Quintessential London: From Shakespeare to Shopping

By Sara Calian, and Larry Porges and Louise Nicholson

Just in time for the London Olympics, this entertaining, 8000-word e-short gives the inside scoop on what makes London thegreat city that it is. Twenty different topics are tackled in quick, entertaining bites, including the tradition of afternoon tea (andthe best places to enjoy it); artists with a London fixation (Hogarth and Monet among them); royal parks (and the favoritesamong kings); and pubs from medieval to modern times (with a listing of the best). Evocative, entertaining text married with gorgeous images and nuts-and-bolts sidebars on authentic experiences reveals the best of this fabulous city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: National Geographic
• Release date: Jun 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781426210013

Sara Calian

SARA CALIAN has lived in London and walked the city's streets since 1998. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and has worked as a communications consultant.

Book preview

London.

CHAPTER 1

TRADITION

City of Palaces

For more than a millenium, English monarchs have added grandeur and glamour to London, choosing it for their power base, shaping its appearance with lavish palaces, and providing scenes of spectacle and pageantry. London’s royal palaces are rich in history and tradition, and several provide the setting for colorful and spectacular ceremonies whose origins lie deep in the past.

Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 to 1066, made his capital at the City of Westminster. When Edward’s cousin, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded England in 1066, London bustled as the country’s largest city, and William knew he must control it. He thus chose Edward’s newly finished Westminster Abbey for his coronation and, to keep watch over the City merchants, he built the immense White Tower, the central feature of which would become the Tower of London.

In the 12th century, King William II added the Great Hall to the Palace of Westminster, and kings resided in this fabulous structure until most of it burned down in 1512. Today, the second Palace of Westminster towers on the spot. Commonly referred to as the Houses of Parliament, this Victorian Gothic riverside palace, with its landmark Big Ben clock tower, is London’s newest palace, built on the foundations of the