If you spent World War Two in London, even just as a little boy like I was then, you will always be moved by one sound in particular. That sound is the chimes of Big Ben, the great clock on the end of the Houses of Parliament in London. The chimes were broadcast live at the start of the news bulletins on the radio throughout wartime. The sound was unique. It signaled hope and defiance. It suggested that, notwithstanding bombing and food shortages and bad news, it was all going to work out in the end. The sound of Big Ben meant stability and survival. It was so reassuring. The tune of the actual chimes is from a passage of Handel's Messiah. Pat and I made a rare visit to London in April 2009 and we visited Big Ben. Even though the events of which I speak above occurred over 65 years ago, the sound of the chimes still moves me. Like some of my family members, this clock is never wrong. I was pleased to see that the time shown on Big Ben exactly corresponded with the time displayed by my own watch - recently purchased by me for $10 at WalMart. So who needs a Rolex?
Bob and Big Ben
The Houses of Parliament, or the Palace of Westminster to give the correct name, were badly damaged in the great fire of 1834. However, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hall nearby were not damaged. When the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster was planned, it was decided to match the new building with the Gothic style of the surviving buildings. That probably would not happen today, when architects take sadistic joy in placing unpleasantly contrasting styles next to each other. The plans for the new building featured a clock tower, over 300 feet in height, immediately adjacent to the River Thames. The clock, which was to be installed high up in that tower, had been built by 1854. However, the building of the tower itself had not been completed by then. The tower was not finished and the clock was not in operation until May 31 1859, which was the date of the State Opening of Parliament in that year. Pat and I therefore visited Big Ben a few weeks before its 150th birthday.
Click on player below to hear Big Ben chime for the last time before falling silent for repairs in 2017.
Benjamin Hall
Strictly speaking, Big Ben is not the name of the clock tower. It is the name of the bell which produces those wonderful chimes at fifteen minute intervals. Yet, all over the world, everyone thinks of the tower and clock combined as Big Ben. The original name, The Great Clock of the Palace of Westminster, didn't catch on. But why Big Ben? The most likely source of the name is Benjamin Hall, who was Chief Commissioner of Works during the period of rebuilding. He was also the very popular MP for the nearby constituency of Marylebone and was 6ft 4ins in height.
About a third of the way up the tower, a prison cell was installed. The last MP to be imprisoned there was Charles Bradlaugh in 1880. Few prison cells in the world can have enjoyed such an impressive view. They only kept Bradlaugh in for one night. His crime? He refused to be sworn in on the Bible as a Member of Parliament. Bradlaugh was an atheist. Because of this, Bradlaugh was not allowed to take his seat for several years, despite having been elected as a member of the House of Commons, and he was punished because of his attempts to vote.
(Left) Charles Bradlaugh being arrested (Right) Bradlaugh takes his seat in Parliament
From 1886, he was allowed to take his seat and, in 1888, the law was changed to permit non-believers to affirm, instead of swearing on the Bible. Bradlaugh was a great campaigner for the independence of India, 60 years before it actually happened. He died in 1891 at the age of 57.
When speaking to somebody on their cell phone, the caller these days never really knows where the other person is. That is why Members of Parliament today love it when Big Ben chimes during their telephone conversations with constituents. It proves to the public that they are hard at work in their office in the Palace of Westminster and are not merely spending their time in some restaurant or bar elsewhere.
Big Ben
A clock tower of 300 feet is not a great height, but Big Ben looks taller. There are no competing tall buildings nearby and this fosters the appearance of a greater height. Yet, even at its present height, one must respect the achievement of those who erected it. They did so, in the mid-19th century, without any of the construction aids which are taken for granted today. Enormous care is taken to keep this 5 ton, 150 year old time piece running on time. Behind the clock faces are little heaters, which prevent the hands of the clock becoming impeded by ice and losing their exact timing. For example, in the bitter weather suffered by London a few weeks ago, the hands did not freeze up.
There is doubtless much more for me to say about the technical aspects of this remarkable piece of engineering, but let me instead conclude as I began. It is the emotion within one that is generated by the sound of those chimes that is so special.
This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on April 9, 2009.
It is over half a century since I made my one and only visit to the land of the midnight sun, as Norway is sometimes called. Here’s how it came about. My friends and I in London decided to go skiing for the first time, but we knew nothing about ski resorts and had little money. Our research indicated that we could not afford any of the famous Alpine ski resorts in France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Then we discovered Geilo, Norway, which appeared to be a ski resort that we could afford. It was a really low price, which became even lower if we did not fly there and fell to practically nothing at all, if we traveled in early January. Now the Norwegians are among the smartest people on the planet, as they recently demonstrated by their refusal to join the European Union, with whose members they still trade without having to stifle themselves with expensive bureaucratic regulation from Brussels and Strasbourg. Norway gives away nothing so, if it was very cheap to ski there, had to be some very good reasons. We set out for Geilo in early January 1960, without having had the experience of life to have figured this out.
TS Leda – the vomiting Venus
The first leg of our journey was by third class rail from London to the port of Newcastle in the north east of England. It was a long and uncomfortable trip, but worse was to come. In Newcastle, we embarked upon a small vessel called the TS Leda, known widely as “the vomiting venus” in a tribute to its ability to induce seasickness in even the hardiest voyager. In all fairness to the poor little ship, the North Sea in January can be rough, so it was not entirely to blame for all the passengers (including us) becoming rather unwell during the voyage of just over 24 hours from Newcastle to Bergen, Norway. Nobody was well enough to eat, so we could not take advantage of the smorgasbord offered to us on the ship. This was a word that we had never before encountered. We anticipated some exotic Scandinavian delicacy, so it was something of an anticlimax to find that smorgasbord is simply the Swedish word for buffet. Yet, at the time, we were in no condition to eat anything at all.
Suddenly, the decks stopped jumping around and we found ourselves in calm waters. In fact, the ship had moved into the long fjord that runs from the sea up to the beautiful old city of Bergen, which sits at the head of the fjord. Bergen is Norway’s second largest city. Until 1830, when it was overtaken by Oslo – the capital, it was the largest. There is a railway line in the shape of an inverted “U”, which heads north from Bergen, eventually curves around and which finally heads south to finish up in Oslo, another sea level city. In its route of 320 miles, the railway line travels through hilly terrain. On its route, midway between Bergen and Oslo, lies the little town of Geilo. Therefore this was the train that we took on the third and last leg of our journey to Geilo, which is situated north of 60 degrees latitude. When one considers that the Arctic Circle is at 66 degrees latitude, this means that Geilo is pretty far to the north and this is where the midnight sun comes into it. It follows that, if parts of Norway enjoy the sun at midnight in the middle of summer, then they must in return endure a good deal of darkness in the middle of winter. So there we were in Geilo in early January with daylight available to us only from 10am to 3pm. Finally, we understood the logic behind the pricing of this vacation. The whole area was only about 2000 to 3000 feet about sea level, which is hardly mountainous. We learned that skiing was created by the Norwegians simply as a form of transportation cross country. They were not in the business of making dramatic descents of high mountains at top speed for the fun of it. That was not why they invented skiing. Ski is a Norwegian word and for literally thousands of years Norwegians had used cross country skiing, not for sport, but as a way of allowing isolated snowbound communities to stay in touch. It was the British in the 19th century, with their passion for inventing sports, who moved skiing from Norway to an entirely different environment in the Alps from where it has developed to become a major Olympic sport.
Skiing in Austrian Tirol
We did our best with the conditions in Geilo and had fun. We returned home safely, after experiencing a return journey as traumatic as the outward journey. We subsequently took other skiing vacations in the nineteen sixties, but we had learned our lesson. We took care on those future trips to visit instead the Austrian Tirol in late February, where plentiful daylight and hot midday sun and tall steep mountains provide a wonderfully exhilarating experience.
This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on March 22, 2010.
It was in March that Pat and I made our first ever train journey through the tunnel underneath the English Channel. This tunnel, which opened only in 1994, is the longest undersea tunnel in the world.
Channel tunnel concept presented to Napoleon
Efforts to create it began in the time of Napoleon. Digging even began in 1882, but was then discontinued for fear of compromising Britain’s national defense.
It takes about 25 minutes to travel through the tunnel and there is nothing to see. It’s like traveling from one subway station to another. It’s as exciting as watching paint dry. However, what is exciting is to consider the consequences of the tunnel having opened 60 years earlier than it did. Hitler’s failure to occupy Britain in 1940, when it stood alone, probably lost him The Second World War. Mighty though the US military was and is, it could hardly have mounted the 1944 D-Day invasion of Europe from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
D-Day Map showing route allies took across English Channel
That invasion succeeded only because the island of Britain could be used as its takeoff point. Had Britain been occupied by Germany in 1940, Germany would then have been free to concentrate on beating Russia on the eastern front, without the having to face the D-Day invasion from the west. Yet the reason that Britain was not occupied in 1940, like the rest of Europe, was that it was an island that could be defended. The Channel and British air power were just about able to keep Hitler at bay, prior to US entry into the war. But what if the Channel Tunnel had existed in 1940? Could Hitler have seized it undamaged and used it to get his armies across the Channel into England? We shall never know the answers to these hypothetical questions. What we do know however is that world history would have been very different if Hitler’s panzer divisions had managed to pour through the tunnel and “blitzkrieg” their way through England. One could not help but reflect on this, as the train rattled its way through the darkness of the tunnel.
Cologne Cathedral
As our train pulled into the station at Cologne, Pat saw the outside of Cologne Cathedral for the first time. She did not even need to leave the train, which went right past it. The mighty twin spires made this the tallest building in the world for four years from 1880, when building was completed, until 1884 when its height was surpassed by the newly erected Washington Monument. The building of the Cathedral started in 1248, which means that it was under construction for over 600 years. The builders seem to have done a good job though, because the building took 70 bombing hits during World War Two without the spires collapsing. Hopefully, Pat will have time to leave the train next time and see the inside of this beautiful cathedral, which I visited many years ago.
This piece, written by Bob, originally appeared on our website on April 5, 2010.
Pat and I share nothing in common with Queen Victoria of England and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, except this. Nine months after their marriage in 1840, a beautiful baby daughter arrived. Nine months after Pat and I married in 1980, a beautiful baby daughter arrived. Twelve months after the birth of their first child, their second child arrived. Twelve months after the birth of our first child, our second child arrived. Pat and I then gave up on producing children. However, the Queen and her prince were only just starting. By the time Albert met his untimely death from typhoid fever in 1861 at the age of 42, the Queen had given birth to nine of his children. The story of Albert has always fascinated me because, as a Londoner, I have always been aware that my hometown is full of monuments to his memory. To mention but a few, London has The Royal Albert Hall, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, and The Albert Bridge across the River Thames, which was his idea. Then London is also home to many pubs and bars named The Royal Albert or The Prince Albert. Yet the use of this name for watering holes is by no means confined to England. They are now to be found all over the world.
Click on player below to see Pat's video on the Ehrenburg Palace.
In the spring of 2010, Pat and I took advantage of an opportunity to visit the town of Coburg, where Albert was born in 1819. At the time of his birth, the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was an independent state and Albert was the second son of the Duke. Coburg today is in Bavaria, close to its northern border. The people of Coburg voted to join Bavaria in 1920, shortly after the abdication of the last duke. Coburg today has a population of 42,000 and lies at the foot of a mountain, from the top of which a huge fortress dominates the town. The construction of that fortress began in 1225 and Martin Luther spent six months there in 1530, when he was translating the Bible into German. Down in the town itself, we visited another castle, the Ehrenburg Palace. This building was the site of an 1860 meeting between Queen Victoria and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. I have already written about the Emperor on this website in an item entitled “The Emperor rides the Subway”. Coburg is a picturesque little town sitting astride the Itz River. It is easy to see why Queen Victoria loved it so much that she made six visits here from England. That may appear no big deal today but, before the invention of the airplane and the automobile and before widespread availability of railway tracks, it involved many days of uncomfortably bumping through Europe in a horse drawn carriage. The Queen is reported to have declared that, if she were not who she was, Coburg would have been her real home but that she would always consider it as her second home. That leads us to the question of who was she?
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
In the middle of the 19th century, Queen Victoria was the head of the largest empire that the world had ever seen and was undoubtedly one of the most powerful persons on earth. Albert was only 20 when he came from Coburg to marry her. He was a minor German prince, not even heir to the Duchy. It was a magnificent match for him. The people of the British Empire were at first highly suspicious of him and suspected him of marrying for prestige or money. By the time of his early death in 1861, he was widely respected throughout the kingdom and was exercising a huge influence for the good on the affairs of state. He is in fact the great great grandfather of the present Queen of England, Elizabeth II.
Queen Elizabeth II
The name of the British royal house since 1714 had been Hanover. On the 1901 death of his mother Queen Victoria, Albert’s eldest son (who then became King Edward VII) changed the family name to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. However, during World War One, it was deemed prudent to change it once again and the name since then has been Windsor. Therefore, Coburg is a famous word in my native land.
Moving closer to the present time, Coburg would be a great location for a spy thriller by John LeCarre, who has set so many of his greatest novels in Central Europe. During the Cold War (1946-1990), Coburg was surrounded on three sides by communist East Germany. Coburg was situated on a little peninsula of land sticking out into communist territory. In 1946, Coburg was rumored to be the base for a revolt by free Poles against the Russian backed Polish government in Warsaw. Being little more than 200 miles from the Polish frontier, Coburg was one of the nearest cities to Poland in the free world. However, nothing came of the rumor about a revolt.
Finally, Albert is responsible for the popularity of the Christmas tree in England and America where, until the middle of the 19th century, the custom was virtually unknown. This had been a strictly German tradition, but Albert installed and decorated a Christmas tree each year at Windsor Castle in England. This innovation was widely reported and very soon everyone in England had their own Christmas tree.The custom then quickly crossed the Atlantic to America. Christmas trees are now to be found all over the world, just like pubs called The Prince Albert. Of all the many memorials to Prince Albert, a beautifully decorated Christmas tree is probably the one which would have given him the most satisfaction and which would have brought back to him happy thoughts of his Coburg childhood.
This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on July 4, 2010.
