artisan created goods often made in small workshops on the shop premises such as papier-mâché art,  paper makers and craftsmen making hand made books, hand sewen  with tooled leather covers. There were many galleries selling exquisite Venetian glass, chandeliers, mirrors, vases and bowls exhibiting translucent colours. So many shops are stocked with masks ready for the ten day carnival they have in Venice every Easter. Many of the masks are made in the shops and elaborate 18^th century costumes are on display for hire too. The idea of wearing a mask for ten days over Easter has it’s social and  moral side. A mask wearer takes on a new identity. A persons everyday identity disappears. Somebody can create a new persona, do things they would not do. Masks create danger and intrigue. But then of course there was shop after shop selling tourist tat, expensive rubbish. There are so many restaurants, coffee bars and wine bars throughout Venice, all with welcoming and friendly bar staff. Every Venetian I met had a sense of humour and great big smile.

 A small gallery in a back alleyway.

We found the building where the Venice Art biennial is held every two years. It was once a palace facing the waterway between Venice and the Lido. It has an expansive water view. Venice also holds film and architecture biennials and it is these that I think are Venice’s important contributions to the world today. Venice of course, is now a place for tourists .

Marilyn and me eating out in Venice. The wine was good by the way.

The  history of Venice is incredible. The Venetians gave the world many things, which have developed into important aspects of our society and forms of government. The Republic of Venice lasted for over a thousand years from about 740 until 1797, when Napoleon defeated the Venetians and France took control. Venice is a prime example of the all-powerful city-state. It was not a country. It was an independent city that controlled trade all over the Mediterranean and Europe. It was almost continually at war with the Ottomans. The Venetian Empire grew and shrank with success and defeat. As a republic it had no king or royal family. The Doge, the ruler of Venice, was an elected official from amongst the most powerful families of Venice. He was usually chosen because of his astute abilities at trade and negotiating skills.  In this way the government of Venice was a  meritocracy. The election for a Doge was similar to that of a pope and like a pope he stayed in that position for life.

Marilyn and I visited the Doges Palace next to St Marks Basilica, beside St Marks Square. It was a fascinating place not least because of its  architecture. John Ruskin in the 19^th century described the Doges Palace as the most perfect building architecturally in the entire world. He described it as being a perfect combination of Moorish and medieval gothic designs. The palace is designed for a purpose and this purpose was the purpose of government. There are rooms for the great council, for law making, law courts, even a small room that held officials to make sure the law was being followed correctly. There was a department for spying on foreign governments. There was a council for foreign affairs and a council for governing industry within Venice itself. There was a separate room where trade and everyday life in Venice  was controlled. There was a room where sailors were recruited for the all-important Venetian Navy. It is easy to see how this form of government structure has developed, with all it’s departments and concerns, into the sort of governments we have.

 The Doges Palace.

Next door to the Doges Palace is Venice’s prison. It was here Casanova was imprisoned for a while. The entrance to the prison is across the enclosed Bridge of Sighs. The prisoner would have been taken from the courtroom in the palace straight to their prison cell. Marilyn and I followed the rout a prisoner would take and saw the last glimpse a prisoner would get of Venice from the small windows in the Bridge of Sighs. The cells consist of rough stonewalls. Any light getting in to them is from apertures high up in the walls so the prisoners could not see out to the outside world. Each cell was virtually a stone cave.

The Bridge of Sighs leading to the prison on the right.

 Once you were inside one of those you were  dead to the world. Imagine being incarcerated in a Venetian cell. The only place you were alive was inside your own head. There you would be, inside a stone cell, doing absolutely nothing, day in, night out. You would be fed once a day and then nothing. Imagine it, nothingness. Your whole humanity confined to an empty space. You or I would probably go mad.

 St Marks basilica in St Marks Square.

St Marks Basilica was awe-inspiring. It was a symbol of the Venetian superiority in the Mediterranean and it’s power over the Ottomans. St Marks body was stolen from the Egyptians in a Venetian raid. The basilica was built as a great celebration to house St Marks body but also to celebrate Venetian strength and power over the Ottomans. Much of it was constructed from marble columns and slabs, statues and precious metals pillaged during raiding parties against cities,nations and people the Venetians conquered. Marilyn and I both wondered where St Marks body was situated within the basilica. A church guide told us it was inside the silver covered high altar. All Catholic altars have to have a piece of a Saints reliquary within it to make it an altar. This expalnation does sound plausible. Marilyn and I walked around the high altar, which is fronted by a solid silver embossed relief of the life of St Mark. We saw medieval pilgrims badges hanging from a wall and at the back of the altar was a solid gold frieze , jewelled and encapsulating pictures of saints.

 The Lion of St Mark on the left, the great camponile that rang out it's bells on the hour, and The Doges Palace on the right.

Venice is an incredible place. You cannot resist taking photographs. Every inch of the place is photogenic. Windows, walls, rooftops, flower baskets, narrow, dark, damp canals all cry out to be photographed. I couldn’t stop taking pictures. There are fantastic churches everywhere. Art galleries are in abundance. The Academia, Venice’s main gallery, full of Renaissance art was open but undergoing refurbishment, so limited numbers were allowed in. There was a Picasso exhibition and a Salvadore Dali exhibition going on in different places. Venice is full of tourists from every nation. Venice attracts us all to marvel and wonder.

A CHARLES DICKENS TOUR IN LONDON

Charles Dickens has  always gripped my consciousness from that first moment I saw the heart stopping appearance of Magwich confronting Pip, in David Leans 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations. Magwich emerged monstrous like a nightmare from behind the tombstone in the desolate graveyard set in St Jame's Church,Cooling, a viilage on the marshes near Rochester,in the Thames Estuary. If you ever visit the graveyard in Cooling to see Pip's  graves, '....five little stone lozenges each about a foot and a half long which were arranged in a neat row ... and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine....'  you cannot fail to be moved.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and first arrived in London with his family in 1814 at the age of two for a short interval before his family moved to Chatham, in Kent, to live. In 1821 they moved back to London. His father John had lost his job with the admiralty in which he was a clerk in the pay office. The Royal Navy was going through a period of restructuring at the time. He obtained a job at Somerset House in The Strand. The streets  close to The Strand were to become  an imaginative influence on Charles Dickens for the rest of his life. A walk through this area, north and south of the Strand, takes us through the different stages of Dickens life from poverty to fame, from anguish to success, illustrating the hard grinding work he continued throughout his life.

We begin our walk at the Embankment tube station, very close to the steep steps, littered with Starbucks cups and Macdonald paper bags, that lead up to the walkway beside Hungerford Railway Bridge.  Beside Hungerford Bridge, on The Victoria Embankment, is a good place to begin a Dickens walk in London because it was here  that Warrens Blacking Factory was situated in 1820 next to Hungerford Steps. Victoria Embankment,that great Victorian engineering achievement, was designed and created by Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860’s,  obliterated the site of the steps. Hungerford Bridge takes its name from that once dilapidated, ramshackle piece of Victorian London where small factories, poverty and dillapidation rubbed shoulders. Near the site of Warrens Blacking Factory, was the location Dickens used for the lodging house  where Mr Macawber and his family stayed before emigrating to Australia.

 Warren’s Blacking Factory, owned by one of his mother’s cousins,was where Dickens started his working life.Charles Dickens suffered terribly in the blacking factory at Hungerford Steps, which produced bottles of blacking to polish boots with. His job was sticking labels on the bottles and it must have been numbingly boring for him. What horrified him also was the sound of the water rats scratching and scrabbling beneath the floorboards on which he had to stand.  The humiliation it must have caused somebody who was not only sensitive but very intelligent is hard to imagine. For the rest of his life Dicken’s was a driven individual almost manic in his desperation to keep working. A result of his childhood experiences. No matter how hard he worked and how much money he earned he always felt that it could all be taken away from him. 

From Hungerford Bridge walk up Buckingham Street by way of the ancient river gateway to Buckingham House that is the only remaining part of Buckingham House that once stood here and was the London home of the Dukes of Buckingham.  Dickens knew the gateway because it stood beside the blacking factory. Buckingham Street leads to John Adam Street, a rather dull brick canyon like street. The entrances to the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) and the art deco Adelphi Hotel. Dickens had lodgings  on the site of The Adelphi Hotel which, in his  day, was the Adelphi Terrace, designed and built by John Adam. Here Arthur Clennem, a leading character in Little Dorrit stayed and David Copperfield too. It had become somewhat rundown and dilapidated by the 1820s.

From John Adam Street  turn left into Adam Street and then a short few steps to the busy populous Strand.  Dickens would not recognise The Strand today but he would know the two churches placed one after the other along The Strand as you walk towards Wellington Street; St Mary le Strand , followed by St Clement Danes. As you come out on to The Strand, to the left, a few hundred yards away, is the modern glass fronted branch of Coutts bank. Angela Burdett Coutts was the daughter of the founder of Coutts and her father’s heiress. She was the wealthiest woman in England during  the Victorian period and became a close friend of Dickens. She was a devout Christian and wanted to do good charitable works. She discussed with Dickens charitable projects that she could finance. Dickens, with her money, set up Urania Cottage near Shepherds Bush. It was a home for the salvation and education of women who wanted to escape the perils of prostitution. In many ways it was a successful enterprise and they sent many, “saved,” women to become good wives in Australia. In front of you as you reach The Strand is the Adelphi Theatre. It has a modern, probably 1950’s front to it nowadays but it was in this theatre that many of Dicken’s novels were dramatized and performed.

The Strand has many connections with Dickens. Further, towards Fleet Street,next to Waterloo Bridge is Somerset House where John Dickens, his father, was first employed when he came to London. In the Strand too is the main campus for Kings College London. It was next to this that  Kings College School was set up before being moved to Wimbledon in the suburbs. Dickens eldest son ( he had ten children) , Charles Culliford Boz Dickens, attended Kings College school whilst it was in The Strand.

Walk along The Strand towards the traffic lights at the junction with The Aldwych and Wellington Street.Cross over to Wellington Street. You are entering an area that was the centre of Dickens working life as a novelist.  The Lyric Theatre on the corner is another theatre where some of Dickens novels and stories were dramatized. Opposite The Lyric is the site of Household Words, the magazine in which Dickens serialised some of his novels. He was the editor and part owner of the magazine. He argued with the publishers, Bradbury and Evans. Dickens wanted more editorial say. The other partners would not allow him this.Dickens then decided to start another publication called, All The Year Round, in offices a mere few yards away from the offices of Household Words. This was very successful and Dickens had far more control of this new publication.  

Charles Dickens Coffee House, in Wellington Street. This building was the premises of Dickens magazine, All The Year Round.

The actual building where All The Year Round was published is still there and is known as, Dickens Coffee House. The rooms above the ground floor were all rented by Dickens and he had them turned into bachelor appartments. There were bedrooms for himself and his friends to stay, such as John Forster, Daniel Maclise, William Makepeace Thackeray, Hablet Brown, Wilkie Collins and George Meredith.  All The Year Round, published articles by Dickens and other writers, Elizabeth Gaskell and William Makepeace Thackery amongst others. It was a tradition then to publish novels  in monthly instalments before being published as a whole.

Just a short walk north, across Wellington Street from Dickens Coffee House  you will find yourself in Covent Garden. It was here on the north side of the square that the Piazza Coffee House was located. Dickens sometimes stayed here but it was here that after long trips away, either to Italy or France and when he returned from his American trips in 1842 and 1867, Dickens best friend, John Forster organised  parties consisting of his male friends,to welcome him home. It has to be remembered that Covent Garden, certainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, was the centre of the prostitution trade in London. It is something to consider that Dickens, staying in Wellington Street and carousing at The Piazza Coffee House, was rubbing shoulders  with prostitutes and madams.  He set up Urania Cottage to save women from the streets but it is not at all clear whether he frequented prostitutes himself. He certainly knew where they were. He mentions to his friend Maclise in a letter inviting him to stay with his family in Broadstairs in Kent that he knew where to find young ladies in Broadstairs.  Maclise was a bachelor and womaniser.

From Covent Garden it is a short walk to The Theatre Royal and Drury Lane. Dickens loved the theatre and would have attended performances at these theatres. From Drury Lane it is a few steps to The Aldwych and then a sharp turn left into Kingsway, past Bush House one of the BBC’s iconic buildings in London and where many BBC radio stations are broadcast from including The World Service, and then a quick first right into Portugal Street.You find yourself at the heart of the LSE, the London School of Economics.  This is a maze of buildings and narrow streets and alleyways with college buildings all around, each building a different department of the LSE. 

There is a pub amongst this complex called Ye Olde White Horse.  To be found at the back of the pub is ,"The Old Curiosity Shop." It is a rickety, timber frame building, with sagging roof and low eaves. It is set amongst modern university buildings. It could never have survived there without its title emblazoned across the whitewashed plaster front.” THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.MADE FAMOUS BY CHARLES DICKENS.” There is a letter Dickens wrote in reply to his friend Forster. Forster had asked him whether The Old Curiosity Shop was a real place. Dickens had replied that it was but he thought it had since been demolished. Whether this building in Portrugal Street is the actual building Dickens had in mind when he wrote the novel is therefore doubtful. Of course, as the Old Curiosity Shop was so popular he could well have been saying that to protect its anonymity. Somebody decided he would make his shop popular by emblazoning that title across the front of it.

Just behind ,"The Old Curiosity Shop," is Lincolns Inn Fields. Lincolns Inn Fields are London’s largest open square named after Lincolns Inn which is situated on the east  side of the square. It was designed in the 1630’s by Inigo Jones. It has Sir John Soanes three houses on the north side.In this square Dickens set major scenes of his novel Bleak House. Mr Tulkinghorns offices were located in Lincolns Inn Fields.  

Walking east across the square from the south west corner of Lincolns Inn Fields having just emerged from Portugal Street and The Old Curiosity Shop  make your way to the elaborate, ornate brick gateway to Lincolns Inn. Once through the gateway it is like entering another world. New Square is on the right, the beautiful brick Tudor chapel on the left and Old Square straight ahead. This is one of the four remaining inns of court. Kenge and Carboys lawyers offices were situated in Old Square. Chancery Lane, running along the east side of Lincolns Inn was the location for Mr and Mrs Snagsbys establishment and many other scenes in the novel. Jo swept the streets near here.  These are the opening lines of  Bleak House.

“London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather……Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city……And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery;”

 

The entrance to Lincolns Inn.

 When Dickens refused to go back to the blacking factory at Hungerford steps. His mother  used her connections to get Charles a job as a clerk with another relation of hers. Charles learned shorthand quickly and was employed recording parliamentary speeches. He later took jobs with various lawyers in Lincolns Inn and Greys Inn as a clerk. 

During his time as a lawyers clerk time he walked all over London observing life and events closely. He felt inspired to start writing reports and stories about his observations and sending them to various publications.  Later they were published  together as ,"Sketches by Boz," Boz, being a pseudonym that Dickens affected.One publisher thought Dickens  a good choice to write a book for him. Popular at the time were stories about groups of friends who travelled the countryside having sporting adventures. Dickens was asked to write a book in this genre. He wrote ,"Pickwick Papers," and in the process invented situation comedy. 

Dickens includes lawyers and scenes set in the inns of court in many of his novels. In Pickwick Papers, Dickens describes in detail the various levels of lawyers clerk.  Mr  Perkin, Mr Pickwick’s lawyer is situated in Grays Inn. Serjeant Snubbin, a serjeant being one of the highest levels of lawyer in Dickens time,  has his office in Old Court, Lincolns Inn. Dodgson and Fogg, Mrs Bardells lawyers, are situated in Temple. Dickens reveals the tricks and subterfuge and downright dishonesty of the law profession. He describes  long and arduous legal proceedings expertly, with great humour and pathos. 

From Lincolns Inn you come out on to Chancery Lane where many lawyers have their offices too. The London Silver Vaults are situated in Chancery Lane.This is the area of  Bleak House fame. Turn left down Chancery Lane and you will soon reach High Holburn, a busy road running at right angles to Chancery Lane. Turn right along High Holburn and at the cross roads with Grays Inn Road you can see the Tudor, black and white timber front of Staples Inn which used to be another inns of court but is no longer. It is reputed to be one of the few remaining buildings from The Fire of London in 1666. Across the road is the large pink edifice of the Prudential Insurance Company which is on the site of Furnivals Inn where Dickens had lodgings soon after marrying Catherine Hogarth.

Walking along Grays inn road you pass Grays Inn on the left and catch a glimpse of the park surrounded by lawyers offices that make up Grays Inn. No. 1 South Square  was the firm of Ellis and Blackmore Solicitors, which is where Charles Dickens found employment as a clerk at the age of 15. It was here he learned shorthand which lead to him becoming a writer. At the cross road with Theobolds Road turn left bordering the northern extremity of Grays Inn  and then  turn right along John Street. The houses here are all 18^th century with their beautiful elaborate porticoes  and solid oak doors with highly polished lion and Greek goddess door knockers. John  Street leads you  straight into Doughty Street and not far along on the right hand side you will reach number 48 which was Dickens residence.

 He moved into 48 Doughty Street on March 25^th 1837. He had a three year lease on the house at £80 a year. Dickens described it himself,

“It was a pleasant twelve-room dwelling of pink brick, with three stories and an attic, a white arched entrance door on the street level, and a small private garden in the rear. It was located just north of Gray's Inn ... a genteel private street with a lodge at each end and gates that were closed at night by a porter in a gold-laced hat and a mulberry-coloured coat with the Doughty arms on its buttons."

He moved in with his wife Catherine but also her 17 year old sister Mary and his younger brother Frederick. Mary died in the house in 1837 not long after moving in. It was said the experience affected Dickens for the rest of his life. Little Nell may have been modelled on her. 48 Doughty Street is the Dickens Museum and well worth a visit. 

At the end of Doughty Street you can catch a glimpse of the corner of Coram Fields the site of The Foundling Hospital founded by Thomas Coram. Dickens has a character called Tatty Coram in Little Dorrit.She is named after Coram Fields by her adoptive parents obliterating her real name and so being reminded of her past. She is adopted  as a playmate for the families biological daughter, Pet, and although treated well in a physical sense, she is not loved as an individual in herself. The other side of Coram Fields is Tavistock Square where Dickens rented a very large house and from where he separated from his wife Catherine. He was having an affair with Ellen Ternan at the time. 48 Doughty Street is the end of our walk.

48 Doughty Street

The walk takes about an hour and twenty minutes. If you want to spend time in the Dickens Museum in Doughty Street you will need an extra hour.

For a pub lunch you could choose no better an establishment than Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street.

You have to retrace your steps from Doughty  Street to Chancery Lane and walk the full length of Chancery Lane to Fleet Street. Turn left along Fleet Street  and you will reach Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, the oldest pub in London, within sight of St Pauls Cathedral. Dickens himself dined here and Charles Darney and Sydney Carton met here in A Tale  of Two Cities. Many famous people have drunk and dined here including Theodore Roosevelt.

There are many other Dickens related sites throughout London but this walk will take you through many of the sites connected with Dickens working world as well as some of the scenes from his novels. Walk across London Bridge into Southwark and walk down Borough High Street, you will see the name's of old court yards and the entrances to inns Dickens includes in various novels. You will find the last remaining wall of the Marshalsea Prison. Dickens features this in Little Dorrit but in reality it was the prison his father was incarcerated in for debt. 

WHITE HEAT

Claire Foy plays Charlotte in White Heat.

White Heat

The BBC have commissioned a new six part drama about our lives at the end of the last century. Originally they had the idea of a programme that covered the last three decades from the 1980’s to the present day, however the script writer, Paula Milne, felt that what she was writing about was very much about the arc of her own adult life Her adult experiences began in the 1960’s. So the programme starts in 1965, a year of social revolution and The Vietnam War and the funeral of Winston Churchill was on our screens in Britain, when the world was changing and our lives would never be the same. The title takes it's name from a speech by Harold Wilson in 1963 who spoke about the implications of technological change and how Britain was going to be “forged in the white heat of this revolution.”

What compelled me to watch this first episode, aired on the BBC on Thursday 8^th March, was the programme description for the series. It seemed to describe my own experiences in a weird sort of way and many of the historical events that have happened in my life. I felt an enormous magnetic pull enticing me to watch. I can imagine this must have been the same for many of my age group and of my generation. I’ve not looked at the viewer numbers for the first episode, but I can imagine!!! The cast list looks very impressive. The series covers fifty years in flash backs therefore, there are older actors and younger actors who play the same part. The cast list includes the excellent Sam Claflin, who plays Jack one of the leads and who has revolutionary ideas about the way society should be, then there is the mesmeric Claire Foy, who is Charlotte, with those hypnotic eyes, Jeremy Northam, Lindsey Duncan, Tamsin Greig, Juliet Stevenson and a whole cast of young and older actors who are quite superb. The acting skills alone will keep this series strong.

The young cast of White Heat.

The first episode called, The Past Is A Foreign Country, starts in the present day with Tamsin Greig, who plays the older Charlotte, going back to the flat the students shared in the sixties. The owner has died and left the flat and his money to the old flat mates in his will. It is presumed that the dead person is one of the original flat mates too. The fact that none of them has seen each other for more than twenty years adds to the twist. In Charlottes imagination we flash back to the sixties. Jack, played by Sam Claflin, is setting up a flat for a social experiment. His father has bought him a flat while he is a student at one of the London Universities. His father, played by Jeremy Northam is a conservative MP but his son Jack has revolutionary thoughts and ideals. He is a follower of Chez Guevara and Marx. Just this little strand, father son relationship, illuminates the conflict between the parents and youth of the sixties. One of the biggest revolutions was the rift that happened in those days between parents with their very old fashioned ideals that came almost out of the Victorian period and their children. In this programme you can see it in the scene where Claire Foy leaves home going to university. She walks out of the front door of her middle class parents 1930’s house in the suburbs wearing a two piece tweed skirt and jacket, carrying a bag. As she drives off in the taxi she changes into a mini skirt and puts on a brilliantly shining, bright red PVC coat. The transformation and rift from what she has just left to where she is just going is graphically illustrated.

Jack, advertises the rooms in his flat, in an old Victorian terraced four story with basement property. Just this one aspect gripped myself and Marilyn. We used to live in a flat exactly the same when we first ,”shacked up,” together after university, on the top floor of an old Victorian pile in Surbiton in the 1970’s. Jack's advertisement stated that he wanted people to live together to conduct his social experiment . Claire Foy’s character turns up alongside a whole host of varied characters straight out of the sixties for interview. Jack chooses his mix carefully. They are all students, but each one fits a certain category of English society at the time. There is the Jamaican student who has very little money, Claire Foy is middle class from the suburbs, there is a an Indian student, a fat girl with a northern accent and a bespectacled jumper clad lad with a side parting to his hair who does chemistry at Imperial College and so on. Jack brings together a cross section of the type of people who went to university in the London of the time. He sets the rules for the house. Jack pronounces that there will be no lasting sexual relationships. Nobody is allowed to have sex with each other on more than three consecutive nights. A silence ensues and the girls look at each other. They have told their parents that they are going into a flat, which comprises only girls. One of the things that is subtle but actually right on the nail is the lies that we told our parents or rather what we didn’t tell our parents in those days.

Me in the late 60's.

The programme has the backdrop of the Vietnam War, demonstrations and the music of The Who, My Generation and the Rolling Stones, I Can't Get No Satisfaction. Claire Foy goes to her doctor to ask for the contraceptive pill. She wears a brass curtain ring on her wedding finger. The doctor asks if her husband agrees to this. Claire Foy says that she can make her own independent decisions and the doctor ,”humphs,” and has a rant about young girls not deceiving him by wearing false wedding rings. The law at the time in Britain was that only married women could get the pill. He gives Claire Foy the prescription she wants.

Back at the flat a TV programme going on in the background shows Joan Bakewell interviewing women on both sides of the argument over sexual freedoms. Joan Bakewell to this day, she hasn’t aged at all by the way, still produces documentaries and hosts discussion programmes about many and varied social issues. Long Live Saint Joan!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joan Bakewell in the 60's.  She hailed from Newnham College Cambridge.

The flat is a star in the programme. Marilyn and I remember clearly within the flat we shared with friends straight out of university, the floral, peeling wallpaper, the ancient gas boiler in the kitchen that leaked, the kitchen cupboard doors with flaking paint and rusty hinges and the small fridge packed with gone off milk and mouldy bread. When Jeremy Northam visits to see if Jack wants to come to Churchill’s funeral, as an MP, he has a ticket for Jack to attend the funeral at St Pauls. One of the flat mates offers him a cup of tea, which he gingerly accepts after sniffing the milk in the bottle.

One scene shows Claire Foy at night lying in bed under a duvet. Were duvets introduced into Britain in the 60’s? She reads Lady Chatterleys Lover and appears to be getting rather flushed. Duvets!! they are part of the sexual revolution surely.

So in this series we will recap our very own lives, pot smoking, sexual freedoms, clothes, music and new ways of thinking socially and politically. Were the sixties the greatest revolution we have ever had? Looking at my life now and what life is like today, yes there have been many many changes but have these changes become conservative in their turn creating just as wide a gap between us and our own children as there was between us and our parents?

I can’t wait for the next five episodes, a lost world.

Beating The English

This is not a terrorist poster. It is not some disgruntled Americans having a go at us aloof English.

It all boils down to rugby.

The Welsh beat us the other day at Twickenham and won the triple crown in the process and it seems they want to carry on!!!!!!!!!Ha! ha!

Dickens and London, an Exhibition.

DICKENS AND LONDON

It is only appropriate that London should somewhere have an exhibition about Charles Dickens this year. It is the 200^th anniversary of his birth after all. Where better than The Museum of London set above the road level in The Barbican. An area Dickens undoubtedly would have known well with Aldersgate next to it, the chapel, John Wesley preached at nearby, an area that was packed with coaching inns for the Georgian and Victorian traveller, St Paul’s Cathedral dominating the scene towards the south and close by too, the site of the great 18^th century post office where letters were distributed around the whole country by a fleet of fast coaches drawn by swift teams of horses. There are few of these buildings still in existence and I think Dickens would probably have difficulty in recognising much of the area. A small street called, Little Britain, is nearby and although ,"little," by name and little in size, has rather a large part in Great Expectations as the Street where the lawyer, Jaggers office is situated. The Museum of London is in the heart of London and Dickens would have appreciated its location and significance. The museum explores, the living breathing organism, the monster that is London and from which Dickens drew characters and plot and added them to the life force of the great city. The Museum in it’s way is like Dickens in its aspirations, it has an insatiable eye on London and a thirst for knowledge of London.

The exhibition starts with a quote that shows London is Dickens's muse, it is his ,"magic lantern,"and portrays Dickens as what many see him as, London's very own, "special correspondent."

"... the great beating heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered round it." Master Humphrey's Clock 1841

The exhibition is set out in a serpentine route that gently weaves its way round the exhibition like a river reminiscent of The Thames itself. It is divided into themes. “A City of the imagination,” “Amusements of the People,” “Home and Hearth,” “Dickens and the modern age,” and, “In life and death.”

The displays are wordy and explain on posters and panels in great detail every aspect of Dickens life in London. From this point of view the exhibition is an adult exhibition. This would put children off. There are plenty of photographs of Dickens, his family, friends and of London and the people of Victorian London. These I am sure are rare and precious items but some are rather small and you have to get close to have a good look, which is not always possible in a  popular exhibition like this. It is interesting to compare photographs of Dickens and some of the portraits of him. In the photographs he is grey and his face is lined, they are daguerreotypes and albumen prints. He looks human. In the paintings, especially the portrait commissioned by Forster, his best friend, he looks heroic, the great man of letters. He was 27 years old at the time of the portrair commissioned by Forster.

I think the exhibition is rather flat. Flat in the sense that everything is flat on walls, on information panels, paintings, photographs or in glass cases. There are not many substantial three-dimensional items. The exhibition is dotted with what the curators term, highlights. These are objects Dickens used or knew well. There are a plethora of manuscripts, Great Expectations, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield and there is Dicken’s annotated version of Oliver Twist with his handwritten stage directions for reading the murder scene of Nancy by Bill Sykes.

There are a few  evocative three-dimensional items such as the watchman’s box from Furnivals Inn, Holborn, where Dickens obtained rooms. Dickens must have passed that rather ordinary looking wooden construction many times and spoken to the watchman inside to say goodnight or perhaps make a comment about the weather. There is an iron door from Newgate Prison. That made me smile. The Museum of London seems to have an abundance of doors and items from Newgate Prison. There is  the entire, wooden clad interior of a prison cell from that establishment. It is carved with the names and graffiti of many bored and fearful inhabitants. The thought occurs to me that when Newgate Prison was demolished there were people then who thought,

“ I’ll keep that door, or that bit of wood panelling. They might come in useful.”

The most interesting and emotional piece I thought was Dickens writing desk and chair. I stood and stared at the desk for a while looking at every scratch and mark and wondering if Dickens made those marks or actually wore out the leather cover on the desk top himself.

These are the very pieces of furniture that appear in the painting by Robert William Buss called Dickens Dream. It was painted after he died and portrays Dickens sitting at the desk and in the chair, in a bay window of Gads Hill Place. He appears to be sleeping in the picture, dreaming about all the characters he has created floating around the room and around his head. The actual painting is to one side of this exhibit but directly behind is an enormous version of the painting covering a whole wall, which is very subtly animated. At first you might not think it is animated but  you begin to notice that each scene is taking it’s turn to move. The illustrated characters perform the scene they are frozen in in the original painting.  It is doing for us what we do as readers. As readers we remember what has lead up to a scene and predict what might happen next. I must admit, although this is done well, I have a grouse against museums and exhibitions doing too much for us. Computers and software programmes can do for us what our minds should do. Technology is  useful in a museum context but if it takes away from or ignores the original historical object, picture or document, then it is damaging the interaction a museum really needs to create.

Technology is however used creatively and beneficially at one point in the exhibition. There is a screen room at the end with seats for you to sit on. A wall is used for a film presentation. A story by Dickens from Sketches by Boz is read out as a film of modern day London is shown, people walking, traffic, buildings and so on. The article by Dickens is about him walking through London. The camera takes us on a walk through London as Dickens once did. It is a film portraying in a modern way what Dickens was saying in words. I think this works because the film is a piece of art in itself. The viewer can have a creative response to the film and to the piece of writing.

At the part of the exhibition that deals with Dickens and the modern age it is important to put yourself in the shoes of Dickens or at least a Victorian of the period. Technological innovation was of course, steam ships, the railway and the Penny Post. Those were at the cutting edge of the Industrial Revolution. So old and ancient to us now,but, yes, this was new to Dickens and the people of his time and as exciting as laptops, i-phones and renewable energies are to us now. Just as we embrace our laptops and smart phones, Dickens embraced these new technologies whole heartedly. He travelled to America on a steam ship. However, after that bone shaking and uncomfortable experience he returned by sailing ship. New technology does take a while to settle in.

The exhibition has been well attended and on the day that Marilyn and I went there were plenty of people going around it. For a person who doesn’t know much about Charles Dickens, if they follow the exhibition diligently they will come out with a very good sense of who and what he was. Sometimes it is more about Victorian London than Dickens, which is not a bad thing, because that gives us a context. Dickens would have approved.

Charles Dickens 200years!!!!!!!!!!!!

CHARLES DICKENS

The tunnel under the road from Gads Hill Place. Dickens had it dug from his front garden to a plot of land on the other side of the road where he had his Swiss Cottage erected.
The old town hall in Rochester High Street where Joe Gargery indentured Pip.
The front bedroom at 13 Mile End Road Landsport, Portsmouth where Charles Dickens was born.
The Lyceum Theatre in Wellington Street very close to the offices both of Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens had many of his novels dramatised to put on the stage, particuarly at the Adelphi and also here at the Lyceum. Dickens also gave readings of favourite scenes such as the death of Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop. He worked hard  helping with the productions.
This is the couch that Dickens was laid on in Gads Hill Place after he collapsed on the floor. It was on this couch Dickens died.
The Bull Inn in Rochester High Street where Mr Pickwick and his companions stayed. Dickens often would stay here himself and get accommodation for visiting friends. He lived at Gads Hill just across the River Medway and up the hill from this spot but he also liked to inhabit and get a feal for his environment which he used in his novels. He wanted to feel what his characters might feel.
The bed in Doughty Street in which Mary Hogarth died. She was a younger sister of Catherine Dickens. Dickens was distraught at her death and couldn't be pulled off her dead body lying here.
Rochester High Street. Dickens and many of his characters walked along this street.
Rochester Cathedral, the backdrop to the dark and gloomy tale of Edwin Drood, Dickens last novel and unfinished piece.
The Swiss Cottage, now in the garden of an old house in Rochester High Street. This is where Dickens wrote towards the end of his life and was working on Edwin Drood the morning of his death.

Number 13 Mile End Road, Portsmouth where Dickens was born.
Restoration House in Rochester which was the house Dickens used for the home of Miss Haversham and Estelle.
The post box in the garden wall of Gads Hill Place. The age of it fits with the time Dickens lived at Gads Hill Place. Dickens himself could have posted letters through it's aperture.
Gads Hill Place just outside of Rochester where Dickens lived towards the end of his life and where he died.
The sitting room at Doughty Street.

Looking out from the interior of Dickens Coffee House in Wellington Street.

This is called Dickens Coffee House. It was where Dickens had the offices for All The Year Round. It is situated in Wellington Street about a 100 yards from the Lyceum Theatre.

CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Dickens was born on Friday 7^th February 1812 in the front bedroom of a modest, lower middle class house at 13, Mile End Road, Landport, Portsmouth on the south coast of England. His father worked in the Royal Naval pay office situated in the naval dockyard. The house still exists. It is a miracle it does because Portsmouth, a major Royal Naval base was bombed extensively during the the second world war and much of the centre of the city and the docks was destroyed. Dickens’s birthplace and the terrace of Georgian houses it is part of, survived. The road is a pretty little Georgian enclave within Portsmouth surrounded by a modern 1960’s housing estate and backed by the main road into and out of Portsmouth. The family remained in Portsmouth for the first few months of Charles’s life before moving temporarily to Bloomsbury in London and then moving on to a house in Chatham in Kent.

The house in Chatham was number 2, Ordnance Terrace. He spent most of his early childhood in the Chatham and Rochester area.

Charles’s father was called John Dickens and his mother was Elizabeth. He had an older sister, Fanny, who attended the Royal College of Music in London and was a talented musician. Throughout Charles’s life he was affected by his fathers profligacy and inability to manage his own money.

Rochester was to have a deep and lasting effect on Charles’s imagination. And indeed it was to Gads Hill on the old London Road,just outside of Rochester, up the hill on the opposite side of the Medway Estuary, that Charles Dickens returned in later life to live.

London and the people he observed and knew became part of his imaginative world and he drew on many elements of the people he met to create his own literary characters. His characters became real to him and he referred to them as close friends and he cared for them emotionally as friends long after they were published in his novels.

From Chatham John Dickens moved the family in 1822 to Camden Town in London. At first John Dickens obtained a job in Somerset House on The Strand. But he was a spendthrift and lived beyond his financial means. He ended up becoming bankrupt and was incarcerated in the Marshalsea debtors prison that used to be situated just off Borough High Street, a short walk across London Bridge on the Southwark side. A mere few hundred yards from London Bridge on the left is a narrow alleyway with a high brick wall on the right. This is the only remaining part of The Marshalsea. On the other side of the wall is a park that was land on which the prison stood. Very close to this spot is Lant Street where Dicken’s lived in lodgings while his father was incarcerated. Charles at this time was employed by a relation of his mother's at the blacking factory next to Hungerford Steps. The site of the blacking factory is underneath Charing Cross Station.  Hungerford Steps down to The Thames no longer exist. The Embankment, which narrowed The Thames here, covers the site.

These experiences hurt Dicken’s deeply. They can be interpreted as giving him the driving force to succeed. He was naturally intelligent and desperate to succeed and experiences like these could only drive him harder throughout his life. A bitter quotation reveals the depth of his anguish and pain,

"I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!"

Dickens developed his talents quickly. He got a job at the law firm Ellis and Blackmore and quickly learned Gurneys system of shorthand. This enabled him to become a freelance reporter and through the influence of a distant relative, Thomas Charlton,he reported the proceedings at Doctors Commons. He reported the legal proceedings there for almost four years. It was while working here that he met his first love, Maria Beadnell, in 1830. This relationship was doomed because Maria’s family thought Dickens was below their status. He later married Catherine Hogarth, on the 2^nd April 1836.  They had ten children. His wife Catherine seemed forever pregnant. 

In 1833 Dickens published his first story, “A Dinner At Poplar Walk”, in," The Monthly Magazine."A collection of articles and stories he wrote at this time became, in 1836, "Sketches by Boz." But it was the sensational reception of his first novel The Pickwick Papers, published 1836, that set him on the road to fame.

The Pickwick Papers, at face value, was a similar format to other series of stories written by other writers, where a club of gentlemen go on adventures together. However, Charles Dickens was able to take his version to far greater heights than anybody else had achieved. The characters and situations in Pickwick Papers are the template for all British humour then and since. All modern stand up comedians who use situation comedy have a debt to pay to Dickens. All life is there in the Pickwick Papers. Pickwick and his friends have been described as gods bestriding England. Indeed when I have read The Pickwick Papers the characterisation and the situations pull me in, I become immersed, the situations are so real, so funny, pregnant with pathos and it describes the dark depths of the human condition, all tumbled together.

The Pickwick Papers are a fine example of how Dickens uses his own life experiences. The happy group fist visit Rochester on their travels. They stay at The Bull Inn which can visited today on the right hand side of Rochester High Street as you enter the city across the bridge over The Medway. The geography and main buildings of the city are described in detail in this tale.

Rochester appears in many novels after this. Great Expectations begins in a village far out on the marshes of The Medway Estuary outside of Rochester. Phillip Pirrip visits Miss Haversham at Satis House just off the High Street in Rochester at the far end from The Bull Inn. The building he used is actually called ,"Restoration House,"  the building called Satis House is next to Rochester Castle just behind The Bull Inn. Dickens transposed the name. The town hall, where Joe Gargery payed for the indentures of Pip as his apprentice, is opposite the Bull Inn. Rochester Cathedral, hard by the castle, is the backdrop and scene of Edwin Drood,the very novel Dickens was working on, in his Swiss Chalet across the road from Gads Hill Place on the morning of his death.

He was  greatly interested in prostitutes from a social and welfare point of view. There are however, hints of more than just a care for their welfare. He makes licentious reference to them in letters to a close friend Maclise, who was a bachelor, suggesting they visit some he knows in Broadstairs. On the other hand he set up a charitable organisation to help prostitutes with the financial help of Angela Burdett Couts, heiress to the Couts banking fortune. Urania Cottage was situated in Lime Grove and used to help fallen women change their life styles. Dickens interviewed them personally and took a close interest in their reform. he set up a scheme that enabled ex prostitutes to start a new life on the other side of the world in Australia.

 His philanthropy and desire to help the poor is no less evident in the portrayal of the many aspects of society good and bad, in his novels. Dickens was horrified by the plight of the poor and the criminal classes and this cannot be taken away from him.

In London, Dickens and his family lived at many addresses. When first married Catherine and he had lodgings in Furnivals Inn just off High Holborn. 48 Doughty Street, not far from High Holborn on the other side of Greys Inn, was a mid career home. It is now the home to the Dickens Museum. Number 1 Devonshire Drive, a much more salubrious place,  in Marylebone, next to Regents Park was rented and when the lease ran out he moved to Tavistock House nearby in Marylebone. His relations with his wife were deteriorating. Catherine Dickens became eventually a burden to Dickens and he moved out leaving Tavistock House to his wife and extensive family. He sought company in younger and more attractive women. 

He had a passion for his own wife’s younger sister, Georgina, as he had had for her sister Mary years before. Georgina, became a permanent part of his household and to the shock of the Hogarth family moved with him when he decided to return to Rochester and buy Gads Hill Place. In many ways this was the culmination of his search for the ideal house. In his youth, when living in Chatham close by Rochester, Charles and his father had walked past Gads Hill Place and his father had told him that if he worked hard he too could aspire to owning such a house. Dickens did work hard, very hard, probably too hard and he did aspire and bought the house his father talked of. In later life his mistress was the actress Ellen Ternan.

Dickens lead a very active and frenetic life. He was a great traveller travelling on holidays with his family throughout Europe. Apart from the publication of his novels and stories other important events of his life included the tour he undertook of America in 1842. In some ways this was a disaster. He went hoping to find a much better land and existence than Britain offered which he didn't find but he also went with an agenda. Publishers in America were publishing pirate copies of his novels from which he made no money. He went with the aim of getting copyright and publishing laws changed but only achieved upsetting many people and himself. The American public adored him though. and he remained popular there. He went on a second trip to America later in 1858 and was welcomed with important dinners and great speeches. 

Then there was the terrible Staplehurst rail crash in which Dickens was a passenger. He witnessed terrible scenes and worked with great energy to save people.This left a lasting mark on his health and wellbeing.

Dickens often undertook two and even three jobs at once, writing a novel, dramatising one his stories for the theatre, being a magazine owner and publisher and performing readings of the most popular scenes from his novels to adoring crowds. The death scene of Little Nell from the Old Curiosity Shop was his most dramatic and personally exhausting performance. His energies were prodigious. His magazines, Household Words and later All the Year Round were situated in offices in Wellington Street close by The Lyric Theatre and Covent Garden.

Opposite Gads Hill Place, just outside of Rochester, was The Falstaff Inn. Dickens was pleased with the fact that Shakespeare used this very spot on Gads Hill in his play, Henry IV. Nowadays Gads Hill Place is a private school. It is not open to the public. My friend, Clive, and I spent some time in Rochester searching out the places connected with Dickens. We stood in the road outside of Gads Hill Place. There is an old Victorian post box set in the roadside garden wall at the front of the house and we contemplated the thought that  Charles Dickens himself posted letters into it. Across the road in a small park with shrubs and trees is the gated entrance to a tunnel that passes under the road  to the front garden of Gads Hill Place . Dickens had the tunnel dug specially. On the land he erected ,"The Swiss Cottage," a friend had sent him from Switzerland. It was on the first floor of this cottage that Dickens wrote in later life and was where he was writing and working on Edwin Drood the day he died. The cottage has now been moved into the city of Rochester and can be found in the garden of an ancient house, a museum, in the High Street.

Charles Dickens died at the age of 58 on 9^th June 1870.

Today is the 200 th anniversary of Charles Dickens's birth in that small front bedroom in Portsmouth.