London Perceived 2
Just have to share this piece of text by V. S. Pritchett from my favourite book on London – London Perceived. If you have an interest in London, it’s a fine one to look out for second-hand (see previous post Evelyn Hofer :: london perceived).
(talking about the Tower of London…)
“All European cities have these lumps of dead history in them; they obstruct the mind, lie inertly across it for centuries and do no more than alert the fancy for an hour or two in these happy times when a sense of the past is a personal taste, a passing wonder before which we congratulate ourselves on our progress or, at any rate, on our change. But a real sense of the past cannot exist without a sense of the present. We are now closer to the Middle Ages than the Victorians were. [here I think he's talking generally about the just-experienced brutality of WWII as a retrograde step] These picturesque lumps bristle and wake up. In what way does the medieval ethos now differ from that of Europe or, indeed, the greater part of the world? The Tower means murder now, torture now, stranglings, treacheries, massacre, the solitary cell, the kick of the policeman’s boot. The scratchings on the walls of the Tower are the scratchings of Auschwitcz. We are reminded of what the words “struggle for power” mean in our own age. It may have astonished Victorians that Wren’s uncle, a harmless, dull, and climbing bishop, was shut up here for eighteen years; but that sort of thing does not astonish us today. It is normal. I say nothing of the Great. The Tower, grey and nasty, is awake again, and the dirty waters of the Thames lapping under Traitors’ Gate, where they rowed the fellows in, looks sly and has the light of a conniving eye.”
I haven’t done it but I imagine googling Tower of London will not trawl up anything even slightly approaching this analysis – written 47 years ago – and still good for our own time.
