Sunday in London,
the perfect day to visit an important religious building and enjoy an
Anglican mass to understand better English culture and idiosyncrasy.
The Grandma has chosen St Paul's Cathedral, perhaps one of the most important cathedrals of this amazing city.
St Paul's Cathedral in London, is anAnglican cathedral, the seat of theBishop of Londonand the mother church of theDiocese of London.
It sits on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of theCity of Londonand is a Grade I listed building. Its dedication toPaul the Apostledates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. Thepresent cathedral, dating from the late 17th century, was designed in theEnglishBaroquestyle bySirChristopher Wren. Its construction, completed in Wren's lifetime, was part of a major rebuilding programme in the City after theGreat Fire of London.
The cathedral is one of the most famous and most recognisable sights of London. Its
dome, framed by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the
skyline for over 300 years. At 111 metres high, it was the tallest
building in London from 1710 to 1967. The dome is among the highest in
the world. StPaul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom after Liverpool Cathedral.
Services held at St Paul's
have included the funerals of Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington,
Sir Winston Churchill and Baroness Thatcher; jubilee celebrations for
Queen Victoria; peace services marking the end of the First and Second
World Wars; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer; the
launch of the Festival of Britain; and the thanksgiving services for the
Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees and the 80th and 90th birthdays of
Queen Elizabeth II. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of
much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded
by the smoke and fire of the Blitz.
A list of the 16 archbishops of London was recorded by Jocelyn of Furness in the 12th century, claiming London's Christian community was
founded in the 2nd century under the legendary King Lucius and his
missionary saints Fagan, Deruvian, Elvanus and Medwin. None of that is
considered credible by modern historians but, although the surviving
text is problematic, either Bishop Restitutus or Adelphius at the 314
Council of Arles seems to have come from Londinium. The location of
Londinium's original cathedral is unknown.
Bede
records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as
the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their
king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent,
built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the
new bishop. It is assumed, although not proved, that this first
Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the later medieval and
the present cathedrals.
On
the death of Sæberht in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Mellitus
from London, and the East Saxons reverted to paganism. The fate of the
first cathedral building is unknown.
Christianity was restored among the East Saxons in the late 7th century and it is presumed that either the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was
restored or a new building erected as the seat of bishops such as Cedd,
Wine and Earconwald, the last of whom was buried in the cathedral in
693.
This building, or a successor, was destroyed by fire in 962, but rebuilt in the same year. KingÆthelred
the Unready was buried in the cathedral on his death in 1016; his tomb
is lost. The cathedral was burnt, with much of the city, in a fire in 1087, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The present structure of St Peter upon Cornhill was designed by Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of London in 1666. It stands upon the highest point in the area of old Londinium, and medieval legends tie it to the city's earliest Christian community.
In
1995, however, a large and ornate 5th-century building on Tower Hill
was excavated, which might have been the city's cathedral.
On 2 December 1697, 31 years and 3 months after the Great Fire destroyed Old St Paul's,
the new cathedral was consecrated for use. The Right Reverend Henry
Compton, Bishop of London, preached the sermon. It was based on the text
of Psalm 122, I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord. The first regular service was held on the following Sunday.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing in the Cumberland Hotel. She has decided to listen to some music and she has chosen MarianneFaithfull, one of her favourite singers.
Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (born 29 December 1946-30 January 2025) wasan English singer, songwriter, and actress.She achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her hit single AsTears GoBy and became one of the lead female artists during the British Invasion in the United States.
Born in Hampstead, London, Marianne Faithfull
began her career in 1964 after attending a Rolling Stones party, where
she was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham. After the release of her hit
single As Tears Go By, she became an international star. Her debut album Marianne Faithfull (1965), released simultaneously with her album Come My Way, was a commercial success followed by a number of albums on Decca Records.
From
1966 to 1970, she had a highly publicised romantic relationship with
Mick Jagger. Her popularity was further enhanced by her film roles, such
as I'll NeverForget What's'isname (1967), The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), and Hamlet(1969).
However, her popularity was overshadowed by personal problems in the
1970s. During that time she was anorexic, homeless, and a heroin addict.
Noted for her distinctive voice,
Marianne Faithfull's previously melodic and higher registered vocals,
which were prevalent throughout her career in the 1960s, were affected
by severe laryngitis, coupled with persistent drug abuse during the
1970s, permanently altering her voice, leaving it raspy, cracked and
lower in pitch. This new sound was praised as whisky soaked by some
critics for helping capture the raw emotions expressed in her music.
After a long commercial absence, Marianne Faithfull made a comeback with the 1979 release of her critically acclaimed album Broken English. The album was a commercial success and marked a resurgence of her musical career. BrokenEnglish earned Faithfull a nomination for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and is often regarded as her definitive recording.
She followed with a series of albums, including Dangerous Acquaintances (1981), A Child's Adventure (1983), and Strange Weather (1987). Faithfull also wrote three books about her life: Faithfull: An Autobiography (1994), Memories, Dreams& Reflections (2007), and Marianne Faithfull: A Life on Record (2014).
Marianne Faithfull is listed on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll
list. She received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009
Women's World Awards and was made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres by the government of France.
Faithfull was born in Hampstead,
London. Her half-brother is artist Simon Faithfull. Her father, Major
Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British intelligence officer and professor
of Italian Literature at Bedford College of London University. Robert
Glynn Faithfull's family lived in Ormskirk, Lancashire, while he
completed a doctorate at Liverpool University.
Faithfull's
mother, Eva, was the daughter of an Austro-Hungarian nobleman, Artur
Wolfgang, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1875–1953). Eva chose to style
herself as Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso.
Faithfull began her singing career in 1964,
landing her first gigs as a folk music performer in coffeehouses. She
soon began taking part in London's exploding social scene. In early 1964
she attended a Rolling Stones launch party with artist John Dunbar and
met Andrew Loog Oldham, who discovered her. Her first major release, As Tears Go By,
was written and composed by Jagger, Keith Richards, and Oldham, and
became a chart success. The Rolling Stones recorded their own version
one year later, which also became successful. She then released a series
of successful singles, including This LittleBird, Summer Nights, and Come and Stay With Me.
Faithfull
married John Dunbar on 6 May 1965 in Cambridge with Peter Asher as the
best man. The couple lived in a flat at 29 Lennox Gardens in Belgravia
just off Knightsbridge, London SW1. On 10 November 1965, she gave birth
to their son, Nicholas. She left her husband shortly after to live with
Mick Jagger.
Faithfull
lived on London's Soho streets for two years, suffering from heroin
addiction and anorexia nervosa. Friends intervened and enrolled her in
an NHS drug programme, from which she could get her daily fix on
prescription from a chemist. She failed at controlling or stabilising
her addiction at that time.
In 1971, producer Mike Leander found her on the streets and made an attempt to revive her career, producing part of her album Rich Kid Blues. The album was shelved until 1985.
Severe laryngitis, coupled with persistent drug abuse during this period, permanently altered Faithfull's voice, leaving it cracked and lower in pitch. While the new sound was praised as whisky soaked by some critics, journalist John Jones, of the Sunday Times, wrote that she had permanently vulgarised her voice.
In 1975 she released the country-influenced record Dreamin' My Dreams (a.k.a. Faithless), which reached No.1 on the Irish Albums Chart.
Faithfull
moved into a squat without hot water or electricity in Chelsea with
then-boyfriend Ben Brierly, of the punk band the Vibrators. She later
shared flats in Chelsea and Regent's Park with Henrietta Moraes.
In 1979, the same year she was arrested for marijuana possession in Norway, Faithfull's career returned full force with the album Broken English,
one of her most critically hailed albums. Partially influenced by the
punk explosion and her marriage to Brierly in the same year, it ranged
from the punk-pop sounds of the title track, which addressed terrorism
in Europe, being dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof, to the punk-reggae rhythms
of Why D'Ya Do It?, a song with aggressive lyrics adapted from a poem by Heathcote Williams.
Faithfull began living in New York after the release of the follow-up to Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances, in 1981.
When Roger Waters assembled an all-star cast of musicians to perform the rock opera The Wall live in Berlin in July 1990, Faithfull played the part of Pink's overprotective mother.
As her fascination with the music of Weimar-era Germany continued, Faithfull performed in The Threepenny Opera at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, playing Pirate Jenny. Her interpretation of the music led to a new album, Twentieth CenturyBlues (1996), which focused on the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht as well as Noël Coward, followed in 1998 by a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins,
with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell
Davies. A hugely successful concert and cabaret tour accompanied by Paul
Trueblood at the piano, culminated in the filming, at the Montreal Jazz
Festival, of the DVD Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill.
Faithfull released several albums in the 2000s that received positive critical response, beginning with Vagabond Ways
(1999), which was produced and recorded by Mark Howard. It included
collaborations with Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Pink Floyd's Roger
Waters, and writer and friend Frank McGuinness. Later that year she sang
Love Got Lost on Joe Jackson's Night and Day II.
During a webchat hosted by The Guardian on 1 February 2016, Faithfull revealed plans to release a live album from her 50th anniversary tour. She also had ideas for a follow-up for Give My Love to London, but had no intention of recording new material for at least a year and a half.
Faithfull's most recent album, Negative Capability, was released in November 2018. It featured Rob Ellis, Warren Ellis, Nick Cave, Ed Harcourt, and Mark Lanegan.
Camden Town, often shortened to Camden, is anarea in the LondonBorough of Camden, around 4.1 km north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London.
Laid out as a residential district from 1791 and originally part of the manor of Kentish Town and the parish of St Pancras, Camden Town became an important location during the early development of the railways, which reinforced its position on the London
canal network. The area's industrial economic base has been replaced by
service industries such as retail, tourism and entertainment. The area
now hosts street markets and music venues associated with alternative
culture.
Camden Town is named after Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. His earldom was styled after his estate, Camden Place near Chislehurst in Kent (now in the London Borough of Bromley), formerly owned by historian William Camden. The name, which appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822, was later applied to the early-20th-century Camden Town Group of artists and the LondonBorough of Camden, created in 1965.
The emergence of the industrial revolution in the 19th century meant Camden was
the North Western Railway's terminal stop in 1837. It was where goods
were transported off the tracks and onto the roads of London by 250 000 workhorses. The whole area was adapted to a transportation function: the Roundhouse (1846), Camden Lock and the Stables were examples of this.
Camden Town stands on land that was once the manor of Kentish Town. Sir Charles Pratt, a radical 18th-century lawyer and politician, acquired the manor through marriage.
In 1791, he started granting leases for houses to be built in the manor.
In 1816, the Regent's Canal was built through the area. Up to at least the mid-20th century, Camden Town was considered an unfashionable locality.
The Camden Markets, which started in 1973 and have grown since then, attract many visitors.
On 9 February 2008, Camden Canal market suffered a major fire, but there were no injuries. It later reopened as Camden Lock Village, until closed in 2015 for redevelopment.
Camden Town was contained within the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras between 1900 and 1965, when it became part of the new LondonBorough of Camden, of which it is the namesake and administrative centre.
Camden Town
is on relatively flat ground at 30 m above sea level, 4.0 km
north-northwest of Charing Cross. To the north are the hills of
Hampstead and Highgate; to the west is Primrose Hill. The culverted,
subterranean River Fleet flows from its source on Hampstead Heath
through Camden Town south to the River Thames. The Regent's Canal runs through the north of Camden Town.
Camden is well known for its markets.
These date from 1974 or later, except for Inverness Street market, for
over a century a small food market serving the local community, though
by 2013 all foodstuff and produce stalls had gone and only touristy
stalls remained. Camden Lock Market proper started in a former timber yard in 1973, and is now surrounded by five more markets: Buck Street market, Stables market, Camden Lock Village, and an indoor market in the Electric Ballroom.
The markets are a major tourist attraction at weekends,
selling goods of all types, including fashion, lifestyle, books, food,
junk/antiques and more bizarre items; they and the surrounding shops are
popular with young people, in particular, those searching for alternative clothing. While originally open on Sundays only, market activity later extended throughout the week, though concentrating on weekends.
The London Eye or the Millennium Wheel, is a cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London.
It
is Europe's tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and is the most
popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75
million visitors annually, and has made many appearances in popular
culture.
The structure is 135 metres tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 metres. When
it opened to the public in 2000 it was the world's tallest Ferris
wheel. Its height was surpassed by the 160-metre Star of Nanchang in
2006, the 165-metre Singapore Flyer in 2008, and the 167-metre-tall High
Roller (Las Vegas) in 2014. Supported by an A-frame on one side only,
unlike the taller Nanchang and Singapore wheels, the Eye is described by
its operators as the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel.
The London Eye used to offer the highest public viewing point in London
until it was superseded by the 245-metre-high observation deck on the
72nd floor of The Shard, which opened to the public on 1 February 2013. The
London Eye adjoins the western end of Jubilee Gardens, previously the
site of the former Dome of Discovery, on the South Bank of the River
Thames between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge beside County
Hall, in the London Borough of Lambeth.
The London Eye was designed by the husband-and-wife team of JuliaBarfield and David Marks
of Marks Barfield Architects. Mace was responsible for construction
management, with Hollandia as the main steelwork contractor and Tilbury
Douglas as the civil contractor. Consulting engineers Tony Gee &
Partners designed the foundation works while Beckett Rankine designed
the marine works.
The rim of the Eye
is supported by tensioned steel cables and resembles a huge spoked
bicycle wheel. The lighting was re-done with LED lighting from Color
Kinetics in December 2006 to allow digital control of the lights as
opposed to the manual replacement of gels over fluorescent tubes.
The wheel was constructed in sections which were floated up the Thames
on barges and assembled lying flat on piled platforms in the river.
Once the wheel was complete it was lifted into an upright position by a
strand jack system made by Enerpac. It was first raised at 2 degrees per
hour until it reached 65 degrees, then left in that position for a week
while engineers prepared for the second phase of the lift.
The project was European with major components coming from six countries: the steel was supplied from the UK and fabricated in TheNetherlands by the Dutch company Hollandia, the cables came from Italy, the bearings came from Germany (FAG/Schaeffler Group), the spindle and hub were cast in the Czech Republic, the capsules were made by Poma in France and the glass for these came from Italy, and the electrical components from the UK.
The London Eye
was formally opened by the Prime Minister Tony Blair on 31 December
1999, but did not open to the paying public until 9 March 2000 because
of a capsule clutch problem.
The nearest London Underground station is Waterloo, although Charing Cross, Embankment, and Westminster are also within easy walking distance.
Connection with National Rail services is made at London Waterloo station and London Waterloo East station.
London River Services operated by Thames Clippers and City Cruises stop at the London Eye Pier.
Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have visited the British Museum and has been learning about one of the most exciting themes that mix Linguistics and History, the Rosetta Stone.
It has been an interesting visit to know about Egyptian hieroglyphics, and to compare with modern ones:crosswordsand wordsearch.
Before this visit, the family has been studying some grammar with To Be verb in present and There is / There are. They have been talking about Jan Petit'ssong origins and the importance of left-handers in our history in a tribute to our Núria Winsor.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period
and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple,
possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or
during the Mameluk period, and was eventually used as building material
in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta.
It was discovered there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.
It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern
times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslatedhieroglyphic script.
Lithographic
copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums
and scholars. When the British defeated the French they took the stone
to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. It has been on
public display at the British Museum almost continuously since 1802 and is the most visited object there.
Study
of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation
of the Greek text was published in 1803. Jean-François Champollion
announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822;
it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian
inscriptions and literature confidently.
Major
advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three
versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic
characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did
so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (1814); and
that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words
(1822–1824).
Three
other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and
several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now
known, including three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC.
The Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation.
The term Rosetta Stone is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.
The Rosetta Stone is listed as a stone of black granodiorite, bearing threeinscriptions...
found at Rosetta in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts
discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in
1801.
At
some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured
in white chalk to make them more legible, and the remaining surface was
covered with a layer of carnauba wax designed to protect it from
visitors'fingers.
This
gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification
as black basalt.These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned
in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle
of its crystalline structure, and a pink vein running across the top
left corner.
Comparisons with the Klemm collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a closeresemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry at Gebel Tingar on
the west bank of the Nile, west of Elephantine in the region of Aswan;
the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.
The Rosetta Stone
is 1,123 millimetres high at its highest point, 757 mm wide, and 284 mm
thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms. It bears three
inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second in the Egyptian Demotic script,and the third in Ancient Greek.
The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on
it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly
worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele
was erected.
The
Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments
were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged
state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed
of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14
lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on
the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle
register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which
the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register
of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full;
the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the
bottom right of the stone.
The full length of the hieroglyphic text
and the total size of the original stele, of which the Rosetta Stone is a
fragment, can be estimated based on comparable stelae that have
survived, including other copies of the same order.
The
slightly earlier decree of Canopus, erected in 238 BC during the reign
of Ptolemy III, is 2,190 millimetres high and 820 mm wide, and contains
36 lines of hieroglyphic text, 73 of demotic text, and 74 of Greek. The
texts are of similar length. From such comparisons, it can be estimated
that an additional 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic inscription are
missing from the top register of the RosettaStone, amounting to another
300 millimetres.
In
addition to the inscriptions, there would probably have been a scene
depicting the king being presented to the gods, topped with a winged
disc, as on the Canopus Stele. These parallels, and a hieroglyphic sign
for stela on the stone itself, suggest that it originally had a
rounded top.The height of the original stele is estimated to have been
about 149 centimetres.
The
stele was erected after the coronation of King Ptolemy V and was
inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new
ruler. The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered at
Memphis. The date is given as 4 Xandikos in the Macedonian calendar
and 18 Mekhir in the Egyptian calendar, which corresponds to 27 March
196 BC. The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign,
equated with 197/196 BC, which is confirmed by naming four priests who
officiated in that year: Aetos son of Aetos was priest of the divine
cults of Alexander the Great and the five Ptolemies down to Ptolemy V
himself; the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are
those who led the worship of Berenice Euergetis (wife of Ptolemy III),
Arsinoe Philadelphos (wife and sister of Ptolemy II), and Arsinoe
Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V.
However,
a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts,
corresponding to 27 November 197 BC, the official anniversary of
Ptolemy's coronation. The demotic text conflicts with this, listing
consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary. It is
uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree
was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule
of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.
Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt inspired a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France.
A corps of 167 technical experts (savants), known as the Commission des
Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to
Egypt.
On
15 July 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul
were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles
north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta, modern-day Rashid. Lieutenant Pierre-FrançoisBouchard
spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had
uncovered. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and
informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.
The
find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association
in Cairo, the Institut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel
Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in
hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the
three inscriptions were versions of the same text.
Lancret's
report, dated 19 July 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon
after 25 July. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for
examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already
begun to be called la Pierre de Rosette, the Rosetta Stone, shortly
before his return to France in August 1799.
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt,
including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and
drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to
hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British
General John Hely-Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Menou gave
in.
Scholars
Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from
England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and claimed to
have found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter
home, Clarke said that we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined.
Hutchinson
claimed that all materials were property of the British Crown, but
French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire told Clarke and Hamilton
that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them
over, referring ominously to the destruction of the Library of
Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to
Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history
specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.
Menou
quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property. Hutchinson was
equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim.
Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was
incorporated into the Capitulation of Alexandria signed by representatives of the British, French, and Ottoman forces.
It
is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands,
as contemporary accounts differ. Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who
was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized
it from Menou and carried it away on a gun-carriage.
In
a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French officer and member of the Institute had taken him, his student John
Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's
residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among
Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the
stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed
at once and the stone was taken away -possibly by Turner and his
gun-carriage.
The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.
Prior
to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment,
the ancient Egyptian language and script had not been understood since
shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire.
The usage of the hieroglyphic script
had become increasingly specialised even in the later Pharaonic period;
by the 4th century AD, few Egyptians were capable of reading them.
Monumental
use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was
converted to Christianity; the last known inscription is dated to 24
August 394, found at Philae and known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom.
The last demotic text, also from Philae, was written in 452.
The Greek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point.
Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar
with details of its use in the Hellenistic period as a government
language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greek papyri
were a long way in the future.
At
the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholar Johan
David Åkerblad was working on a little-known script of which some
examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known as
demotic. He called it cursive Coptic because he was
convinced that it was used to record some form of the Coptic language,
the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian, although it had few
similarities with the later Coptic script.
In
1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student about Chinese
script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made by Georg Zoëga in
1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might
be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761,
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the characters enclosed in
cartouches in hieroglyphicinscriptions were proper names.
Thus, when Thomas Young, foreign secretary of the Royal Society of
London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy
suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.
Calls for the Rosetta Stone to be returned to Egypt were made
in July 2003 by Zahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities. These calls, expressed in the Egyptian and
international media, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt,
commenting that it was the icon of our Egyptian identity.
He
repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as
one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list
which also included: the iconic bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum
of Berlin; a statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu in the
Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; the Dendera Temple
Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris; and the bust of Ankhhaf in the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have been visiting Hyde Park, in Westminster. The park is in front of the hotel and they have been studying some English grammar with the Order ofAdjectives, Saxon Genitive and Prepositions of Time before walking across it and taking some tea with some delicious sweet round Arabian cookies made by OsamaWinsor.
Hyde Park is thehistoric urban park in Westminster. It
is located in front of their hotel and they have decided to walk slowly
and see all the details that this place offers carefully. It has been an interesting morning. They have been studying some English Grammar with the Adverbs of Manner and SaxonGenitive,
and talking about how much information can give our surname about our
past and our origins. Finally, they have been preparing some necessary
things to spend this afternoon together sailing across theThamesis
river. They want to have fun.
Hyde Park is a 140 ha, historic Grade I-listed urban park in Westminster, Greater London. A Royal Park,
it is the largest of the parks and green spaces that form a chain from
Kensington Palace through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, via Hyde
Park Corner and Green Park, past Buckingham Palace to St James's Park.
Hyde Park is divided by the Serpentine and the Long Water lakes.
The park was established by Henry VIII in 1536 when he took the land from Westminster Abbey and used it as a hunting ground.
It opened to the public in 1637
and quickly became popular, particularly for May Day parades. Major
improvements occurred in the early 18th century under the direction of
Queen Caroline. The park also became a place for duels during this time,
often involving members of the nobility.
In
the 19th century, The Great Exhibition of 1851 was held in the park,
for which The Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton, was erected.
Free speech and demonstrations have been a key feature of Hyde Park since the 19th century. Speakers' Corner
has been established as a point of free speech and debate since 1872,
while the Chartists, the Reform League, the suffragettes, and the Stop
the War Coalition have all held protests there.
In
the late 20th century, the park was known for holding large-scale free
rock music concerts, featuring artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Pink
Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Queen. Major events in the park have
continued into the 21st century, such as Live 8 in 2005, and the annual
Hyde Park Winter Wonderland from 2007.
The park's name comes from the Manor of Hyde,
which was the northeast sub-division of the manor of Eia (the other two
sub-divisions were Ebury and Neyte) and appears as such in the Domesday
Book.
The name is believed to be of Saxon origin, and means a unit of land,
the hide, that was appropriate for the support of a single family and
dependents. Through the Middle Ages, it was property of Westminster
Abbey, and the woods in the manor were used both for firewood and
shelter for game.
The Wellington Arch was extensively restored by English Heritage between 1999 and 2001. It is now open to the public, who can see a view of the parks from its platforms above the porticoes.
The surname Foster is a variation of the name Forster, meaning one who works in the forest. It may also derive from the French forcetier, meaning maker of scissors.
The Foster surname is predominantly English, where it has been recorded in use from the 1100s onwards. Foster derives as an occupational surname from a number of sources. Firstly it comes from a forester, the name for a forest warden or gamekeeper. Secondly the surname Foster is believed to derive from the Old English Forseter (shearer), given to those who shear sheep and their descendants. Most rarely, Foster has been hypothesised to relate to a 'fosterer', someone who feeds and looks after children in place of their parents.
Today, The Winsors & TheGrandma
havetalked about the MetropolitanRailway,that was so important during the WWII to protect Londoners from the enemy bombs. Before this, the family has been practising some English grammar with the TheArticle and the Gerunds.
The Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) was a passenger and goodsrailway that servedLondon from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex suburbs. Its first line connected the main-line railway termini at Paddington, Euston, and King's Cross to the City.
The first section was built beneath the New Road using cut-and-cover between Paddington and King's Cross and in tunnel and cuttings beside FarringdonRoad from King'sCross to near Smithfield,
near the City. It opened to the public on 10 January 1863 with gas-lit
wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives, the world's first
passenger-carrying designated underground railway.
The line was soon extended from both ends, and northwards via a branch from Baker Street. Southern branches, directly served, reached Hammersmith in 1864, Richmond in 1877 and the original completed the Inner Circle in 1884.
The most important route was northwest into the Middlesex countryside, stimulating the development of new suburbs. Harrow
was reached in 1880, and from 1897, having achieved the early patronage
of the Duke of Buckingham and the owners of Waddesdon Manor, services
extended for many years to VerneyJunction in Buckinghamshire.
Electric
traction was introduced in 1905 and by 1907 electric multiple units
operated most of the services, though electrification of outlying
sections did not occur until decades later. Unlike other railway
companies in the London area, the Met developed land for housing, and
after World War I promoted housing estates near the railway using the Metro-land brand.
On
1 July 1933, the Met was amalgamated with the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and the capital's tramway and bus operators
to form the London Passenger Transport Board.
Former Met tracks and stations are used by the London Underground's Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly, Jubilee and Victoria lines, and by Chiltern Railways and Great Northern.
In
the first half of the 19th century the population and physical extent of
London grew greatly. The increasing resident population and the
development of a commuting population arriving by train each day led to a
high level of traffic congestion with huge numbers of carts, cabs, and
omnibuses filling the roads and up to 200,000 people entering the City
of London, the commercial heart, each day on foot.
By
1850 there were seven railway termini around the urban centre of
London: London Bridge and Waterloo to the south, Shoreditch and
Fenchurch Street to the east, Euston and King's Cross to the north, and
Paddington to the west. Only Fenchurch Street station was within the
City.
The congested streets and the
distance to the City from the stations to the north and west prompted
many attempts to get parliamentary approval to build new railway lines
into the City. None were successful, and the 1846 Royal Commission
investigation into Metropolitan Railway Termini banned construction of
new lines or stations in the built-up central area.
The concept of an underground railway linking the City
with the mainline termini was first proposed in the 1830s. Charles
Pearson, Solicitor to the City, was a leading promoter of several
schemes and in 1846 proposed a central railway station to be used by
multiple railway companies.
The scheme was rejected by the 1846 commission, but Pearson returned to the idea in 1852 when he helped set up the City Terminus Company to build a railway from Farringdon to King'sCross.
The plan was supported by the City, but the railway companies were not interested and the company struggled to proceed.
The
Bayswater, Paddington, and Holborn Bridge Railway Company was
established to connect the Great Western Railway's (GWR's) Paddington
station to Pearson's route at King's Cross. A bill was published in
November 1852 and in January 1853 the directors held their first meeting
and appointed John Fowler as its engineer.
After
successful lobbying, the company secured parliamentary approval under
the name of the North Metropolitan Railway in mid-1853. The bill
submitted by the City Terminus Company was rejected by Parliament, which
meant that the NorthMetropolitan Railway would not be able to reach
the City: to overcome this obstacle, the company took over the City
Terminus Company and submitted a new bill in November 1853. This dropped
the City terminus and extended the route south from Farringdon to the
General Post Office in St.Martin's Le Grand.
The route at the western end was
also altered so that it connected more directly to the GWR station.
Permission was sought to connect to the London and NorthWestern Railway
(LNWR) at Euston and to the Great Northern Railway (GNR) at King's
Cross, the latter by hoists and lifts. The company's name was also to be
changed again, to Metropolitan Railway. Royal assent was granted to the
North Metropolitan Railway Act on 7 August 1854.
Construction of the railway was
estimated to cost £1 million. Initially, with the Crimean War under way,
the Met found it hard to raise the capital. While it attempted to raise
the funds it presented new bills to Parliament seeking an extension of
time to carry out the works.
In July 1855, an Act to make a direct connection to the GNR at King's Cross received royal assent. The plan was modified in 1856 by the Metropolitan (Great Northern Branch and Amendment) Act and in 1860 by the Great Northern & Metropolitan Junction Railway Act.
Board
of Trade inspections took place in late December 1862 and early January
1863 to approve the railway for opening. After minor signalling changes
were made, approval was granted and a few days of operating trials were
carried out before the grand opening on 9 January 1863, which included a
ceremonial run from Paddington and a large banquet for 600 shareholders and guests at Farringdon. Charles Pearson did not live to see the completion of the project; he died in September 1862.
The 6 km railway opened to the public on 10 January 1863, with stations at Paddington (Bishop's Road) (now Paddington), Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road (now Great Portland Street), Gower Street (now Euston Square), King's Cross (now King's Cross St Pancras), and Farringdon Street (now Farringdon).
The railway was hailed a success, carrying 38,000 passengers on the opening day, using GNR
trains to supplement the service. In the first 12 months 9.5 million
passengers were carried and in the second 12 months this increased to 12
million.
The
original timetable allowed 18 minutes for the journey. Off-peak service
frequency was every 15 minutes, increased to ten minutes during the
morning peak and reduced 20 minutes in the early mornings and after 8
pm. From May 1864, workmen's returns were offered on the 5:30 am and
5:40 am services from Paddington at the cost of a single ticket.
I just like being on my own on trains, traveling. I spent all my pocket money travelling the London Underground and Southern Railway, what used to be the Western region, and in Europe as much as I could afford it. My parents used to think I was going places, but I wasn't, I was just travelling the trains.
Today, The Grandma has been reading some Arthur Conan Doyle's books, and she has enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and his relationwith Scotland Yard,the MetropolitanPolice ofLondon that was founded in 1829.
The Metropolitan Police Service
(MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police and
informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard, is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement in the Metropolitan Police District, whichconsists of the 32 London boroughs. The MPD does not include the square mile of the City of London, which is policed by the much smaller City of London Police. The Met
also has significant national responsibilities, such as co-ordinating
and leading on UK-wide national counter-terrorism matters and protecting
the Royal Family, certain members of Her Majesty's Government and
others as deemed appropriate.
As the police force for the capital, the Met
has significant unique responsibilities and challenges within its
police area, such as protecting 164 foreign embassies and High
Commissions, policing London City and Heathrow Airports, policing and
protecting the Palace of Westminster, and dealing with significantly
more protests and events than any other force in the country, with 3,500
such events in 2016.
The
force, by officer numbers, is the largest in the United Kingdom by a
significant margin, and one of the biggest in the world. Leaving its
national responsibilities aside, the Met has the eighth-smallest
police area (primary geographic area of responsibility) of the
territorial police forces in the United Kingdom.
The force is led by the Commissioner,
whose formal title is the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. The
Commissioner is answerable, responsible and accountable to The Queen,
the Home Office and the Mayor of London, through the Mayor's Office for
Policing and Crime. The post of Commissioner was first held jointly by
Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne. Dame Cressida Dick was
appointed Commissioner in April 2017.
A number of informal names and abbreviations are applied to the Metropolitan Police Service, the most common being the Met. In colloquial London (or Cockney) slang, it is sometimes referred to as the Old Bill.
The
Met is also referred to as Scotland Yard after the location of its
original headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall.
The Met's current headquarters is New Scotland Yard, situated on the Victoria Embankment.
The
Metropolitan Police Service was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under
the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 and on 29 September of that year, thefirst constables of the service appeared on the streets of London.
Ten years later, Metropolitan Police Act 1839 consolidated policing within London
by expanding the Metropolitan Police District and either abolishing or
amalgamating the various other law enforcement entities within London into the Metropolitan Police such as the Thames River Police, which had been formed in 1800, and the end of the Bow Street Runners and Horse Patrol.
Since January 2012, the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC).
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