Book Review: St Pancras Station by Simon Bradley
by Natalie Bennett
You might describe my reading interests as catholic (very definitely with a small “C”): I read history, science, politics, philosophy, and bits of fiction: but I would have given you good money that railway station architecture was not particularly likely to feature on my reading list. But I’d have lost that money.
When I saw a little paperback entitled St Pancras’s Station in the lovely, small but select branch of Foyles that’s opened since the London international terminus’s refurbishment, I couldn’t resist. After all, I only live five minutes away and walk through the station several times a week. Although had I known how much there was about those roofing struts I might not have done - and that would have been a pity.
For although this is an odd little book — mostly an architectural history, something that isn’t terribly evident from the book’s furniture — there’s a huge number of fascinating snippets in this - and even those supporting struts are interesting.
Supporters
–>Office space –<
–>UK immigration service–<
–>Accommodation in Cape Town–<
The largest section, and the least involving, focuses on George Gilbert Scott, the architect of the great neo-Gothic frontage on the Euston Road that was built as the Midland Grand Hotel. He also built the Albert Memorial and was responsible for huge numbers of church and cathedral restorations. He was, on this account, hyperactive, arrogant, greedy, bewhiskered - the perfect Victorian male. (And his architecture to my mind doesn’t have a lot to recommend it - although St Pancras is far from the worst of it.)
Things warm up when you get to the train shed chapter, which begins by roaming across the history of this entirely new form of architecture and social space (before this the only vaguely comparable place was a coaching inn, a very different beast) - with many of the examples being within a stone’s throw of St Pancras, for easy comparison. Euston’s “ridge-and-furrow” shed was, Bradley tells us “essentially a lightweight translation of a timber-framed system developed for greenhouses”, the prevailing type in the 1840s. “Thought readily extendable, their numerous uprights hindered flexible use of space, and their limited height coped poorly with smoke and steam generated by increasingly frequent and powerful trains.”
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Theatre Review: The Cordelia Dream by the RSC at Wilton’s Music Hall
By Natalie Bennett
It isn't at all uncommon for parents and children not to like each other, to be consumed by rivalry and competition - yet you'd think, watching Marina Carr's new The Cordelia Dream as performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Wilton's Music Hall, that this was a new, dramatic idea taut with possibility.
At least you would, if you weren't feeling as though you were stuck in a cheap motel room with plywood-thin walls, hearing a two-hour full-on domestic in the early hours of the morning.
This was quite the worst time I've had at the theatre in a very long while. About the only virtue of this production is that it makes the previous effort in the RSC's new play series, The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, look good in comparison — at least that was an interesting failure. This is just endless, histrionic melodrama, two characters who spend most of the time screaming at each other — when the violins aren't doing the screaming for them.
An aged composer (David Hargreaves) has retired to a bedsit — well he hasn't got a bed, but sleeps on his piano — to attempt to realise his failed potential. His daughter (Michelle Gomez) comes to visit after a long absence, distressed and angry that the relationship has broken down because she's been more successful in the same career.
As the title suggests, reference is continually made to him as Lear and her as Cordelia — increasingly clunking references, at increasingly regular intervals. It's not so much allusion as thumping jackhammer have-you-noticed-yet-audience? repetition.
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From the editor, Natalie Bennett: I've lived in London for seven years, and I still love every minute of it. With the theatres, the museums and galleries, the streets dripping with history, there's so much here that many visitors miss. On this site I and a few friends share our enthusiasms, and provide tips of getting the most out of visiting, or living, here. 