Tower Bridge at Sunset
Dear Readers, on Saturday we went to the Tower of London for a concert of Christmas music by the Choir of the Chapels Royal. What a treat it was! And what a treat it was to walk the streets of London, my favourite city in the whole world. You might have read that it’s a hellhole descending into anarchy, or you might have heard that it’s under Sharia law. Need I say that neither is true? It always impresses me how people from all over the world just rub along together enjoying what the city has to offer. Unless you stand on the left-hand side of an escalator, obviously.
It always surprises me how large the Tower of London complex is once you get inside. The oldest part of the Tower was built in Norman times, but many other monarchs cheerfully knocked things down and put up new bits, until we get the hodge-podge that we have today. It was very exciting to be going into the Tower just as everybody else was getting thrown out, and I took advantage of being in the queue to take a few photos.
Once inside we headed for the Church of St Peter ad Vincula – the list of people buried here reads like a who’s who of Tudor England. They include Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas More (though his head is buried in Canterbury, apparently). We had little time to admire the building, however, as the seating was ‘first come, first served’, and the area where the choir was to sing is slightly off centre, meaning that those who came last probably wouldn’t be able to see them.
Outside the Church of St Peter ad Vincula
The choir sang a wonderful selection of Christmas songs, from ‘Puer nobis nascitur’, written in the fourteenth century, through to a Puer Nobis written by Richard Rodney Bennett who died in 2012. I have a great fondness for Vaughan Williams’ ‘Fantasia on Christmas Carols’, so was glad to hear it being performed by such an exemplary choir. The songs were interspersed by readings by Henry Goodman, best known as Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister – he did a masterful job of reading the end of ‘A Christmas Carol’, the part where Scrooge wakes up and discovers that he can do good in the world. He also read John Julius Norwich’s ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, in which the ever increasing panoply of unlikely gifts from her suitor drives a young woman to legal action.
What a treat the whole thing was! And then we were out into the Tower of London again, and darkness had fallen. What a magical city London is.
