British Things in My Week #BriFri
Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I shared a round-up of British stories, mostly related to COVID-19. Tina shared the British e-books that she bought to read while staying at home.
I don’t seem to have the focus to manage a post about one thing, right now, so here’s a post about several things.
Did you all see the Queen’s speech about the pandemic? I was encouraged watching it.
The speech was nearly overshadowed by the news that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized on Sunday due to persistent symptoms of COVID-19 and moved to ICU on Monday. He’s still there, as I write this at mid-day (US Central time) on Thursday, but the latest report from No. 10 Downing Street is that he’s improving.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is deputizing for the Prime Minister. He had already been playing a leading role in the government response to the coronavirus.
This video explains the lack of succession planning in the UK government compared to the detailed list that the US uses.
We watched the film 1917 last week and enjoyed it. It’s a World War I story of an attempt to get a message to a front-line command before troops are ordered into a German trap. You’ll recognize lots of actors in support roles, but the movie is carried on the back of George MacKay. I’ll always remember him fondly from the movie Pride, since I saw that while we were in England, a day that included a visit to the library in Birmingham.
Architectural drawing by Eva Jiřičná
The H. H. Robertson Ideas for Architecture competitions were known for attracting conceptual designs. The theme for 1979 was ‘An Image for Britain’ on the Hampton site. Jiřičná won first place of 148 entries. The assessors were Norman Foster, Charles Moore and Derek Walker.
Jiřičná’s entry is for a vertical leisure centre, on the competition site beside the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square which eventually became the site for the Sainsbury Wing of the gallery. The 100 metre tower, a metal and pneumatic structure, is in three sections: the Videotron at ground level with electronic entertainments, the Belvedere with its transparent outer wall containing hanging garden, and at the top, the landing pad for airships (at this time Jiřičná was much interested in pneumatic structures and lectured on airships).
I’m in the midst of the A to Z Challenge, using the theme “What to Pack on Your Creative Journey.” Since the posts are about creativity, I’ve been sharing illustrations from the Victoria and Albert Museum to indulge my fascination with all things British and Irish. My favorite so far is this architectural rendition of an amusement center in Trafalgar Square that never materialized. It certainly would have changed the landscape!
What British content have you been paying attention to this week?
Apparently we are on the same page listening to the Queen’s speech. It moved me, at the end I found myself tearing up. Why can’t we have a figure of such grace? Yeah, rhetorical question.
I have a few books to share with you as soon as I can write a review, I’ve been reading so much. We haven’t seen 1917 yet but I would like to. I’m going to catch up with your A to Z challenge now.
I have posts in my head, but just haven’t written them down yet!
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