Books about Town

It is great to always have a good book in your hands. Also, in summer, what can be better than enjoying the sun and the city while you delight yourself with a wonderful reading?

The wind in the willows. Kenneth Grahame

The National Literacy Trust, to celebrate London's literary heritage and encourage reading, has scattered 50 book benches all over the Capital. These masterpieces will be displayed until the 15th of September and they will be auctioned on the 7th of October at the Southbank Centre.

Each bench has been designed by a different artist and they are all dedicated to books, authors or characters. 

If you want to see all of them you should follow the four trails around The City, Greenwich, Riverside and Bloomsbury. The organization has also planned performances, book giveaways, quizzes and more events.

Imperial War Museums

The Imperial War Museums reopened on Saturday, to mark the centenary of the World War One, after completing the first phase of its plan. We had to wait six months but the £40 million project, designed by the architects Foster and Partners, is concluded. 

Prince William and David Cameron officially opened the IWM and the new "First World War Galleries" last Thursday.

IWM, formerly called the National War Museum, was founded on the 5th of March, 1917, and the museum was opened in the Crystal Palace by King George V, Prince William great-great grandfather, on the 9th of June, 1920. The Duke of York, later known as King George VI, reopened the IMW on Lambeth Road, its present location.

The Bank of England, c. 1890

 The Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, London.
 (Photo by London Stereoscopic Company)

Keep Calm and Carry on

The Second World War officially started with the German invasion of Poland on the 1st of September, 1939. Two days later, United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.

It was an uncertain year and the population lived under the threat of impending invasion. To maintain the morale, the British government designed, from the 27th of June to the 6th of July, three posters with a very simply style. The symbolic crown of King George VI, an effective font and a powerful slogan. 

Two of them were produced by His Majesty’s Stationery Office and posted in shop windows, public transport and notice boards across all Britain.

The Coffee Houses

It was in the Muslim monasteries near Mocha, Yemen, in the middle of the 15th century, where the coffee seeds were roasted and brewed for the first time. 

By the 16th century, the coffee was not only a drink in Arabia but in all the Middle East, Persia, northern Africa and Turkey. 

Decades later, and thanks to the British East India Company, coffee became popular in England too. The Jamaica Coffee House, opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosee, is the oldest one. Located in St Michael's Alley, in the City of London, is still opened after more than three hundred years.

The artist Adam Dant wanted to pay homage to these popular places with a new map. “I’ve always wanted to do a map of the Coffee Houses, because it marks a moment when intellectual activity had a parity with mercantile activity. They called them the penny universities”. And he explained, as well, that "there were thirty here in these streets behind the Royal Exchange, until a fire that started in a peruke shop burnt them all down. The only reason we know where they all were is because somebody was commissioned to draw a map of them, assessing the damage.”

Now you have another reason to get lost in between the beautiful and ambiguous passages and courtyards of the City.

The Tour de France

The Tour de France, one of the world's biggest annual sporting events, arrived this Monday to London. The first stage of the competition took place last Saturday, 4th of July, from Leeds to Harrogate. The bikers departed on Sunday, 5th of July, from York and arrived to Sheffield after they went across 201 kilometres.

The third stage, and the last one that occurred in the UK, started in Cambridge, it passed through Essex and, after 155 kilometres, the competitors finished on the Mall, London.

The race went through some important landmarks including the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

Bangor St, Kensington, c. 1900

Bangor St, Kensington, c. 1900