Posts Tagged Cultural trips
The seven wonders of Wales
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 1, 2010
An old rhyme gives Dixe Wills the excuse to celebrate an overlooked corner of Wales on St David's Day
"Pistyll Rhaeadr and Wrexham steeple,
Snowdon's mountain without its people,
Overton yew trees, St Winefride's wells,
Llangollen bridge and Gresford bells"
Penned by an anonymous 18th-century English traveller, this piece of doggerel, called the Seven Wonders of Wales, probably owes its survival to the fact that, unlike the Eight Wonders of the World, all the Welsh marvels cited are still with us. Furthermore, since six of them are in a small pocket in the north-east of the country, you can collect the set in a long weekend.
So it was that I found myself cycling high into the Berwyn Mountains in search of Pistyll Rhaeadr, a waterfall, which at 240 feet, is a true Welsh wonder. There can't be many outdoor attractions that are best seen in the rain, but a waterfall is one of them. High above my head, the rain-swollen river Rhaeadr tumbled over the precipice in thick silver threads. A further six hours of solid downpour rather took the edge off my exultation.
The cosiness of Cornerstones – an extraordinary B&B that has fused together three of Llangollen's 16th-century houses – was thus a welcome sight, and I was soon looking down at a heron stalking the River Dee, just a couple of wing flaps from the medieval Llangollen bridge.
Of course, not everyone can get excited about the art of spanning rivers. However, even the least ardent fan would have to admit to the graciousness of these particular arches, each one a slightly different size to fit neatly on to the rocks below. But it's the setting that really makes it – Llangollen's jumble of black-and-white houses swiftly giving way to wooded hills beyond – and in the glorious morning sunshine the pinky fawn stones positively shone in the morning sunlight.
The rest of my day was to be spent with yews, a steeple, a set of bells and some curative waters – not always the first things that spring to mind when considering wonders. However, I will confess that there is something about the way that yews rage against the dying of the light: some managing it for thousand of years. The 23 standing guard around Overton's St Mary's church are relative youngsters but some still go back to the Middle Ages.
At St Giles' church in nearby Wrexham, a stone bears the faded legend, "This steeple was completed in 1506." The difficulty is that the "steeple" is clearly a tower. A very fine 147-foot sandstone tower, it has to be said and, when I went up on to its roof, I was able to testify that it also commanded extraordinary views of mountains to the west and the Dee valley to the east. However, a steeple it is not.
Once upon a time, before we all became so noisy, you would have been able to hear Gresford bells in Wrexham, even though Gresford is three miles away. Gresford's Tower Captain, Hilton Roberts, took me up a stone spiral staircase and introduced me to the monsters. Bell ringing, he told me, is a perfect fusion of music and science. Peals may have fanciful names like Stedman Triples and Yorkshire Surprise Major, but they are strictly governed by mathematical formulae. Logical thinkers they may be, but bell ringers are evidently also touched by a streak of eccentricity. We were up above the bells when Hilton, no spring chicken, suddenly jumped down on to one and started swinging on it, Tarzan-like, just so that I could hear what it sounded like. I was three yards away. It was loud.
It was another sort of madness that brought about St Winefride's well. A rejected suitor called Caradog sliced off young Winefride's head and where it fell a miraculous spring gushed forth. "People from all over the world come here now," a warden told me, kindly handing me a bottle of freshly drawn water. The well itself is a rather wonderful star-shape that feeds water to a pool in which the sick and ailing lower themselves to be healed.
I mentioned my visit to Paulene at Celyn Villa, my home from home for the night, asking her if she knew anyone who'd been miraculously cured.
"Ah well, strange you should say that," she replied. "I had a verruca for years that wouldn't respond to any treatment whatsoever. I dipped it in the pool and it went away completely."
I'm hanging on to that bottle.
Bright and early next morning the happy chatter of fellow train passengers accompanied me round the north coast to Bangor and the final wonder, Snowdon. The donkey ride from Llanberis to the top, which our poet may well have enjoyed, was replaced in 1896 by the mountain railway. I confess to having felt slightly guilty as the tiny steam engine strained to push our single carriage upwards, but this was partially assuaged by the fact that I was only going as far as Clogwyn, three-quarters of the way, where I joined a long thin line of people marching to the top.
It was quite a party at the summit: 70 or 80 of us – families, groups of friends, a school field trip, a number of very sprightly pensioners – all excited about having conquered Wales' tallest mountain. And why not? Given a clear day it's possible to see Ireland's Wicklow Mountains from here. Having arrived just before the brand new £8m summit visitor centre was officially opened, I whipped out a flask of tea for my celebratory toast: I had succeeded in visiting all seven wonders of Wales.
Or had I? The poem clearly stipulated "Snowdon's mountain without its people". Well now, I mused, as I sauntered back down to Llanberis, that would be a wonder.
Way to go
Virgin Trains Single from London to Chester from £8 return; 08457 222333; virgintrains.com. Arriva Trains Wales, single from Chester to Gobowen £6.50 return, and Bangor to Chester £22.20 return; 0870 9000773, arrivatrainswales.co.uk.
Snowdon Mountain Railway Llanberis to summit return, adult £23, child £16; 0871 7200033; snowdonrailway.co.uk.
Cornerstones B&B, Llangollen. Doubles from £70; +44 (0)1978 861569, cornerstones-guesthouse.co.uk.
Celyn Villa, Carmel Near Holywell. Doubles from £56; +44 (0)1352 710853, celynvilla.co.uk.
St Winefride's Well, Holywell. Adult 80p, child 20p; +44 (0)1352 713054, saintwinefrideswell.com.
Luke Harding on Moscow’s plan to demolish artists’ village
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on February 16, 2010
Luke Harding on Moscow's plan to demolish artists' village
The knowledge: London’s hidden architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 20, 2010
Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey discovers three exquisite places of worship sitting in the shadows of the Square Mile's financial giants
The knowledge: London’s secret buildings
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 14, 2010
Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey discovers three exquisite places of worship sitting in the shadows of the Square Mile's financial giants
Ouseburn: the beating art of Newcastle
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 4, 2010
Ouseburn's once derelict factories and warehouses are buzzing again with artists' studios, music venues and cinemas. Stephen Emms guides us around
Ouseburn was, until 10 years ago, a monument to an industrial past, its derelict factories, red-brick warehouses and mills lurking in the shadow of Victorian bridges and viaducts less than a mile from Newcastle city centre. Now, this picturesque valley, either side of the river Ouse (once used to carry coal by boat from Spital Tongues down to waiting barges on the Tyne), is the creative heart of Newcastle.
Following years of post-industrial decline, its regeneration, kick-started by community-driven enterprise rather than corporate business (the Ouseburn Trust in partnership with the local authority), has given the area's unique architecture and riverside setting a new lease of life – in the form of artists' studios, live music venues, an independent cinema and galleries. Here's a quick tour to get you started.
1. Cumberland Arms
Not just the best pub in Ouseburn, but arguably the finest in Newcastle itself. Built in 1836 (owner Jo will show you the hatch where women, refused entrance to the main bar, used to be served), it's boozer heaven: wood-panelled, roaring fire, simple furniture, leaded windows, a smattering of salvaged art, and shelves heaving with paperbacks. Session ale is the "Rapper", named after the Northumberland sword dance, and there are six guests, as well as 12 types of cider. An upstairs room plays host to music, theatre and comedy. Its isolated position overlooking the valley means stunning views not only from its terrace, but also the windows of its four spacious, very comfortable bedrooms.
• James Place St, +44 (0)191 265 6151, thecumberlandarms.co.uk.Doubles from £70 a night including breakfast.
2. Star & Shadow Cinema
A converted former prop department for Tyne Tees Television, this tiny cinema is run by volunteers, from film programming and projecting, to gigs and promotion. Every year there is a charmingly named "Building Festival" where volunteers come and help build, improve and restore. One Sunday a month there is a "Make & Mend" arts, crafts and flea market. Meetings every Monday at 6pm, films every Thursday and Sunday, and gigs, films, club nights and art events programmed on Weds, Fri and Sat.
• Stepney Bank, +44 (0)191 261 0066, starandshadow.org.uk. Open daily.
3. Biscuit Factory
Britain's biggest commercial art gallery is a whopping 35,000 square feet over two floors of exhibition spaces and artists' studios. Paintings, drawings prints, ceramics, and jewellery including artists such as Emma Tooth (whose Concilium Plebis are Caravaggio-style portraits of those dismissed as "chavs and hoodies"), and Maria Rivan's stunning 3D collages. My tip is to refresh yourself at the café, which groans with inviting home-made sandwiches and cakes, while contemplating the industrial views over the Byker Wall (see below), rather than at the blandly-furnished, expensive restaurant.
• Stoddart St, +44 (0)191 261 1103, thebiscuitfactory.com. Open daily
4. The Cluny
A former whisky bottling plant a stottie's throw from Byker Bridge, The Cluny is owned by iconic party boozer the Head Of Steam (worth a visit, opposite Newcastle Central Station). As well as a live venue, which showcases both young Geordie bands and international artists, the simple main bar and lounge (runner-up in the Observer Food Monthly's awards 2006 for best quick eat in north-east) offers local ales and informal yet hearty snacks, such as good quality house salads (£6), home-made burgers (£6) and Sunday roasts (£7).
• 36 Lime Street, +44 (0)191 2304474, theheadofsteam.co.uk.
5. Seven Stories
The first museum in the UK dedicated to the art of British children's books protects the heritage of British classics for families and curious adults alike. Temporary exhibitions at the former flour mill (such as the current retrospective for Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr, which runs until May 2010) complement the permanent collection, whose earliest acquisition was Puffin Books editor (and Puffin Club founder) Kaye Webb's archive. Philip Pullman is a great supporter and has given work from the His Dark Materials trilogy and the Sally Lockhart quartet. The huge bookshop is free to enter, as is one of the best cafes in Ouseburn, which offers sleepy views over the Ouse – and great mugs of coffee.
• 30 Lime Street, + 44 (0)845 271 0777, sevenstories.org.ukpen Mon-Sat 10-5pm, £5.50 adults £4.50 children
6. Mushroom Works
The scream of gulls and clink and hammer of the docks fill the air outside this hard-to-find gallery, originally a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, in an area once known as the "Mushroom". Opened in 2004 by furniture-maker Nick James, there are 12 studios, including painters, illustrators, jewellery makers, animators, architects, and glass artists. They host eight exhibitions a year, and the shop, with its emphasis on affordability, currently stocks work by 32 artists. The Stairwell Gallery has just opened upstairs, given over to exhibitions by other artists. A 50% off "studio sale" runs from Jan 9-Feb 6.
• St Lawrence Road, +(0)191 224 4011, mushroomworks.com. Open 12pm-5pm Weds-Sat.
7. Northern Print
Northern Print began life in 1994 on Fish Quay, North Shields, and moved in 2006 to a former pottery in Ouseburn. Now a gallery and contemporary print-making studio offering affordable prints as well as classes, it's worth also spending a penny in ceramic artist Paul Scott's impressive tiled toilet. Also, don't miss the large screen-prints decorating the sides of the offices opposite.
• Stepney Bank, +44 (0)191 261 7000,northernprint.org.uk. Open Weds to Sat 12pm to 4pm.
8. Byker Wall
Set between the roar of the flyover and silence of the river, the Grade II-listed Byker Wall, a 1970s primary-coloured brick, wood and plastic-built unbroken block of 620 maisonettes, was placed on UNESCO's list of outstanding 20th-century buildings. Designed by Ralph Erskine in Functionalist Romantic style, the low-rise construction represented a break with the high-rise architectural orthodoxy of the time. Its iconic, triangular Tom Collins House is visible from miles around.
9. Victoria Tunnel
Testament to the achievement of Victorian labour, this two-mile tunnel was built in 1838 for transporting coal from Spital Tongues colliery on the Town Moor to the river Tyne, and in the second world war converted to an air-raid shelter. A short section, with its last remaining accessible entrance on Ouse Street (behind the Hotel Du Vin, see below) re-opened in 2008 to give visitors and locals an experience deep below the city.
• newcastlecommunityheritage.org.
10. Hotel Du Vin
The first hotel in Ouseburn opened in 2008 in the former headquarters of the Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company, which once served as the company's maintenance depot and storeroom. As such, a nautical theme pervades the 42 rooms, many of which have outstanding views over the Tyne Bridge. Its glass and brick bistro is the most glamorous evening eating option in Ouseburn, even if you're not a resident (great value too with two-course menus boasting locally-sourced ingredients from £15.50).
• Allan House, City Road, +44 (0)191 229 2200, hotelduvin.com/newcastle. Standard rooms from £160. On Sunday nights, spend £75 in the bistro and room is only £25 if you book online.
• Newcastle is served by East Coast Trains: for the best deal on advance fares, book online via nationalexpresseastcoast.com, or call 08457 225225.
Back on the bloc: an architectural tour of East Berlin
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 8, 2009
Twenty years after the fall of the wall, young Berliners are finding a new love for GDR architecture, which is being reclaimed for galleries, bars and clubs
Berlin has been melded back together so well over the last two decades that there are now very few obvious visual clues to the division that once was: the shiny "golf ball" TV Tower, the East Side Gallery (the longest remaining stretch of the wall), and the odd scattering of blocky GDR buildings, which defined eastern development in the 1960s when the city was in dire need of reconstruction. Although many of these East German government buildings were knocked down after 1989, and many of those that still stand are ugly, cheap monstrosities, the most iconic remaining examples of this era-defining architecture are now winning the interest of a new generation, thanks in part to the current buzz around the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down. Many young Berliners now think of the GDR era with nostalgia; it's no longer something to forget.
The distinctive buildings – clean and modernist, inspired by Bauhaus or grandly Soviet – which did away with the sharp corners and rectangles of Nazi buildings – have been adopted by businesses, and are now home to many of the city's coolest nightspots, galleries and cafes.
One of the city's most exciting conversions is Soho House Berlin, complete with hotel and pool, which is due to open early next year in the "Big House", the former headquarters of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party. The politics may be gone forever, but the form is back in fashion. Here's where you can see it.
Capitain Petzel
This new gallery, housed in a classic Soviet-modernist glass-box which is flooded with light, was designed in 1964 as a showcase for arts and crafts from across the eastern bloc. The name Capitain Petzel comes from Cologne dealer Gisela Capitain and New York gallerist Friedrich Petzel, who joined together to open this gallery last autumn. It shows a roster of celebrated international artists in a building with a huge wow factor.
• Karl-Marx-Alle 45 (+49 30 2408 8130, capitainpetzel.de).
Club Rechenzentrum
This building used to be the technology centre for East German radio (the name means "computer centre") and is hidden away in the woods on the banks of the Spree. The minimal house and techno club is in a vast single-story rectangular prism, with a frosted glass and wood exterior. In the winter, all the fun is in the vast low-ceilinged main room, but on warm nights there is an adjacent man-made beach – both with celebrated sound systems. As well as dancing, you can chill out on deckchairs by the water, eat from a barbecue and when you're done, rent one of 40 tents in the woods provided by the club and sleep off the excess.
• Nalepastr 10-16 (club-rechenzentrum .de). Entry €8-12, tents €10.
Galerie Im Turm
This "Gallery in Tower" sits in one of the two white Stalinist-style towers flanking Frankfurter Tor, East Berlin's grand square. The towers were once the crowning glory of Karl-Marx-Alle, the monumental socialist boulevard designed by the GDR's star architect Hermann Henselmann, who trained at the Bauhaus but was persuaded by the government to design in the Soviet style. The towers now contain luxury apartments, plus the gallery, which opened in 1965, and used to be a space for official GDR art. Today it supports the work of up-and-coming young artists. Be sure to peek out the windows and marvel at how undeviatingly straight Karl-Marx-Alle is leading to the Fernsehturm (television tower).
• Frankfurtur Tor 1 (+49 30 422 9426, kunstamtkreuzberg.de/k_galerieimturm).
Klub Der Republik
This bar/club takes its name from the Palast der Republik, the GDR's showcase building which was a huge glamorous hall for concerts, parties and events that also housed the East German parliament. The original building was controversially torn down last year but this club, which occupies a former ballroom, scavenged some of the fittings and furniture from the Palast before demolition – from multi-bulb wall lamps to Formica tables. A favourite of Prenzlauer Berg locals, the pre-clubbing ambience is relaxed and the music ranges from electro to pop.
• Pappelallee 81, Berlin 10437 (+49 30 4403 5653. Free entry, but €1 donation to the DJ.
KMA 36
This is a great, unheralded bar that has no signage – but you can see it's a bar as it is housed in a stocky glass cube of a building that was formerly a cosmetics showroom and shop for GDR make-up and hair products. Barely furnished, with an upstairs mezzanine level resplendent in mirrors, on warm nights there are plenty of wooden cinema-style chairs lined up outside for drinking on the wide pavement.
• Karl-Marx-Allee 36. Free entry.
Restaurant Schönbrunn
One of many brilliant outdoor spots to while away a sunny afternoon in Berlin, Restaurant Schönbrunn sits bang in the middle of the Volkspark Friedrichshain with a prime spot by the fountain pond. The building, a low glass-fronted construction with its original sign, was a pavilion in GDR times. While open until late, the best time to visit is during the day when you can take advantage of the large terrace or the beer garden that snakes alongside. The food is waiter-served Bavarian fodder with a twist, such as chicken with beer risotto, or spätzle pasta – or you can just take advantage of the beer selection. Inside, there are retro 60s-style details, including the ball-chair bar stools, and cluster ceiling lights.
Volkspark Friedrichshain (+49 30 453 0565, schoenbrunn-berlin.de).
CSA Bar
A super-stylish cocktail bar that was formerly the ticket office for Czech Airlines, though you can be sure the offices didn't look half as good back then. Now there's a minimalist retro interior – glass panels, low leather seating, sculptural lighting – very James Bond film set. There are myriad cocktails on offer and this is the kind of place you could happily challenge the bar staff and order off menu.
• Karl-Marx-Alle 96 (+49 30 2904 4741, csa-bar.de).
Air Berlin flies from Stansted to Berlin via Dusseldorf from €60 one-way including tax. Ryanair flies Stansted-Berlin direct from £24.99 one way. The new Cosmo boutique hotel in Mitte opens 2 January 2010, from €99 per room per night through designhotels.com.
Towering follies: the Dubai architecture you couldn’t make up
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 4, 2009
The kilometre-high skyscraper, the underwater hotel, the cloud on stilts ... Steve Rose mourns the eye-popping erections that should never have been commissioned
Pundits have been lining up to say "I told you so" over the bursting of Dubai's construction bubble, so now it's my turn. I did tell you so, a year ago. But what now? In architectural terms, Dubai has surely been the story of the decade. We're just not sure if it's a comedy, a tragedy or some surreal, hallucinogenic fairy tale.
On the other hand, the Dubai experiment has undeniably expanded the realms of what it is possible to build. Before the Palm Jumeirah and its ilk, or the World, who would have contemplated works on such a scale? Reclaiming land from the sea is nothing new, but only Dubai had the imagination to make pretty patterns with its coastline, to shape the earth to such a colossal degree that you need Google Earth to appreciate it.
Other countries have evidently been eyeing Dubai's coastline, too. In Russia, for example, Eric van Egeraat has designed Sochi Island, an artificial resort island in the Black Sea. Bahrain is developing a similar type of offshore resort. Abu Dhabi is making good use of its previously undeveloped islands, for instance Saadiyat Island, which will soon house a very different collection of wonders to Dubai in the form of new museums and galleries designed by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando. Even Boris Johnson's recent proposals for a new airport in the Thames estuary had a touch of Dubai about them.
Foreign architects have had a ball in Dubai, at least until recently. It's been the place where you can get away with anything. No matter how outlandish or oversized the idea, no one seemed to be saying no, and somebody else was always paying. As a result, the emirate has been waging some sort of architectural arms race with itself, each new development trying to outdo the last, while the rest of the world looked on with a mixture of disdain and envy.
The Dubai dream was ultimately unsustainable on many levels, environmental as well as financial, and it's safe to assume that most of the crazy ideas proposed for the city will never happen now, given Dubai's dire credit situation. So here are some of the craziest highlights from a future that will probably never arrive – but, you never know, still just might.
Nakheel Harbour and Tower
Bad timing for SOM's Burj Dubai, which is due to open on 4 January 2010, just when a conspicuous symbol of Dubai's hubris was needed. But in the Dubai spirit of one-upmanship, plans were afoot to build an even taller skyscraper with an even shorter name: Al Burj. Originally designed by IM Pei Partnership, the tower was taken over by Australian architects Woods Bagot. It was renamed Nakheel Harbour and Tower after its backers, the state-owned property group Nakheel, which is at the heart of Dubai's current woes. The sentiment behind this stupendous tower seemed to be: "I see your 800-metre-high Burj Dubai, and raise it to over 1km. How d'you like that?"
Trump International Hotel and Tower
Surely a frontrunner in any competition for the ugliest skyscraper the world has ever seen, this 60-odd-storey atrocity, designed by Atkins, was supposed to be the centrepiece of the famous Palm Jumeirah and super-luxurious addition to the Trump brand. It looks like it was inspired by one of those 1980s vases you find in a pound shop. Mercifully, construction has been on hold for a year or so.
Dubai Towers
In the same way the peacock's tail evolved into a flamboyantly useless appendage, Dubai skyscrapers have had to resort to ludicrous contortions to stand out. From the "ignore them, they're just trying to get attention" school of design comes a quartet of bendy skyscrapers supposedly inspired by the movement of candlelight – or perhaps Jedward's hair.
Hydropolis Underwater Hotel
Why reach for the sky when you can plumb the depths? This German-designed scheme would offer 220 bubble-shaped transparent suites, 66 metres below the surface, so guests can enjoy a privileged view of Dubai's spectacular coastal dredging operations.
The Dynamic Tower
A nice idea: each of this tower's 70 floors revolves independently around its central core, so everyone lives in a revolving apartment and gets a 360-degree view of Dubai's cranescape. And from the outside, the building changes shape all the time. And it's all powered by green energy from wind turbines and solar panels. All perfectly possible, architect David Fisher assures a sceptical world.
The Dubai Opera House
Not even Dubai had the stomach for French superstar Jean Nouvel's idiosyncratic formal experiment – a strange cross between an oil rig, a greenhouse and a psychedelic light show. Nouvel's pretentious accompanying text didn't help: "It is a little like the clouds. Each person can see what attracts them, what makes them question. The architect plays only the role of provocateur, claiming innocence." Nouvel is at least building the new Louvre, in neighbouring Abu Dhabi, which promises to be stunning.
The Cloud
A poetic but preposterous scheme imagining a resort landscape of lakes, palaces and floating gardens, raised 300 metres in the air on slanting columns. The brainchild of Lebanese architect Nadim Karam, it's been described as "a bridge suspended between dreams and reality". Why not put a gigantic pie on stilts instead?
Waterfront City
A whole city for 1.5 million inhabitants on an artificial island twice the size of Hong Kong. Rem Koolhaas's OMA were behind the plan. Reckoning that nobody in the Gulf watched Star Wars, he put a replica of the Death Star as its centrepiece – or was that his idea of architectural satire?
Dubailand
A vast landscape of leisure, twice the size of Florida's Disney World, proposed for the interior of the emirate. Highlights include four theme parks, five golf courses, life-size replicas of some of the world's landmarks, a zillion hotels, a Beauty Museum, and, of course, another "world's largest shopping mall".
A love affair with a city like London demands much more than an air-kiss | Simon Jenkins
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 25, 2009
I know people who swear by the charms of Lagos or Grozny. For them, as me, a city is where friends are. Take note, Jan Morris
I once sat next to a woman at dinner who asked me where I lived. When I replied, London, she frowned and said, how simply ghastly for me. "It is an awful place, absolute hell. I hate going there, the people, the traffic, the tube, the dirt. You must be dying to escape."
Stung by hearing my beloved home so abused I asked where she lived. Gloucestershire, she replied. "How ghastly," I said, "it is an awful place, absolute hell. I hate going there, the people, the horses, the filthy lanes, the boredom. You must be dying to escape." How extraordinarily rude, she said, and turned away for the rest of the evening.
Hating cities is apparently fine, but hating the country is not permitted. Now I read that my old friend, the travel writer Jan Morris, has fallen out of love with London. She proclaimed so in last Saturday's Guardian: "When once it welcomed me like a dowager to her run-down stately home, now its greeting is more like the air-kiss of a tabloid celebrity." When Jan steps off the train at Euston, she said: "I find myself entering a different city altogether from the one that used to thrill me."
I take comfort only in the knowledge that disagreeing with Jan is always exhilarating. We have disagreed everywhere, on the slopes of Snowdon, surrounded at Pen-y-Gwryd by mementos of the 1953 conquest of Everest (in which Jan took part). We have disagreed among the Italianate splendours of Portmeirion. We have disagreed on the banks of the swirling Dyfi and in Jan's stone eyrie upstream from Lloyd George's grave in Llanystumdwy. Disagreeing with her is more enjoyable than agreeing with anyone else. She has mastered the art of dissent, which is to clothe courtesy in laughter.
When Jan shuts her computer, packs her bags and waves goodbye to north Wales, we know she is off to discover, or more often rediscover, some exotic clime and dust it with literary gold. She once claimed that her "final book" was Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. It was her Tempest, plunged into the Adriatic deeper than did ever plummet sound, and full of life-expiring metaphor. But that was in 2001 and, like Rubinstein, Jan's last appearances are now annual events. The latest, out this week, is Contact!, a book of word sketches.
Great travel writers never just describe places. They report their responses to places and their inhabitants. Some cheat and take along a companion as the butt of their commentary. Laurens van der Post took the hapless cameraman Spode to the Kalahari. Peter Fleming travelled Tartary with the tiresome Kini (who later took her revenge in a Royal Geographical Society lecture). Eric Newby ribbed poor Carless up and down the Hindu Kush, and was equally merciless with his wife on the Ganges.
Jan resorts to no such devices. She does not bring human props to feed her narrative. She lives off the land, knowing that for a city to come alive, she must do more than just see. She must form relationships with local humans, perform some ritual of empathy. Her landscapes are peopled, like Constable's, with dappled ghostly figures to draw the composition into focus.
So powerful are these sketches that, to me, they are more than walk-on extras. They are not of celebrities or interviewees, but of passers-by, faces in a crowd, the chance encounters that furnish the room of the solitary traveller. Jan bumps into a man in a hotel door. When he asks where she is from, and she replies "Wales", he cries: "Wales! How wonderful." Oh you splendid liar, she says, you have never heard of the place, and they both roar with laughter.
Jan winks at a wrinkled Alexandrian cabby, chides an American matron, teases a Polish taxi driver that his Volvo is "not Chopin". She helps a "hard-mouthed, fast-shoving" blind lady across a Paris street and into a shop, after which the lady remarks: "Now I give you back your liberty." These flashes of ersatz intimacy colour the monochrome of travel. They bring Jan "close to the meaning of a place".
But they are more than that. They are the city. My early experiences of visiting America coincided with a youthful eagerness for adventure that made every city beautiful, however ugly. Visiting Germany coincided with so many pleasant meetings as to endear me to German cities ever since, just as unfavourable ones coloured my view of France.
I know people who swear by the glories of Lagos, Kiev, Shanghai and even Grozny. I recall the mayor of Houston in Texas looking out of his skyscraper office and sighing that I surely had never seen a city as beautiful as his. I choked, until I realised that my ugly sprawl of office blocks and parking lots were his glittering array of acquaintances. For him, as for me, a city is where the friends are. The beauty of friendship surpassed the physical attributes of a place, much as the mind surpasses the beauty of the body.
Jan's falling out of love with London has, I suggest, little to do with London and more to do with Jan and her Londoners. The wartime metropolis of her memory was battle-scarred but indomitable. "I truly loved it then," she writes, "the proud battered style of it, the blackened and ruined monuments, the posh-and-cockney mixture, the Union Jack flying gamely through the smog upon the Palace of Westminster, the grimy tugs churning up the Thames – liquid 'istory."
That London had the excitement and anticipation of youth, just as it must now convey the tiresome aggression that irks old age. Jan's accounts of India, Oxford, Venice and a myriad other cities are far more than the application of a cultured mind to bricks and mortar, walls, roofs, trees and water. Each was seen at a different stage in a career and with different human encounters, and therefore struck different chords.
London tries to reject my affection. It disfigures itself with ugliness – now with idiot towers as its mayor, Boris Johnson, vies with Ken Livingstone in their penis envy of New York. It afflicts the visitor with what Jan experiences as she steps from the Euston train, or Gloucestershire deplores as she fights her way across town to Harrods. It afflicts them because they are visitors.
My London is one that Jan and Gloucestershire can never love. I do not spend my time in the city, as most non-residents do, enveloped in crowds, shopping and fighting public transport (which is not that bad). I see a city of local streets enlivened by corner shops, bustling pubs, children going to school, parks, squares, museums, theatres. It is a place of intense calm, if I want it.
More than that, I love the comforting familiarity of a life lived in one place, of the continuity of things and friends, spiced only sometimes by a dollop of change. The passing Jan can play her game of smiling and winking and joshing to score a response. But it is she who is air-kissing London, not the other way round. A true city is a mirror, in which the blemishes are our own.
Architecture, Art and design, Books, City breaks, Comment, Cultural trips, Culture, Heritage, Jan Morris, London, The Guardian, Travel, Wales
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