HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH (1/12)

Founded in 1994, THE COURSE offers art history lectures, opera and literature courses, guided museum visits and London walks.

More than any other country on the planet, Britain has pooled its constitutional, financial and cultural forces within its capital. In this series of 6 lectures and 6 accompanying walks we will show HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH. Lecturer, Harry Mount, will explore how, over 2,000 years, London has dealt with six of those forces: the monarchy; the law; religion; finance; entertainment; and education. The story of the Reformation, of constitutional monarchy, of Shakespearean theatre, of the public school, of the common law, the story of Britain…. They can all be told through London’s unique collection of buildings.

 ROYAL LONDON                            

In this lecture (and walk on 2 November) we will show how the monarchy has moved around the capital and adapted to social and political change. Edward the Confessor began Westminster Abbey and his tomb became its heart. William the Confessor enshrined his rule by being crowned in Westminster Abbey, even though Canterbury was the headquarters of the Church of England. You will examine how the building of Westminster Hall was the centrepiece of William Rufus’s Palace of Westminster and also look at the expansion of the royal court in London with the creation of the royal palaces at Whitehall and St James’s. Why William III retreated from the suburban royal palaces of Richmond and Hampton Court and moved his palace to Kensington. The increasing importance of royal London in the 18^th century with the acquisition of Buckingham Palace will be discussed and how Kensington Palace became a backwater (the ‘aunt heap’) by the time Queen Victoria was born there. We will also examine Kensington’s Renaissance under Prince William.