Trips End - London

     The main purpose of returning to London, other than heading back to the US of course, was to do some research at the British National Library.  The Library was originally part of The British Museum, but was split off in 1973 and moved into its own building in 1997.  The Library is located by St. Pancras Station on Euston Road in London and we stayed at a hotel within walking distance.  As a researcher you have to pre-register in order to gain entrance to the reading rooms.  Fortunately we had done so on-line.  What we didn't know was that 90% of the library's holdings are kept in York, England  and thus it takes several days to get manuscripts to London.  Fortunately, several of the books we were looking for were stored on site, so our first day there was not a total waste.

                                       
                                                                 British National Library

     The fact we had to wait a day for the rest of our requested material to arrive did give us the time to see some of the tourist sites in London.

      We were able to get around by cab fairly easily and had some interesting conversations with our cabbies.  One of them told us that despite press reports stating otherwise,  downtown London was a ghost town during the Olympics.  Most of the venues were outside the center of London and people just didn't come downtown  He told us that he had cancelled his family's annual holiday to work during the Olympics figuring that he would make a bundle, but found that most days in central London were "like Sundays, nobody was about."  We also found out that the Olympic sites were closed immediately after the events ended.  They weren't even kept open for tours. 
     We did get a chance to see a play at the National Theatre.  We saw Shakespeare's Timon of Athens starring Simon Russell Beale.  Timon is one of Shakespeare's last plays and is very uneven.  The production was set in modern times with Timon as an altruistic capitalist, who after giving away his wealth is hounded and pursued by the 1% to whom he owes money.  He seeks refuge not in a cave in the Wilderness, where Shakespeare sent him, but in an Occupy Movement encampment under cardboard boxes.  The concept worked well.  The second act of the play however seems more of a rant against humanity in general which gets a bit tedious.
     Our last day in London  was spent back in the Library pouring through manuscripts and play reviews from the 1840s and 50s.  I took some time off to go through the permanent exhibits at the Library and catch a look at a copy of the Magna Carta.  Turns out that the nobles who forced King John to sign it were more concerned about the King vowing allegiance to the Pope than establishing a constitutional monarchy - but that's another story.