LondonLife – Snoozing…
September 19, 2017
Palmerston, the ‘chief mouser’ to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall, captured by photographer Steve Way during the Open House London weekend, apparently oblivious to the crowds. Palmerston was recently the subject of a Freedom of Information release which stated that since his arrival at the FCO in April, 2016, he had been seen capturing 27 mice (although the Office of the Permanent Under-Secretary at the FCO reports the actual figure is “likely to be much higher as these are only reported sightings”). The FOI document also revealed Palmerston eats a variety of food brands, usually ‘Whiskas’ and is cared for by a number of volunteers from across the FCO.
PICTURE: Steve Way/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
LondonLife – Buckingham Palace…
September 12, 2017
PICTURE: Shane Rounce/Unsplash
LondonLife – Mist at St Katharine Docks…
September 5, 2017
PICTURE: Rob Bye/Unsplash
LondonLife – Night lights…
August 15, 2017
PICTURE: Gordon Williams/Unsplash
LondonLife – Queen Victoria from on high…
August 8, 2017
The Queen Victoria Memorial, looking from Buckingham Palace across to St James’s Park. PICTURE: Robin Bilney/Royal Parks
LondonLife – London’s DLR celebrates 30 years…
August 1, 2017
London’s Docklands Light Railway – the DLR as it’s better known – is celebrating 30 years of operation. The railway was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in the summer of 1987 and then had just 11 single carriage trains serving 15 stations. Extended six times since and now including some 38 kilometres of track, it now serves 45 stations using mainly three carriage trains. Carrying some 6.7 million passengers in its first year, it now carries a massive 122 million people annually. To mark the occasion, Transport for London has released a Destination DLR travel guide featuring 30 attractions across east and south-east London all easily reached by the DLR, ranging from the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and the Tower of London to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Wilton’s Music Hall. Transport for London have also released a new diagram of the DLR system (pictured below). PICTURES: Transport for London.
LondonLife – Welcome to Zoorassic Park…
July 25, 2017
ZSL London Zoo opened the gates to its new Zoorassic Park last weekend enabling families to step back in time to the Mesozoic era and experience life with the dinosaurs. Featuring life-size, moving dinosaurs ranging from a tyrannosaurus rex (above) to a triceratops (below), the exhibit, will provide insight into the lives of the extinct giants as well as the important work conservationists are doing now to help save today’s animals from the same fate Included in the price of entry into the zoo, the exhibit is only open until 3rd September. For more, see www.zsl.org. PICTURES: ZSL London Zoo.
LondonLife – Horseguards…
July 18, 2017
LondonLife – Rainy day…
July 11, 2017
A rainy day in Marylebone. PICTURE: Anjana Menon/Unsplash.
LondonLife – On board the London Eye…
July 4, 2017
PICTURE: designerpoint/Pixabay
LondonLife – Camden Lock…
June 27, 2017
PICTURE: Clem Onojeghuo/Unsplash
Floral tributes for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster outside the Notting Hill Methodist Church. PICTURE: ChiralJon/CC BY 2.0. (image cropped)
LondonLife – The City rising into the clouds…
June 13, 2017
PICTURE: Rob Bye/Unsplash
Created by Russian-born artist Erik Bulatov to mark the centenary of the revolution, the 10 foot high steel Cyrillic letters, some of which appear to have fallen over, spell out the word ‘forward’ four times and are arranged in a circle. Forward 2016 is Bulatov’s first sculpture and was apparently conceived after a visit to a decommissioned 19th century iron foundry in France which Bulatov, who was born in 1933, felt represented – through its sheer scale and lost sense of power and energy – not only the aspirations of his generation but the disillusionment they experienced. While the bright colours of the letters create a sense of energy and movement, their distribution in a closed loop seem to imply that progress may not really be possible. The work, which is installed on the south terrace of the Tate Modern, will remain on display throughout the summer as a precursor to two major art exhibitions being held at the gallery in autumn – Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into The Future, the UK’s first major exhibition of the works of this pioneering couple (from 18th October), and Red Star Over Russia, an exploration of visual culture and design in the decades following the revolution (from 18th November). For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: Courtesy of Tate Photography.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show was held in London last week at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea and was once again a celebration of horticultural creativity and beauty. Here’s just a sample of what was on show…
Above, animal sculptures are displayed on the Easigrass exhibit while, below, a visitor listens to an audio recording whilst viewing a floral installation on the Interflora exhibit.
ALL PICTURES: RHS/Luke MacGregor.
Above, a visitor views “Neoteric” a floral installation by Robert Hornsby.
Above, lilies are displayed on the Harts Nursery exhibit.
Above, stilt walker “Mrs Flora” poses on the Big Hedge Co. garden.
LondonLife – King’s Cross railway station…
May 23, 2017
King’s Cross railway station, the western concourse. Designed by John McAslan, the semi-circular building – which opened in 2012 – features a steel roof engineered by Arup, claimed to be the longer single-span station structure in Europe. The image was taken with a fisheye lens. PICTURE: Colin/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0.
LondonLife – Taking in the view…
May 16, 2017
Looking over the River Thames from the Tate Modern at the dome of St Paul’s. PICTURE: Christian Battaglia/Unsplash
LondonLife – Going places…
May 9, 2017
PICTURE: Tom Eversley/Unsplash
LondonLife – City by night…
May 2, 2017
PICTURE: Negative Space/CC0. Taken in 2015.
The remains of several archbishops of Canterbury are believed to have been found beneath a former parish church in Lambeth. Workers were carrying out renovation works at the deconsecrated St Mary-at-Lambeth, removing flagstone, when they found a hitherto unknown crypt containing some 20 lead coffins one of 
which had a small gold archbishops’ mitre resting on top of it. Among those whose coffins have been identified are those of Archbishop Richard Bancroft (in office 1604-1610), who played an important role in the creation of the King James Bible, and Archbishop John Moore (1783-1805) as well as Moore’s wife Catherine and that of John Bettesworth, Dean of Arches, Judge of the Archbishop Prerogative court. It is also believed that archbishops Frederick Cornwallis (1768-1783), Matthew Hutton (1757-1758) and Thomas Tenison (1694-1715) were buried in the tomb under the church’s chancel. The church, which is located beside the River Thames adjacent to Lambeth Palace – London home of the archbishops of Canterbury, originally dates from the 11th century and was deconsecrated in the 1960s. The burial place of John Tradescant (c1570-1638), described as the first “great gardener” in British history, it was subsequently transformed into what is now known as the Garden Museum, the world’s first museum of garden history. The museum closed in 2015 for a £7.5 million redevelopment project and is expected to reopen in late May. PICTURE: Top – the lead coffins with metallic bishop’s mitre; a still taken from video posted on the Garden Museum website/Right – St Mary-at-Lambeth (right side of image).
