The Rest Is History - 213. London: Moments

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Welcome to the fifth and final episode in our London Week. Enjoyed the series? Click here to become a member of The Rest Is History Club - you'll get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. London: Moments A drunk elephant, a polar bear swimming in the Thames, and Metroland are discussed by Tom and Dominic in the final London Week episode, as they explore the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London and the expansion of the metropolitan railway.  *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Welcome to The Rest Is History, and we kick off today's episode, the final episode of our London Week, with very, very sad news, Tom.

Yeah. We've been sitting by the phone, haven't we? Two episodes ago, we ended on a cliffhanger. Well, we needed to discover netflix or some other streaming giant would take us up on our um suggestion of a tv series a best-selling blockbuster tv series um based on the life of henry fielding and his brother john and the bow street runners um with future possible spin-offs involving dr johnson hunting ghosts. I regret to say, Tom. They have stared a gift horse in the mouth.

Yeah. They've foolishly thrown away the chance. So we'll be offering it to Amazon starting from now. In the meantime, we are sticking with the podcasting lark. So that's good news for some, bad news for people who don't know the podcast, but why would they be listening? So we are going to finish off our London week.

We've done the walk around Smithfield with the ill-fitting shoes. We did London people. We had CLR James and Henry Fielding. We had London places. We had the Two Eyes coffee bar, and we had Barking Abbey. And if you've been with us since the start of the week, you'll remember that we did our walk around Roman London, and we're going to end by each choosing a London moment, a kind of a cultural moment or political moment. It could be anything. So I've got mine. And Tom, I think you're going to go first, aren't you?

Yeah, because mine is chronologically first. Yeah. And we're going back to the 13th century, the reign of Henry III, who's the son of King John, father of Edward I. And we're going to 1252, which is the year in which Henry III was given by Hakon the Young, who was the King of Norway, a gift. And that gift was a polar bear. So this polar bear had come because Hakon the Young, as a Norwegian, had trade links with Iceland and Iceland had links with Greenland. And so there were polar bears that were able to be sourced. And obviously a very classy gift because not many kings in medieval Europe had a polar bear. So this polar bear was kept in the Tower of London. It had to wear a kind of a collar and a chain to stop it from running off.

But its keepers would very kindly allow it to swim in the Thames and hunt fish. So it would jump into the Thames and have it around. But it's unseasonably warm for a polar bear. Yeah, I think the temperatures were quite a bit colder then, weren't they? I mean, they had kind of

chilly winters and things. I suppose so. Because it's actually it's it's uh the the start of a kind of ice age period mini ice age um that will finish off the viking settlements in greenland it's starting to happen at this point so yes so perhaps the polar bear was all right i mean i agree i don't think it was great um and the polar bear was not alone so this is part this, this is essentially, this is about animals that were kept in the Tower of London. So the Tower of London was the closest thing

that London had to a zoo. Because it's famous as Menagerie, isn't it? Is this when the Menagerie is founded? No. So the first, it begins in 1235 when Frederick II, you know, remarkable emperor, Stupor Mundi, one of the kind of the most charismatic and remarkable figures of medieval history, would well merit an episode. His sister, Eleanor of Provence, is marrying Henry III. And so what do you give?

What do you give the King of England? You give him three lions oh three lines on the shirt um well actually actually they're leopards they're leopards are they already a symbol of of england at this point they are right this is why he gives them um so they're either leopards or lions they're probably lions but there's some confusion um so these these lions are kept in the Tower of London. And then you get the polar bear. So that gets added. And then in 1255, so that's three years after the polar bear has arrived, Louis IX of France sends Henry III an elephant. An elephant? And the elephant has

its own house. So that's nice. But what's not so nice for the elephant is that scholars in Henry III's court think that elephants don't drink water. So they... Why would they think such a stupid thing? They just give it wine. So the poor elephant is permanently drunk. A drunken elephant. God, trumpeting, no doubt, at all hours. Yeah.

So it's very badly behaved and doesn't live very long. No surprise there. So where's the King of France got the elephant from? I'm not sure. I would guess from India, so from the caliphate. Yeah. Because you remember that Harun al-Rashid, the great Abbasid caliph, gives an elephant to Charlemagne.

So that must have come via India. So there must be an elephant well established, yeah. But this is the first elephant to arrive in England since the time of the Romans. Hold on. Since the time of the Romans? Do we know the Romans had elephants? Well, it's claimed that Caesar brought an elephant. Why would he bother? Why would he bother? Why would he bother? So that's perhaps not entirely.

And it seems that Claudius rode into Colchester on an elephant. So they brought one over to impress the locals. That seems just immensely implausible to me. Don't you think? No, I like to think that that's what happened. Okay. You debunk when it suits you. And then when it doesn't suit you, you...

The Romans definitely had access to elephants. Yeah. You know, I'm sure at some point there were elephants. I don't believe anybody has ever ridden into Colchester on an elephant. Well, you and your scepticism. But this establishes the idea that a king should probably have animals, wild animals, exotic animals. And Edward I, who is henry iii's son he basically creates

kind of permanent facilities for this menagerie um and it's a a tower that is now demolished that was just beyond the drawbridge uh and because it had lions it was called the lion tower um and this tradition of keeping animals there lasted throughout the middle ages through the tudor period um into the stewart period so um james the first is very keen on it so when he comes down from scotland he loves the fact that he owns basically owns a menagerie so he improves it he referred and james the first refurbishes um the the setting so that people can actually come and watch the lions prowl around and drink and eat and things like that. So it's a bit like a zoo. That's a zoo.

Yeah, it's starting to turn into a zoo. And so there are lions there, there are leopards, there are eagles, there are pumas, there's a tiger, and there's a jackal. So James loves everything that London offers, all the kind of stuff that he hadn't been able to get in Scotland. And absolutely, a menagerie is part of it. But no more polar bears, Tom. No more polar bears. And so this menagerie lasts through the, into the 18th century, but it's starting to become a bit kind of scuffy.

And into the 19th century, 1824, the RSPCA is founded, well before you get any charities devoted to ending cruelty to children, for instance. Well, I mean, the British famously care more about dogs than humans. So much more concerned with animals. And in 1826, do you know who is constable of the Tower of London? Is it Duke of Wellington? It is the Duke of Wellington.

How did you know that? I've just been secretly reading up on it. Oh, Dominic, that's cheating. That's cheating. So he basically decides that, you know, Tower of London is not a place for animals. That's odd for the Duke of Wellington because he's so

reactionary. Well, on this occasion, he is looking to the future and so he sends it off to the newly built Regent's Park. So they've been built this great park at the end of regent street um built by the prince regent uh and this is a much better place for the duke wellington decides for animals and so 150 of them get sent there and then in 1828 and a zoo opens a london zoo opens in regent's park yeah And seven years later, the menagerie gets closed for good. So all the animals are cleared out of the Tower of London and it stops.

You know, that's the end. It's very sad. So that's the history of the menagerie in the Tower of London. But there's one intriguing further detail. So we have one of the themes of this week has been ghosts. Yeah. So we mentioned the cock lane ghost, the ghosts, the ghost of Priory here in St. Bethlehem.

Lots of ghosts. The ghost of Skiffle. Yes, the ghost of Skiffle. But in 1816, a century, so I assume it was, would it be a beef eater? A guard in the Tower of London? I guess it might be, yeah eater, a guard of the Tower of London. I guess it might be. Anyway, he is standing by where the crown jewels kept. And suddenly he sees looming from out of the door that leads into the into the jewel room.

He sees the figure of an enormous bear, an enormous bear. And so he raises his bayonet to try and stop it. And the bear just goes straight through the bayonet, through him and vanishes. And the guard, the beef eater collapses, comes to, says what he's seen. Obviously they assume he's drunk.

So they fetch the doctor. So the doctor confirms that he wasn't drunk and the poor man dies shortly afterwards. A shock of terror. So what was this ghost? What was the ghost of the bear? Could it have been the polar bear perhaps? Maybe, who knows?

Or could it have been the ghost of a bear that had been given to George III by the Hudson Bay Company? And George III was very disappointed with this bear because he'd wanted clothes. You know, because the Hudson Bay Company produced amazing fur coats or something. Yeah, a nice fur coat or hat or something like that. So he's very disappointed. He got a bear that was called Old Martin and was very, very grumpy.

So that was kept in the Tower of London. So maybe it was the ghost of Old Martin and was very, very grumpy. So that was kept in the Tower of London. So maybe it was the ghost of Old Martin. But it has been argued by London parapsychologists that perhaps this was the ghost of a bear that had lived in the Thames estuary way back when Britain was home to bears and other such wild animals. So lions and mammoths.

You don't really tend to get prehistoric ghosts though, do you? I think that's the most implausible. Are you a leading London parapsychologist, don't you think? No, but I think. Your scepticism is out of control.

Reign it in. Yeah. You've scoffed at the idea that the Emperor Claudius rode an elephant into Colchester. I have, I've scoffed at the idea that the emperor claudius rode an elephant into colchester i have i have scoffed and now you're scoffing at the idea that the ghost scene in the tower of london might be the ghost of an ancient cave bear or something like that i think who knows dominic we don't know we don't know it's a mystery it sounds like it's the ghost of old martin that's my theory that's your that's what you're going for so sometimes in this podcast we like to address historical mysteries we've done the princes in the tower richard the third did it

and i'm going to put my neck on the line again and say i think this is the ghost of old martin because the polar bear i don't see what motive the polar bear has well i think you're right i think you're right because also the the signal thing about a polar bear is that it's white and this is not mentioned yeah he would have said it was a ghost of a polar bear is that it's white. And this is not mentioned. Yeah, he would have said it was a ghost of a white bear. Unless, I suppose, the ghosts tend to be white anyway. No, only Scooby-Doo.

I don't know if I... Do you know who would resolve this? Who? Dr. Johnson Ghost Hunter. Yes, he would. He would. Yeah, Amazon. So if anyone from Amazon is listening to this tv producers please do not ignore this brilliant idea right anyway so that's my that's my choice that's great so our next our next moment which we'll do after the break is much less tv well although there has been a tv program about it that's tantalizing okay we'll come back

after the break and find out what Dominic's got for you. We'll see you then. See you then. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news,

reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History.

The very last section of our London week. And today we are looking at events or episodes that have happened in the history of the British capital. We've had Henry III being given a polar bear in the first half. That was my choice. And now, Dominic, what's your choice? Well, Tom, we've had a lot in this week about people coming to London, about people moving to London, about people bringing bears to London or elephants or whatever they might be, baboons or lions or whatever. So I thought we'd end by people getting out of London. So you will no doubt know, as a top Londoner,

what was the world's first underground railway. Do you know? I do, Metropolitan Line. It was the world's first underground railway? Do you know? I do, Metropolitan Line. It was the Metropolitan Line. So the Metropolitan Line opens in 1863, has gas-lit wooden carriages, and it's hauled by steam locomotives. And it's the setting for a Sherlock Holmes story, isn't it?

It is, yeah, it is. And it's sort of very much redolent of that sort of Holmesian London, but also London, you know, the era just after the Great Exhibition, so London when it's the absolute sort of imperial capital. Yeah, it's the world's Babylon. Exactly. So the Metropolitan Railway, as it was then called, as you said, it goes from basically the city to Baker Street, Paddington.

But then they start extending it very quickly. So by 1864, it has reached Hammersmith in West London. By 1877, it has reached Richmond. And then the line starts to go out north into the sort of countryside of what's then Middlesex. So it goes to Harrow in 1880, Winston Churchill's old school. And eventually it gets as far as a place called Verney Junction in Buckinghamshire. So at that point, what we now think of as part of the London tube system or part of the underground system it extends more than 50 miles out of London

to the northwest all the way into rural very rural Buckinghamshire so if you think about the map especially for people who are from overseas who are massively familiar with London's public transport system you have this artery going out of London, northwest into what are called the home counties. So this is sort of affluent, semi-rural England, southern England. So the counties of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. So the line goes out. People playing tennis, isn't it, and stockbrokers. Exactly.

Well, we'll come to how they start doing all that, because the Metropolitan Railway doesn't just have the land around the railway. It's been allowed. It's been its legislation setting it up has allowed it to keep land to buy and keep land that it thinks it may use later. So it's basically accumulated much more land than it than it needs. And that's running along this railway and they start to think well how can we make this because it's a private company how can we you know basically get this get all this land to turn us a pretty profit and the obvious way is to build housing so with the development of the railways you have the development of commuting so people are coming into town on the railway and working in london then going back out to the countryside.

Is this the first time it's happened in the world, do you think, something like this? Is this another London first? I think it probably is, Tom, because where else will you have – I mean, I suppose at roughly the same period you would have had people commuting into Paris. Paris and maybe New York. Yeah, or maybe commuting into major yeah New York or major

cities in Germany so you get the sense with all this that it is something new yeah it is absolutely it is new and the metropolitan it's driven it's both driven by demand but also by supply so the metropolitan um railway kind of directors they absolutely absolutely want to, they have this land, which they've held on to, and they want people to live in it, they want to build houses on it, people to live there and to take their railway, and they will basically make loads of money. So they set up a company to start what they call

their Surplus Lands Committee to start building estates, housing estates, so late building estates housing estates so late victorian edwardian housing estates so the first one is built in pinna in sort of northwest london in 1900 and the people who are running the line the metropolitan line are thinking all the time about how to encourage custom so what they want to do is they want to get people to use their railway so not just people coming into london but they want to get people to use their railway. So not just people coming into London, but people in London to use their railway to go out of London.

And they want to kind of sell them the area on either side of the railway to sell the beauty of it and the benefits of it so that they will buy houses there. And then they'll be dependent on their railway for the rest of their lives. Yeah, brilliant. So they start producing. They have their own. I mean, it seems a weird thing for a – I a i mean certainly would have seemed a weird thing at the time for a railway line to do they have their own publicity department that produce leaflets and posters

and particularly from about i think it's 1908 or so something around about that anyway in wardian period they produce a booklet a guide the guide to the extension line, as they call it. And that guide is basically a guidebook. It tells you where to stay. This pub does a lovely pie. There's a lovely walk here, some nice woods. Get off at Chesham or whatever or Amersham or any of these sort of places. Have a stroll around.

Isn't it lovely? And maybe you could buy a house. Yes. And it's obviously going to be a hit because it taps into the sort of zeitgeist of the Edwardian era, which is a huge growth of suburbs, growth of people becoming richer and richer,

more affluent, middle classes and so on, but also this fascination with the countryside and with this sort of vanishing. And this is kind of Merchant Ivory film land. Sort of, yes, I suppose so. Yeah. Pellets, warts, white linen suits. Well, that's the sort of the dream that they're selling you, basically,

that you'll have your own little version of that. And the real moment that I want to sort of focus on is in 1915, because it's been delayed because of the war, but in 1915 they renamed their guidebook. So it was the guide to the extension line, and they call it the guide to Metroland. And that term, Metroland, is coined in 1915, and it immediately becomes – the thing that's interesting about it

is it doesn't just refer to thing that's interesting about it is it doesn't just refer to that area running into the home counties out to the northwest of London, but it becomes absolutely redolent of a cultural kind of atmosphere and a sort of political and economic atmosphere. So the Metroland guidebook, and you can get them, or you can find bits of them online, they're selling you the joys of nature and all the lovely woods.

You know, it sort of says at one point, sort of the Chiltern Hills are part of it. So it says at one point, each lover of Metroland may have his own favourite wood, beech and coppice, all tremulous, green loveless in spring and russet and gold in October. So this is obviously aimed at Londoners. Come out, you'll have your own favourite wood, you get get the train they have a train on smog exactly all of this all of this

and what they're selling you is this kind of arcadia so it's the same arcadia in some ways that you see in the wind and the willows that you see in i don't know the poetry of edward thomas or something at this poem adelstrop in which which, of course, he gets off the train, or he's on the train in Gloucestershire, and he sees the birds singing and all that stuff. It's the Arcadia that you get the same period Tolkien is writing, The Hobbit, and then later The Lord of the Rings. This sort of idealized rural England that is consumed by... A kind of escape from the Industrial Revolution.

Exactly, by urban people. Made possible by the Industrial Revolution. Exactly, by urban people. Made possible by the Industrial Revolution. Exactly that. Exactly that. So in a weird way, you could say it was kind of Disneyland rural England that is being created. But they also want to sell the houses.

So as soon as they produced the booklet, they really start... They start buying up more land. They buy it. Start in places that now, to a lot of our listeners who know London or who know England, will sound incredibly humdrum. So Wembley, Rickmansworth, Neasden in particular. Neasden becomes a great symbol of this.

Joke, doesn't it? So these things that are kind of a joke because they're seen as quintessentially kind of banal and suburban. But if you go to those places if you get the metropolitan line get off the houses lots of kind of tudor bethen houses so that they're built in let's say the 1920s in this deliberately retro kind of cottagey style and they are sold to people as this is your own little country villa this is your own little country house um so you've got a kind of bay window and you've got the steep roof

and all that sort of stuff. A short stroll will take you to the lovely park. There's a golf course. There may be an art deco cinema built in the 1920s or the 1930s on the high street at the place where you're going. So it's this sort of world of it's aspirational. It is suburban. It's sort of genteel.

The houses are all called things like the laurels or the oaks and things like that. And actually what it becomes, what Metroland also becomes relevant of, very much a friend of the show, Tom, Stanley Baldwin. This is Stanley Baldwin's Britain. So 1920s, 1930s Britain. Because Baldwin's single most famous speech is when he gave this 1924, so the peak of Metroland, he gives this speech saying, to me, England is the country,

and the country is England. When I ask myself what I mean by England, what I think of England when I'm abroad, and he goes on, blah, blah, blah, what he thinks of is the sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corn crake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill. The sight that has been England since England was a land. And always will be.

Yeah. But the one eternal sight of England, he says. And the thing is that even as he's saying this in the 1920s, it's utterly faded and it's gone. But he is saying it to, I mean, his audience, his electorate, are the people who live in those houses. Yeah. So nuclear families who are upwardly mobile,

who have bought new houses on the estates, basically built and provided by the metropolitan railway but this is one of the great housing booms isn't it it is absolutely and lots of people probably even listening to this podcast without really thinking about it are actually living in stanley baldwin's britain they're living in metroland they're living in 1920s or houses built between the edwardian period and the Second World War. Yeah. All those sort of suburban ribbon developments.

And then after the war, you have Betjeman's. So what happens, Tom, is that the phrase Metroland becomes very nationally known very quickly. So in Evelyn Waugh's books, there's a character who marries Viscount Metroland. She becomes Lady Metroland. Is it starting to become a joke then? Well, you see, it is a joke to intellectuals. And it's always a joke

to intellectuals. Sneery metropolitan types. Sneery, exactly. I think we've mentioned it before on this podcast. John Carey's book, The Intellectuals intellectuals and the masses which is all about the kind of intellectual turn against the masses at the beginning of the 20th century what all the things they dislike about the masses suburbs art deco cinemas the golf courses all of those things that actually people like um they are emblematic of Metroland and they're emblematic of everything

that intellectuals, writers, avant-gardists, Virginia Woolfists, people of that kind hate. And so Metroland does exactly that, become a bit of a sort of a punching ball. Well, I mean, Pinner is still a... Pinner, Neasden. Neasden is where football fans, Ashen-faced...

Ron Knee, the manager of Neaston Town. Yeah, in Private Eye. So that's kind of been swallowed up by slightly more low-rent suburbia. Yes, I suppose, to some extent. Whereas Pinner is... Pinner is slightly more genteel, isn't it? Slightly more genteel, but still a bit common, if you're T.S. Eliot. Well, I think it's not fair to say that the further you get out of London

along the Metropolitan Line, the more genteel it becomes. But every stop on the Metropolitan Line is a kind of lightning rod for different shades of British snobbery. Would that be fair? Yeah, I think that's probably fair. You kind of sneer at different regions

for different reasons. Amersham, which I'm sure is absolutely lovely and in the Chilterns, to a lot of people would just seem Middle England, utterly boring, you know, sort of. I think you're absolutely right, Chorleywood or whatever, all these sort of places. But the one person, of course, who's, as it were, an intellectual who champions this ahead of his time,

as you said, is John Betjeman. So the funny thing is that Betchamon isn't from metroland he grew up in highgate um but he's writing about it when it's really gone so that they stopped using the phrase the metropolitan railway stopped using the phrase in the 1930s that actually shows you how quickly it's become kind of i say yeah de classe exactly and then, from the mid-1930s onwards, the Metropolitan Railway basically ceases to exist. It's absorbed into London Transport. It sort of is just, to a lot of people,

it just seems like a sort of, you know, they forget about it, they forget it ever happened. But Betjeman is writing poems about the line and about the places along the line quite early on. So in 1954, he has a poem called Middlesex. So just read one verse. Very Betjeman for people who don't know Betjeman. Gaily into riselip gardens runs the red electric train with a thousand tars and pardons daintily alights a lane, hurries down the concrete station with a frown of concentration out into the outskirts edges where a few surviving hedges

keep alive our lost Elysium, rural Middlesex again. So Betjeman is kind of alive to the vanishing rural nature of it. But he doesn't sneer at the suburbs. He's sort of, he's wry about them, but he sort of takes them seriously at the same time and then in 1973 when betcherman has become a bit of a he's become a national treasure so he's this sort of cuddly teddy bear conservationist poet laureate the bbc asked him to make a film about metroland um which he does so you can see the film online. He gets on the train in London with a guidebook from the 1920s. And he basically just takes the line all the way to the end. I mean, he has this fantastic line.

He says, Metroland is a child of the First World War, forgotten by the second. And off he goes. He starts at Baker Street. If you ever got off at Baker Street Station, there's a big kind of neoclassical apartment block above Baker Street called Chiltern Court. So he starts by talking about that.

Then he goes to all these places, St. John's Wood, Neasden, Wembley, Harrow, Pinner, Chorleywood, Amersham. And he goes all the way. And it's this beautiful film, very 70s, very melancholy, kind of nostalgic. So it's funny watching it because you're watching multiple eras at once. You're watching somebody from the 70s talking about a sort of project from really the 1910s and 20s, but which was itself the product

of a line that was built in the 1860s. And also in the 70s, I mean, that's a period where a lot of Victorian and Edwardian architecture is being demolished. So most notoriously, the Euston Arch, which Benjamin was very upset about. Exactly. This great neoclassical structure outside the Euston railway station. And what's even better, Tom,

is that that documentary, Metroland, goes out on the BBC, and I think it's February 1973. And I think I'm right in saying it goes out on the day that it goes out. There's been a rail strike. It's just perfect timing. So he goes all the way along the line. And this is the perfect point for it to end. He goes to Verney Junction in rural Buckinghamshire,

which by then has closed. And he goes, and there's nothing there. And the final line of the whole film, he says, Grass triumphs, and I must say i'm rather glad and that's the brilliant so um that's the perfect notion which to end a series about london so i hope you've enjoyed our our london week um thanks very much bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access,

ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. That's rest launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.