The Art of History in London

So. This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, but as I sit here alternating between my paper on WWII and my paper on the Great Exhibition, fresh off a viewing of The King's Speech, I felt compelled to write it now.


I came to London, specifically this semester, for several reasons, however there being one central one: The BU London History Programme. Two core classes, one a seminar and one general history of London from 1666, doubled with a 5,000-6,000 word thesis due in less than three weeks' time. It's London, it's old, it's historical, so it makes sense, right?

Pictured: How I pictured 99% of Europe

In the past semester, I've learned more about Britain, the British Isles, Europe, and the world in general than I ever have before. Since I declared a history major at BU I've been slowly and steadily branching out beyond my scope of general American knowledge  and into a world that's filled with the most amazing, incredible things. Learning history in this country, a country that's, what, five times the age of the United States, is so different from studying it anywhere else. It's living history. It's one thing to look at an old painting and think about a house or an alleyway that may have existed at some point in time; it's another to look at said painting, pack up your things, walk three blocks and see it yourself. Everything from grandiose castles and mansions to something as simple as the winding corridors of the East End, still surviving after years of war, Blitz and fire, still seething with dark caverns of mystery and buried under a layer of historical detail.


And don't even get me started on the World Wars. I've always found the World Wars to be interesting, of course; what history person isn't interested in at least one aspect of those glorious, bloody wars? But, obviously, the United States wasn't really involved in the struggle as much as it was over here. Over here being, well, northern Europe. Just a hop skip and a jump from where the bulk of both wars were fought. I'm of the opinion that they're minorly obsessed with the Wars here but, to be fair, they did have a big effect on Great Britain. Going to Belgium and seeing the vast fields of green where thousands of bodies still lay, and seeing the trench first-hand, walking around, smelling it's horrendous stench, looking at the rabbit hole they called a door into a dark, dank corridor beneath the ground... uncertain if they were to ever come out.

Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum has to be my favorite place, in addition to all this nonsense. Just the way it walks you through the problems of the 20th century, starting with the Home Front in WWI and slowly adding in more and more nations until it's 1989 and half the world is waiting for the Berlin Wall to fall. And the Churchill War Rooms... that's just amazing. To walk the same hallways that Churchill did, and his generals, and his staff, and running to and fro during air raid sirens to check their maps and try to figure out just what they could do to stop the Third Reich from swallowing Europe whole.

It's just... ugh. Good Lord. I first saw "The King's Speech" in either June or July, randomly watching it with my mother on a rare evening off. I enjoyed it, but I couldn't say I was completely in love with it. I enjoy Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter as much as the next person but I didn't have this... investment in it. I just re-watched it while trying to simultaneously write a paper (I don't know why I always think I'm good at that kind of thing) and... I just felt so much more about it. I understood the context of the time; I've been to the places featured; I've seen instances of the fear, the confusion, and the crumbling facade of the British Empire. It's astounding to just think of all that Britain was going through in the late twenties and early thirties-- hell, my thesis is about that time. It's incredibly terrifying and exhilarating and I spent the entire movie yelling at the screen.


This place, I feel as if I've become immersed in wartime Britain. Considering how much of Europe's history is just carved and shaped by war, I'm surprised I'm surprised but... as I said to my roommate this morning, "History has a way of being very, very depressing, doesn't it?"