AboutLondon Laura – August 2024
Did you try any of my recommendations from last month? I went to the V&A and saw both Fragile Beauty and Naomi In Fashion.
The Fragile Beauty photography exhibition is glorious. It’s photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection on lots of diverse themes. A visit will leave you feeling happy with the beauty all around you. And then you’ve got the rest of the V&A to explore. Absolutely recommended.
The V&A does fashion exhibitions really well and while Naomi In Fashion wasn’t as “wow” as the Diva exhibition, it was still enjoyable.
I also saw the Barbie exhibition at the Design Museum. I do appreciate that dolls are small exhibits but this is a small exhibition making the ticket price seem high. It will be popular but I expect there will be plenty of grumbles as visitors leave. If you go, let me know your thoughts.
Bagels Update
Do you remember back in April we had a focus on the best bagels/beigels in London? Beigel Shop at 155 Brick Lane (the yellow one) has reopened and I’ve been back a couple of times to see if it was worth the wait.
I tried a bag of ‘wonky beigels’ but, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t impressed that the price for half a dozen that were slightly imperfect was only 5p cheaper than buying six individual freshly baked ones.
So, I went back and tried the ‘popular on Instagram’ rainbow beigel (£1). It looked great but didn’t taste amazing. It was too sweet and, even sharing it between two, we struggled to finish it.
So, while I was really excited about Beigel Shop being back, I think I’ll be sticking with Beigel Bake at 159 Brick Lane (the white one).
I took these two snaps while there and it certainly seems the majority prefer Beigel Bake.
Buckingham Palace
I usually attend an annual preview of the summer opening of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms but as there isn’t a special exhibition this year, I haven’t been yet. The only additions for return visitors to notice are the Australian State Coach in the Palace’s Grand Entrance Portico and the new portrait of His Majesty The King by Jonathan Yeo in the Ballroom.
The big focus this year is on the first time there has been public access to the East Wing which includes the famous balcony. I could tell you about all the wonderful things to see but unless you’ve already booked you can’t go there as those tours have sold out. You can get standard tickets to see the State Rooms; just not the extra tour of the East Wing.
The East Wing is the side of the Palace that most of us think of as the front (although the west side is known as the garden front.)
This seems like a good time to offer a quick history of Buckingham Palace as you may be planning a visit this summer. The State Rooms are open until 29 September 2024 and your tickets can be converted to a 1-year pass at the exit meaning you can return this year and during the 2025 summer opening.
While it has a much longer history, Buckingham Palace only became the London residence of Britain’s sovereigns in 1837. As you would expect, there are hundreds of rooms inside and it even has its own post office, cinema, swimming pool, doctor’s surgery and jeweller’s workshop.
Royal connections to the area precede the current grand building. Henry VIII took the Manor of Ebury from Westminster Abbey in 1536. (The English Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries meant the King could take what he wanted from the Catholic church.) This brought the site of Buckingham Palace back into royal hands for the first time since William the Conqueror had given it away almost 500 years earlier.
In the early 1600s, James I sold off some of the Crown freehold but retained part of the site for a mulberry garden. (This is at the northwest corner of today’s palace.) The mulberry garden becomes significant later.
The first house on the site was built for Sir William Blake in around 1624. Charles I gave the garden to Lord Aston in 1628 and the next owner was George, Lord Goring (1608–57) who purchased it from Aston’s son.
Now, this is where that mulberry garden becomes important. Goring didn’t realise he didn’t have a freehold interest in the mulberry garden. Why that’s important will be explained when we reach George III.
Charles II’s Secretary of State and later Earl of Arlington bought the lease for Goring House and owned it when it burned down in 1674. He rebuilt it as Arlington House.
John Sheffield, later the first Duke of Buckingham, took a short lease on the house in 1698. (The Duke’s family descended from Sir Edmund Sheffield, a second cousin of Henry VIII.) The following year he acquired the house outright (or so he thought) and decided to demolish it and build Buckingham House.
The Duke of Buckingham died in 1731. George II tried to buy Buckingham House from the Duke’s widow but she decided to stay. She lived there until she died in 1742 and the house was inherited by the Duke’s illegitimate son, Sir Charles Sheffield.
After George II died in 1760, his son, George III discovered that the Duke’s private palace encroached on the former royal mulberry garden. Sir Charles Sheffield was obliged to part with the house for under £30,000 in 1762.
George gave Buckingham House to Queen Charlotte in 1775 as a private family residence. Fourteen of George and Charlotte’s fifteen children were born there.
George III died in 1820. His son, George IV had grown up in Buckingham House so was fond of the building. He was the first monarch to see palace potential in Buckingham House.
In 1825, John Nash drew up plans for the enlargement and modernisation of Buckingham House. He kept the core of the house but added lots too.
When George IV died, his brother, William IV showed no interest in moving from his home at Clarence House. Even after the building was completed, and all the State Rooms had fancy furniture, he still said no. When the Houses of Parliament was destroyed by fire in 1834, he offered Buckingham Palace but the politicians said no.
William IV’s niece Victoria was his successor and she became the first royal resident of Buckingham Palace. Within weeks of becoming the ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 20 June 1837, 18-year-old Victoria made Buckingham Palace her official residence.
After living there for a few years, it became clear it wasn’t ideal for her growing family so a new east wing was added enclosing what had previously been a U-shaped courtyard. And that’s the area some lucky people will get to visit this summer.
If you’d like to know more about the history of Buckingham Palace, I wrote a longer feature for Londontopia a few years ago.
What’s Happening This Month?
As well as the opportunity to go inside Buckingham Palace, you can also visit the Houses of Parliament during the summer recess. There’s a well-priced cafe off Westminster Hall too.
Over in west London, Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery has Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences. It’s a series of six large-scale tapestries that show the rise and fall of a modern-day fictional character called Tom Rakewell. It's based on William Hogarth's famous series A Rake's Progress.
Summer On The Square is back in Trafalgar Square from 1 August to 1 September. The free festival is programmed with and for children, young people and their families.
Head into the National Gallery to Room 46 to see two masterpieces by David Hockney that feature reproductions of Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ (probably about 1437–45) on display alongside the original Renaissance painting from 8 August until 27 October 2024.
Other ideas I’ve still got on my ‘must visit soon’ list include the Guildhall Art Gallery to see La Ghirlandata. The Bank of England Museum to see the Future of Money exhibition and the Charles III banknotes. London Pictures is on at the Gilbert & George Centre. And over at the Serpentine Galleries, there’s the Pavillion and two exhibitions to see.