Buckingham Palace, from the outside, is plain and rather dull.
Near it stands the Queen Victoria memorial, which is less plain and rather less dull.
It features what you might expect of an ostentatious Victorian sculpture (which it wasn’t; it was completed during her
grandson’s reign):
bare breasted ladies, bollocked naked small boys (wot no paedophilia panic?),
latin inscription — REGINA IMPERATRIX — which even I could understand.
But also gold leaf for its highest figures, and what looked like primitive WWI helmets on some of the characters.
The giant statue of Victoria sits facing away from Buckingham Palace, a good choice given the views on offer.
Her death starts the first episode of Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain.
I saw bits of his earlier History of Modern Britain, and remember thinking that it wasn’t bad.
But this new series, it seems to flit around too much. I kept feeling that it was being superficial, and wanted it to go into more depth.
Maybe that was because more of the material was unfamiliar to me this time. Or maybe the times did flit around a bit, and it wasn’t until
war broke out on the continent that history became more focussed.
He came across as quite patronising when talking about the music halls, very much the middle class presenter being oh so terribly impressed
by working class culture. Perhaps because his day job is interviewing politicians. Or because he doesn’t quite have an authoritative voice.