We’ll soon have the first of our many free London Walking Tours ready to roll.
In the mean time though we thought we’d give you a little taster of what our London walks are going to be like.
We’re going to pack an awful lot into these tours and they’re going to be very interactive. What with step by step directions, glorious photographs, little video snippets and an awful lot more.
Anyway here’s a taster of the free Shakespeare London walk accompanying video. Hope you enjoy it.
It might seem an odd thing to say for a compnay that conducts London walks but there is a lot more to do in London than just walking about.
Don’t get me wrong on this, Walking is a great way to discover all the wonderful places that this wonderful city has to offer, but if it was just about taking a walk, well you could quite simply pick up a map or and A to Z and head off through the streets of the capital on your own voyage of discovery.
Whereas that’s a great way to get about London, come to think of it it’s an excellent way to get about, but we like to think that we offer you just that little bit more than just, plain simple London walks.
You see the thing about being taken on a guided tour is that you get a full, dare I say it, theatrical experience. A good London walking tour guide will be able to really bring the past to life or, as we like to say, will breathe life in to the history that surrounds you.
It’s one thing, for example, to know that Shakespeare lived and worked in Southwark, on the south side of the River Thames from St. Paul’s Cathedral, but it’s quite another thing to learn about the people he lived and worked with, to hear great little anecdotes that bring his life and his times to vivid life.
Likewise, it’s great read in a book that a certain building in London is haunted by the ghost of a woman in white, but when you hear the tale on one of our exciting London walks you have it told by a masterful storyteller whose narrative will creep you out and have you looking over your shoulder lest the white lady in question is sneaking up on you at that very moment.
These are just a few examples of the difference between just walking around with a map and having a guide take you round on one of our London Walking Tours.
So, to continue where we left off when we introduced you to the Energy and Process wing at Tate Modern, and told you a bit about which of our London walks end close to Tate Modern so that you can pay it a visit
We were in the Energy and Process wing trying to make sense of Dynamic Suprematism by the Russian Artist Kasimir Malevich and got as far as explaining that what, at first glance, seems like a meaningless jumble of different shapes is, in fact, a very spiritual and mystical work.
In a later post we will look at a painting by a leading member of the Futurist art movement that came out of Italy in 1909.
Like the Futurists Malevich was very excited by the brave new technological world that the dawning of the 20th century had ushered in.
Scientific advancements such as motor cars and airplanes had given people a radically different perception of speed and movement.
Mankind could travel faster than ever before. He could look down on landscapes from high above and, in so doing, gain a totally new perspective on the world and his surroundings.
But for Russia in 1915, at the time when Malevich painted Dynamic Suprematism, the new technological age was about something more than a mere altering of peoples perspectives and perceptions about their surroundings - it was a catalyst for cataclysmic, huge social upheaval that would culminate in the Russian Revolution of 1918 and the overthrow of the Czar.
Malevich and his fellow, left wing artists were eagerly awaiting the coming of this new Russia and the resultant government by the people and for the people.
So this should be looked at as the art of a coming new world. An art that would replace religious icons with a simplicity that would enable people to look into and ponder a painting.
Indeed, just as the religious icons of old were intended to make you stop and ponder the world beyond, so to does Dynamic Suprematism make you forget about the materialism of art and look instead at the meaning behind the art.
So there we end our look at the work of Kasimir Malevich in Tate Modern’s Energy and Process wing.
Tomorrow we’ll pick up on the work that stares across at it in the dialogue room, Richard Serra’s Trip Hammer.
In the meantime, why not join us on a London walk to explore the places that surround Tate Modern and to enjoy a stroll over the Millennium Bridge following in the foosteps of Shakespeare and Dickens.?
When our London walks cross over the River Thames via the Millennium Bridge the view of all those on the tours is captivated, some might even say dominated, by a massive building on the south bank of the River Thames.
This building is Tate Modern but it was formerly Bankside Power Station which closed in 1981 when the price of oil (it was an oil powered power station) rose so steeply that keeping it open simply wasn’t economically viable.
It was a year after this closure that Richard Jones began offering his London walks to the public and the area on the south bank was totally different then.
In those days Bankside was made up of derelict warehouses, dark and sinister little alleyways that snaked behind the warehouses and echoing railway tunnels.
Clink Street, which features on both our Shakespeare and Dickens London walks, was a particularly sinister street. Indeed it was so sinister that in the 1980’s film Murder By Decree, which starred Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes trying to solve the mystery of the Jack the Ripper murders, this area was used to substitute for the streets of Whitechapel.
But then two things happened to change the area. Firstly, Sam Wanamaker realised his life long dream to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe Playhouse on the south side of the River Thames. Secondly, in 1994, The Trustees of the Tate Gallery, who were looking to establish a new museum to house their modern art collection, acquired the old Bankside Station and launched an international architectural competition for a design that would transform the old Bankside Power Station into a suitable art gallery for their collection.
Their were over 70 entries but a young Swiss company were the winners because they submitted a plan that advocated working with what was left of the Bankside Power Station.
Thus in the year 2000 Tate Modern was opened by Queen Elizabeth 11 and over five million people a year now cross its threshold to admire, criticise, laugh and enjoy their collection.
So when you next join one of our London walks that corsses the Thames via the Millennium Bridge and you look up at the tall building with the soaring chimney, you will now know exactly what it is.
You will picture the Victorian police as they hunt the Ripper through the cobblestone streets through which you pass. And so skilled will your guide's narrative be that, as one recent Jack the Ripper Walk participant put it, "you can just feel that you're walking alongside them!"
Walking tours offer one of the best value and most entertaining and most environmentally friendly ways to get to know one of the world's most fascinating cities.
Our London walks are carefully crafted to ensure that you get the most out of exploring the historic streets of old London.
