Literary Walk Tour of London

On Wednesday, 4 June, the Year 12 students studying English Literature went on the maiden voyage of the walking tour with Mrs Talbot and Dr Kossuth from the English Department as guides. It was a great day for it: not too hot and not too cold, though windy at times, but the pace of the walking soon took away any chills.

We started at London Bridge where we started a tour with a duet of ‘London Bells’, Mrs Talbot ringing out the sounds and Dr Kossuth providing the commentary. After that the first stop was the statue of Romantic poet John Keats, who studied to become a doctor at Guy’s Hospital, most notably (and gruesomely) clearing away amputated limbs. The students heard about his career, his love for Fanny Brawne and his death and were treated to his most famous love sonnet ‘Bright Star’. An extended walk along the Southbank took in the Clink and Marshalsea Prisons, the Anchor Inn (from where Pepys had watched London burn in 1666), the great freeze, the great stink and of course the Globe as well as bear baiting and cock fighting. Each station was marked by the short reading of diary extracts, poems or reports.

Heading south into Lambeth we marvelled at mosaics that hung under railway arches just off Hercules Road, where visionary poet and painter William Blake used to live and work. The mosaics are replicas of Blake’s drawings and illuminated books and are both tribute to and insight into his work. While his ‘London’ is a must-hear, the students also heard his more cryptic ‘Auguries of Innocence’. Crossing Westminster Bridge with an obligatory recital of Wordsworth’s poem ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’ we headed for Parliament Square to hear about Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Due to a protest march, we cut this leg short (no Keats to clear away) and walked along the Embankment where Mrs Talbot treated the students to more poems by Hulme, Kipling and Wilde. We had a very civilised lunch in Victoria Gardens before passing blue plaques commemorating the sojourn of Herman Melville and Rudyard Kipling as well as Charles Dickens’s spell in a boot-blacking factory. A brief conversation with Maggie Hambling’s statue of Oscar Wilde and then we went into the National Portrait Gallery.

Amongst a host of wigs and uniforms, we focused on finding the authors and writers. Among the people spotted were Horace Walpole looking as gothic as his novel, Samuel Johnson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Walter Scott and Henry James. One room was devoted to Romantics, and all the right faces were there (with only Blake missing), including Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, and one to Victorians, which was a bit thinner on the ground, with Jane Austen and the Brontës being away on loan.

Throughout, the students were upbeat, well-behaved and interested. As many said afterwards, they’d learnt many things they hadn’t known before and felt they had a greater idea of connections between people and places. Definitely a trip to be repeated.

Dr Kossuth,

Subject Leader of English, Film Studies and Creative Media