What have I missed the most? London buses, the familiar red double deckers that I adored as a child, climbing up stairs in the hope of finding a seat at the very front, so I could observe everything from on high. The Docklands Light Railway, which thrilled my nephew as a child, as it was driverless. The markets - Portobello for antiques, Columbia Road for flowers, Brick Lane for vintage and Camden for pure nostalgia…
The gold standard of travel writing, for me, has got to be Paul Theroux, whose epic train journey in the 1970′s became a best-seller in the form of his book “The Great Railway Bazaar.” Setting out from Victoria Station, Theroux took one train after another as far as the Far East, traveling through Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, onto India, Burma and Vietnam...
My favourite piece in the Library, without a doubt, has to be the Astronomical Clock. Deigned by Raingo in Paris, it has been French polished to a marble finish It’s a highly complex mechanism. showing an intricate model of the solar system...the rotation of the earth on its axis and the phases of the moon...
