Musings - Charing Cross Road - London

I wandered over to Charing Cross Road, once famous for its collection of fine specialty and antiquarian booksellers. It is now just like any other street, selling DVDs and fast food. There are only about four bookshops and the prices are hideous. Used books that I would find at home for 25 cents are ten dollars or more here. I never found a single book to read with a cost benefit ratio that suited me. The road is certainly far removed from the one described in the endearing play “84 Charing Cross Road”, the attendants now being brusque and pre-occupied. It is a major commentary on how secular England has become, in that a couple of shops told me they had no religious books out and had them boxed up. Two other shops had very minimal offerings. I never saw a single book by any of the fine Christian writers of the past hundred years. I would like to have found a single volume of any sort by Chesterton, Merton, Nouwen, Lewis, MacDonald – even one by some of the popular American Christian writers, such as Lucado or Swindoll.

I did make the happy discovery while poking around of a newly opening Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is in its last day of preview, which means I got a seat in the center for $15. The practice here is to offer a few weeks of preview on a new show at big discounts so that people will act as free advertising for the show. I had not planned to go see any plays this time in London as I have a season series in Atlanta for six musicals but with movies here costing $13.50, I figure it sure is worth $15 to see a fine live play.

I went to the British Museum, figuring to see all of the grand paintings of JMW Turner and Rembrandt, only to find out that the British Museum and the British National Museum are quite different institutions and in all of these years I had, in fact, never been in the British Museum. What I found was a vast archeology collection on four floors. Unbelievably, there is no restriction on photography (even flash) inside the museum. I have never heard of such a thing. I got a major bonus in that a very fine Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, and Toltec exhibition from Middle America was up. I spent fully an hour photographing everything in it (without flash) and also making pictures of all the descriptive texts and maps. This will increase the quality of my Mayan lecture by orders of magnitude.

I was also amazed to find the Rosetta stone housed here and I was able to make macro images of all three writing forms on it. My camera is not at all irritated by glass display cases. I wandered on further and found that virtually the entire original frieze of the Parthenon is installed to full scale in here. It seems one of Britain’s big boys helped himself to it back in 1819 and brought it back. Actually, when he found it, it was strewn about on the ground. The Turks had used the Parthenon as a gun powder magazine in 1679 and blew the place up accidentally. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that this frieze work could be the impetus for a complete restoration of one of the most significant buildings standing on earth. Alas, the heavily polluted air of Athens would destroy it in a few decades and at least it is now in a climate controlled environment and well preserved. I find it really strange how stuff ends up in museums in other countries where it really does not belong.

There is a grand collection of materials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and nearby regions, dating back 6,000 years. Sadly, with the destruction of the Great Iraq Museum, this collection I saw today will become even more important. The museum in Iraq could have been protected from total destruction by a mere ten coalition soldiers. They had been warned in advance the museum was at risk of being ransacked. It was a bittersweet experience being in museums today, knowing the incredible museums that have been lost in the past couple of years. The Taliban destroyed the contents of the great archeology museum in Kabul several years ago (some 6,000 items). Six years ago the insurgency in Cambodia cut up parts of Angor Wat with chain saws, the grandest archeological site on the planet, and sold it off for weapons.

I was heartened to see that the magnificent reading room of about two hundred years has been completely rebuilt and is now open freely to anyone who wishes to take a reader’s card. It reminds me of the vast space in the Bodelian Library at Oxford – breathtaking.

I walked a few blocks further down and went into the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. This proved a haunting experience for me. The four floors of the place are paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of people who have made their lives count in a major way for the betterment of the world. I found myself getting rather introspective, especially when viewing the portraits and descriptions of men and women who had made great contributions in the fields of science and medicine. I wondered greatly again about what might have been in my own life, if a few things had turned out even slightly differently for me. It was almost like having a bit of a mid-life crisis while walking through those grand halls. There is a major driver in my psyche that really wants to make a major contribution to the world condition, but I have never gotten the focus to make this happen. I don’t know that I am driven by fame as much as the idea that those of us who have been gifted with fine educations and opportunities have a major responsibility to give them back to the world in an enhanced form. I don’t often have the sense that I am giving anything of consequence back to anyone, certainly not in a way that is commensurate with my education and experience.

Think I need a good ale or strong lager.