All posts by Sandra Graham

I am an artist and blogger living in Sydney, Australia. I am interested in Australian landscapes and lost suburbia, capturing them in photographs, paintings, prints and mixed media. @s_graham_art
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British Museum – Part 6

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The British Museum of course has treasures from more than just the Mediterranean, it also has a comprehensive collection from its own land. I liked the collection from Celtic Britain, before the Romans came. The Battersea Shield is from the Bronze Age and was exquisite.

Battersea Shield

The Romans of course had a big part to play in the making of Britain. The mosaic below of a lady is particularly fine.

Roman Mosaic

The peak of Roman Britain was when Emperor Hadrian came to visit. Like the current queen’s Golden Jubilee, one has to commemorate the occasion with something special, in this case, a bronze bust of the emperor himself. Nice moustache.

Emperor Hadrian

That’s the end of the visit. We didn’t even touch treasures from the Near and Far East and beyond, which I’m sure the museum has plenty of. I guess that has to be left for a future visit.

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British Museum – Part 5

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The jewel in the crown of the British Museum, in my opinion, were the Grecian galleries. I mean, what can you say when you see a whole temple before you?

Greek Galleries

How all of these pieces got here is rather controversial. In the early 19th Century, a certain Lord Elgin (then British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) obtained permission from the Ottomans to remove sculptures from the Parthenon and other buildings. The British government later purchased his ‘loot’ and it has been on display at the British Museum ever since.

Greek Galleries

One can’t deny that they are exquisite up close; so beautifully formed, and surprisingly well-preserved.

Greek Galleries

Greek Galleries

The debate on whether Britain should return them has raged ever since. The British have currently refused to give them back, but the British weren’t the only ones who removed pieces from Greece – some other startling pieces of Ancient Greece are also in Paris, Berlin and Munich.

Greek Galleries

Having now seen the rest of the existing Parthenon sculptures in Athens itself (which I will go through when I post about Greece), it was probably good that they went to a museum early on and not been exposed to 20th Century Athens pollution. But having seen what a good job the Greeks have done with the new Acropolis museum, I see no reason why the British (and others who have taken from the Parthenon) can’t return them now. What do you think?

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British Museum – Part 3

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The Egyptian Galleries are probably the most visited of all the galleries at the British Museum. Most people seemed to be congregating either around the Rosetta Stone, or the mummies. While one can’t deny the effect the Rosetta Stone had on Egyptology, I didn’t find it very remarkable looking. I preferred to view the giant busts carved out of red granite instead.

Egyptian Galleries

Or perhaps one from basalt?

Egyptian Galleries

Once again, the details are fascinating, and amazing, considering they might have been carved as long as 3000 years ago.

Egyptian Galleries

And since the British, um, collected these pieces, perhaps 150 or so years ago, they’ve certainly taken care of it very well.

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British Museum – Part 2

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Aside from being huge, the British Museum had a lot of impressive exhibits. I think the Assyrian Gallery was one of them. Who doesn’t like an impressive statue or two?

Assyrian Galleries

Or three?

Assyrian Galleries

Not having studied ancient history at school, all I know about the Assyrians were that they were an ancient civilisation in what is now northern Iraq, and was mentioned in the Bible a lot.

Assyrian Galleries

But when you look closely at the wall above, see the intricate stone carving and inscribed texts, you realise that they must be a civilisation to be reckoned with.

Assyrian Galleries

Assyrian Galleries

The Ancient Greeks and Egyptians might get more attention, but in many ways, the works by the Assyrians were finer.

Assyrian Galleries

One might have reservations about all of these panels being ‘collected’ and shown so far away from home, but these works of art probably would not have survived if they had remained in Iraq, given the number of conflicts in the region over the last 100 years.

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Who’s Spooked Now?

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Some of you might now that I was a great fan of the British spy show Spooks. So it was my mission to find the building they called MI5 Headquarters. And I found it!

Freemasons Building

It wasn’t the actual MI5 building, of course, but the Freemasons’ Hall. The real MI5 building is best seen in the latest James Bond film Skyfall (it gets blown up). I walked past it on another walk, incidently, and saw the MI6 building across the Thames. I admit that there were a lot of security cameras about the place.

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East End Markets – Part 2

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Londoners do love their markets. They seem to come out in droves, no matter the weather. We toured of delights of various East End Sunday markets. First up were the Columbia Road Flower Markets in Shoreditch, which took its flora very seriously. There East End marketers flogging their wares with thick Cockney accents, and a profusion of dogs being taken out for walks.

Columbia Road Flower Market

In the back alleys were art galleries, home ware shops, cafes and little bakeries, which sold very tempting treats.

Lily Vanilli

We moved on to neighbouring Spitalfields, home to the famous market, and also Brick Lane, renown for their curries. There were plenty of produce on offer, and also food stalls from every type of cuisine you could think of.

Brick Lane Produce Market

East Enders are particularly renown for their sharp wit. This made me giggle a bit.

GDB

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East End Markets – Part 1

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One thing that London has an abundance of is markets. On weekends, it seems that Londoners and visitors from everywhere hang out in them, no matter the weather.

The closest market to us is Smithfield, down the bottom of St John Street. It’s not really a ‘hanging around’ kind of market, but a serious wholesale one that buys, sells, probably even butchers, meat of all kinds. Like most wholesale markets, most the action takes place in the early hours of the morning. I’m not one to wake up so early (unless it’s from jet lag) so unfortunately I can’t tell you what it’s like.

I can however tell you about its history. Smithfield has been a livestock and butchers market since medieval times. Livestock used to be driven down St John Street to be slaughtered, although livestock weren’t the only things being butchered. Smithfield has also long been an execution spot, being not too far from the Tower of London. William Wallace (of Braveheart fame) was executed here, and many other deemed a heretic or dissident – quite a few during Tudor times.

Smithfield Market

Nowadays there aren’t any crowds crying out for blood, just a line of semi-trailers in the middle of the night, waiting to unload their meaty goods.