HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH 3/6

THE COURSE offers art history lectures, guided museum visits and London walks.

In this series of 6 lectures and 6 accompanying walks we will show HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH

More than any other country on the planet, Britain has pooled its constitutional, financial and cultural forces within its capital. This 6 part series of lectures and 6accompanying walks 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.

RELIGIOUS LONDON

A lecture and walk of London’s churches, from Norman to Gothic to Classical while also explaining the development of British religion from Catholicism to Anglicanism. St Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield explains how the City was the religious heart of Norman London just as it was until the C17th. St Etheldreda’s Church, Holborn, London’s earliest decorated Gothic church was returned to Catholicism in the C19th. (A way of explaining the Reformation in London). With St Paul’s Cathedral, Wren’s deft playing around with plans to fool the Cathedral Commissioners that he was building a perfect Anglican cathedral ended up being a baroque one (a chunk of Rome transplanted to the City). At St Andrew, Holborn, Wren adapted a medieval church to classical Anglicanism while at St Mary Le Bow, he used French classical references. At St Vedast, Foster Lane, he absorbed the baroque, a highly Catholic style, into an Anglican church and at St James’s Piccadilly you will explore how London was spreading into the new West End. Here you will see how Wren created his ideal of the perfect Anglican church, where the congregation could hear/see the priest from all corners of the church and its gallery.

The walk on 30 November will remain within the City of London.

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