Week 9 in Brief

With finals looming, students spent a lot of time studying and making presentations for their classes. In the Shakespeare class, we had a spirited panel discussion of the theater season, and the Maritime London class featured illuminating student presentations on author Patrick O'Brian and the making of the film "Master and Commander." On Wednesday, Andreas Staab's Modern Britain class attended the London Mayor's Question Time and returned to the Centre for a traditional English fish and chips lunch. Thursday, Carole Machin's Art class met at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which holds a great collection of imperial artifacts.

On Friday, a few of us took an optional excursion to Rochester, Kent, an hour's train journey southeast of London. We strolled down the high street past Dickensian facades (Dickens lived here for a time; several of his novels reference the area), to the imposing Norman castle which was erected after the Conquest to over-awe the local Saxon population. It did that and remains formidable. It was a cold, clear day, and from the battlements we surveyed the town of Rochester, the River Medway widening towards Chatham (a major site of shipbuilding in the age of sail) in the distance, and the spectacular cathedral opposite, our next destination. One John Rutherford, a gracious, eminently knowledgeable guide, escorted us through the cathedral, England's second oldest. Located on the pilgrimage route to Canterbury, this cathedral itself became a destination for pilgrims in the 13th century after William Perth, a Scotsman en route to Canterbury, was murdered in the vicinity and ultimately sainted.

Back in London, the holiday season officially began with the illumination of festive lights on Regent and Oxford Streets, the hub of West End's shopping district. Temperatures obligingly dropped to freezing at night, and the ice rink set up in the courtyard at Somerset House attracted lots of skaters.