London Day 4

Today was a really excellent day in London. Rainy to start, the clouds parted in the late afternoon and by the time we left our show in the evening we were able to experience and witness a beautiful and very comfortable summer night in London city.
In class this morning we were visited by the very entertaining architectural historian (I know, usually these words don't go together) Roger Bowdler. Roger lectured on the Architectural history of the city but gave us some very keen insights into London as it was up to 1500 years ago and was very approachable and easy to listen to. He is scheduled to lead us on three walks around various historic and modern districts around London and I'm very excited to hear from and see him again - he's an English football realist and knows that the USA really has a chance to dethrone England in the coming match. Either this, or he's hoping for good karma.
Later on in class we continued our discussion of The Secret Agent and Professors Kinney and Levenson have really opened up this book more to me than I possibly could've imagined. Our discussion centered around the role of the "idiot boy" character Stevie. It really seems now that Stevie actually played the central part in the novel - nothing could've happened without him. Indeed, in a novel where all of the other characters are quietly shown to be completely abnormal and disturbing, Stevie's innocence and quite frank disability made him the novel's doomed, hidden protagonist.
After lunch, we went to the arts district and toured a gallery which was holding an exhibition on maps - how and why they're read as they are and how one can reinterpret or re-draw maps. Some of the work was really excellent but I still am having a difficult time fully accepting "modern art". After the gallery tour, we were set free to go explore the city (or do whatever we wanted) until 7pm. Wayne and I took some tube transfers and made it over to the National Gallery of Art. While I normally hate art museums, I rather enjoyed the National Gallery - particularly the early renaissance art of Canaletto (giant cityscapes of the Port of Venice and the Grand Canal) and the exhibit on the work of Kobke (really beautiful work with light and reflections in pools of water). I picked up a few postcards of Canaletto's work and am going to look into finding a larger (but less expensive than in the museum) poster of his "The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day" (If anyone doesn't know what to get me for my birthday in a month...)

After the gallery, Wayne and I took Jon Readey's advice and found this really cool restaurant called Gordon's Wine Bar. It's this really neat place that, if you weren't look for it, you wouldn't find it. The outside looks like a hole in the wall but you walk downstairs and then are underground in this old abandoned tube station, or war bunker, or something of that nature. You eat underground only be candelight but outside there's a whole terrace and people eating near Westminster Park.

The food was great and the atmosphere was really, really interesting. After dinner, we walked across the Thames and in the direction of the National Theater.

On the way we passed a local, graffiti'd up skate park.

Finally, we our evening's activities concluded by watching the National Theater's Production of After the Dance. It's a show about upper class society in London in the 1930s, reminiscing about the 1920s and wondering about how to deal with the coming war. The show was fascinating and really, really excellent. It was, without a doubt, the best play I've ever seen live. The lead, playing David, was Benedict Cumberbatch who is apparently very well known around England and over the BBC. He was phenomenal in the role and we were all floored by the show.