The Rest Is History - 77. Statues: Whitehall

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Tom and Dominic continue their tour of London’s statues, arriving in Whitehall. War leaders, useless royals and courtesans all feature. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *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. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History, and it's the second episode. Dominic and I are out and about in central London looking at statues and asking keep or cancel. And in our first episode, we went to Trafalgar Square, looked at the statues there. Canceled George Washington, didn't we? We did cancel George Washington. And I think I cancelled, did I cancel Napier?

I think I did. No, I think you cancelled. No, I cancelled Havelock. I cancelled Havelock. You tried to cancel Havelock. So we've now walked down Whitehall. We're by Horse Guards Parade. Along the way, our producer was fulminating with Dominic, arguing that they should all be cancelled

because nobody's heard of them. Very much the Ken Livingstone argument. And we've now come to someone who i think completely essentially proves his point it's a statue of someone i've i've never heard of it's field marshal his royal highness george duke of cambridge kg ccb etc he's a guy he's on a horse he's got a great statue tom it's a guy, he's on a horse, he's got a... It's a great statue, Tom. It's a great statue. That horse looks like it's having a piss. Dominic, who is he? I don't know who he is. Well, he's George Duke of Cambridge.

You said it yourself. I mean, do you not know? Is that Duke of Cambridge as in the pub? There are a lot of pubs named after him, Duke of Cambridge pubs. Why? So who is he? He's Queen Victoria's cousin. And he was commander of the British Army for a large part of the Victorian era.

Okay, I apologize for not knowing that. And he's widely known as the worst commander in British military history. So I don't think he ever sort of led it in battle or anything, I don't think. So why was he bad? But what he did was he opposed every reform, every reform, every attempt to make the army more meritocratic, to stop selling offices. So people buying commissions. Buying commissions, exactly exactly to make it modern uh to adopt new technology to adopt he opposed them all he famously said there is a time for everything and the time for change is when you

can no longer help it and he argued that they could always help it so now the other thing about him that's really fun is that he broke there there was a thing called the Royal Marriages Act, right, where you had to get permission to get married. And he broke the Royal Marriages Act, and he married an actress. And that meant that all his children were illegitimate. So all his children were bastards. Okay, well, that's quite interesting. Yeah, so the title didn't pass down to his children.

Okay, okay. So I'm just going to... Our producer isn't on a mic, but I'm just going to ask him whether he thinks keep or cancel. Cancel. Cancel. So Tony's cancelling it. Well, that wasn't enough for you, Tony.

Cancel on the grounds of irrelevance. Cancel on the grounds of irrelevance. I don't know. I think it's a nice statue. And I also like the fact... Well, I quite like the idea of having a statue to someone who's completely useless and he couldn't even marry properly but i think that that's in key in keeping isn't it with the first episode where we had a lot of

useless kings yes charles ii james ii yes george washington who of course beat the british um some generals nobody's heard of i think i think in a way that perhaps if we reframe the debate and say it gives encouragement to people who aren't very good. Yeah, the producer is rightly pointing out that he thinks this is absolutely ridiculous because we're in the ceremonial core of Britain. We're surrounded by all the buildings. So the old war office is there. It's just been converted into apartments. You know, we're in these fantastic sort of neoclassical buildings.

And I like the fact that we have a symbol of futility. In incompetence uselessness yeah i think that's very british it's very yes minister the french would have like napoleon or marshall nay wouldn't we and we have someone who can't even marry an actress properly yeah exactly i think he's very british yeah i i make you proud doesn't it yeah to a degree i suppose although it's not framed like that is it so people are very keen now on putting up um little signs explaining who people are and why they're there yeah so perhaps we need to put up a sign saying this man is here because he was massively incompetent because he's really useless so all right now now do you know this is on the left coming up here a very good statue spencer spencer competent eighth duke of devonshire okay i have

no idea so he's the duke of devonshire he's a victorian politician now he's an interesting person so born 1833 died 1908 he's better known as lord hartington he's very famous in his day so he's unusual and he led nice motorbike action there uh he led three different political parties at different times he led led the Liberals, he led the Liberal Unionists, who break away from the Liberals, and he led the Tories in the Lords. He was offered the premiership, and full of

facts, Tom. Have you been looking at Wikipedia? I have been looking at Wikipedia. He was offered the premiership three times and declined three times. So in other words, a man who three times could have been Prime Minister but wasn't, because he liked to spend his time pleasures of the turf, shooting.

Well, again... And wait for it. Wait. He had a mistress called Skittles who was... And somewhere in London there's a plaque to her

and it says The Last Victorian Courtesan. So she was a celebrity prostitute and when she used to go riding in Hyde Park she wore a specially fitted, skin tight riding outfit and crowds would gather to watch her riding. How about that?

Well, I'm going to keep him. He's a massive lad. Yeah, exactly. He's a massive lad and he looks good, doesn't he? Yeah, I mean he's got kind of... He's very Victorian. Nice beard. Great cloak, medals.

Why wouldn't you? So this is for the producer who says people are irrelevant. He is irrelevant, of course, but he's interesting, isn't he? Do you know what I think is interesting? Yeah, so he's nodding. He's nodding. I've won. I am the statue champion.

So we haven't cancelled anyone yet? No, we haven't cancelled either of those two. Oh, you wanted to cancel the Duke of Cambridge though, did you, deep down? I do, really. I mean, I think arguing for keeping him up just because he's a model of incompetence to encourage people, it's not really a clinching argument. Whereas a guy who had an affair with someone called Skittles. I like that. Yeah.

And I'm happy to see that as a reasonable justification for keeping him. You see, that's what I think is so great about this walk, is that all these buildings, which kind of connote power and magnificence and might, but as you keep, you know, the actual characters, but these sort of ludicrous people from, you know, sort of Victoria. But it's kind of, I mean, who would be the, it's kind of like having statues to Nick Clegg or...

Yeah, Danny Alexander. Yes. Well, no, I mean... Richard Bergen. Kenneth Baker or, I mean, completely forgotten figures who nobody particularly liked. Okay, so here's another one. I mean, it looks exactly the same.

An Edwardian looking... Oh, it's Thingy. Now. Now. It's Hake. This is a very good one. Is it Hake? Yes, it's Earl Hake.

So I've heard of Earl Hake because I've read Gary Sheffield's book. Earl Hake. Gary Sheffield will be coming on very soon to talk about the Western Front. So this is, you know, the British commander at the height of the First World War, the mastermind behind the triumph of the Somme.

He's just been blocked off by a bus. Now incredibly controversial among historians, massive arguments for and against, seen by some historians afterwards as the donkey who sent all these lions to their deaths. Subsequently being a bit rehabilitated, I think it's fair to say. He's from a whiskey dynasty.

He was very in with the court. He was a dashing cavalry officer in his youth. He was very religious. He believed, when he became commander of the British forces, that he was being advised by the ghost of Napoleon, which is probably not an ideal thing for a modern general to think. But when he died...

Well, I don't know. I mean, Napoleon was very successful. I mean, it's better than being advised by... The ghost of... Some duffer. Yeah, the ghost of George Duke of Cambridge. Yes, exactly. I mean, imagine... That would be disastrous. Imagine you get a supernatural advisor

and it turns out to be him. The worst. The worst general. I mean, that would be a shocker. That would be just bad luck, wouldn't it? Yes. Sort of bring him out in some reality TV show. I mean, I think if you're generally being advised by Napoleon, you probably...

Is it like the early rounds of Strictly Come Dancing when they pay you off and they... You've got John Sargent. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. He died in 1928. There was a colossal turnout for his state funeral. Yeah.

He was very popular with the soldiers, like the Victorian generals we talked about last time. But this is not a popular subscription, is it? This is a kind of state-funded... I don't think it is. No, I think it's a state... But I think had there been a popular subscription, there's no doubt he would have had it.

Yeah. Because he was... The soldiers, despite his subsequent reputation, they loved him because he devoted the years after the war to sort of campaigning for their welfare and stuff. Well, I see there's a ring of poppies. There are. If you look, there are actually always poppies by that statue. So, you know, this is an interesting one

because a lot of people would say Haig's mistakes killed hundreds of thousands of young men. And of course, other people would argue actually he won the war, that his tactics ultimately were vindicated. I don't think there's any argument for cancelling this one, unless you're going to cancel,

unless you're arguing that the First World War is kind of cancellable. And even you can argue making mistakes as a general isn't cancellable, surely, because all generals make mistakes. Well mistakes i think that statues that generate heated debate and material for podcasts are good things yeah um so which is why you love the statue of cecil rhodes right i'm not getting onto that um so i reckon anyone interested in the historiography of the first world war you'd want to keep this wouldn't you i i think yeah i think

it would be weird i mean some of our listeners may well say you're talking about military a lot of military men and statues should be opened up beyond that and the celebration of military prowess is is not worth doing i suppose my answer to that would be every society that's ever existed has celebrated um military victory it's a roman thing again yeah i mean it's the legacy that you put up statues to generals who've won wars and in that sense the existence of statues celebrating people who perform great feats or did they debate discuss um in say the first world war is a snapshot of that period yeah agreed this is a little bit of the 1920s yeah that we're at right now yeah as is also well we've got a couple more generals i think tom have we and some quite controversial

ones before we get to the cenotaph yeah i was talking oh and we've got um the memorial to the the women of the second world war is that it yeah now we're approaching your brother's territory because your brother of course has this podcast with al murray we have ways of making you talk all about a second world war yes so we're outside the ministry of defense and we have three second world war generals we've got field marshal theount Slim, who campaigned in Burma. Yeah, the Forgotten Army, 14th Army. We've got Alan Brooke. And Monty.

And we've got Monty. So let's do Slim first. Lots of people, I understand your brother is a huge admirer of Slim, Slim's generalship. Slim, I've got my notes, he was an ironmonger's son and a former primary school teacher. Was he? Very unusual career trajectory. So he's standing here. He's in his kind of baggy uniform, and he's holding some binoculars.

But he does have the look of a primary school teacher who's discovered little Johnny. Now, yes, this is an issue doing something naughty in the corner it says at the bottom koima infal arakan which are you know his great victories all the rest of it and it says commander 14th army but at the bottom it says governor general and commander-in-chief in australia now there are allegations that as governor general in australia he interfered with child migrants which the Slim family have bitterly resisted and which have raged in Australia so here you have somebody who ought to be you know an unalloyed hero but there is that kind of well I don't want to say the taint because that sounds like i'm siding with his critics i don't

know enough about the issue but there's at least a question mark i guess um what do you think about that tom well i think that proves the gary young point that um you know don't have any statues ever well the the danger with putting up statues even of the most heroic high achievers is that they will turn out to have feet of clay yes and the whole image of the feet of clay of course is a biblical one thereby proving my point yeah yes again that it's all about christianity so it's amazing how he does it doesn't it yeah so well it's a death maneuver there but i think i i think you see if you work on the assumption of all these statues there are people who are sinners who are people who are okay who are human beings with, but also I would say that it's a monument not just to Slim, but to the people who fought under him. That's why the name's so important, the Arakan and all that stuff.

So I think that's important. Viscount Alan Brooke. So he was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, I think. My brother is all over here. We're not going to talk about him. Imagine having that written on your memorial. Dominic, it's pointless us talking about him. staff i think um my brother is all over here yeah we're not going to talk about his much i mean that written on your memorial i dream of that it's it's pointless it's pointless us talking about him let's tell the listeners to go and and listen to my brother i've got a fact about him he's very

keen bird watcher yeah like um edward sir edward gray the foreign secretary yeah beginning of the first world war obviously there's a podcast on that tom bird. Birdwatching and World Wars. And then we've got Monty. Yeah. Now, Monty... Who won the Battle of El Alamein. Monty is... Field Marshal, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. Arguably Britain's... You know, if you're thinking about

Britain's most famous modern general, I mean, arguably. I mean, it's clearly Monty. Monty's a very peculiar man, though, Tom. You know how he wooed his... So his... When he was in his late 30s, he courted a girl, a 17-year-old girl,

which is quite an age gap. Right. Do you know how he did it? Did he talk to her about... About tanks. He drew tanks in the sand and showed how he would use them in a military engagement. Well, I think that's a reasonable way to court a girl, isn't it?

Pro-apartheid, visited South Africa and said how tremendous apartheid was. And also had very strong views about homosexuality. Did he? Was he in favour or not? He said, of the decriminalisation of... Oh, I fell over a barrier. He said, of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, this sort of

thing may be tolerated by the French, but thank god we're british as the producer is pointing out there is some question mark about monty um so keep or cancel i think you keep don't you i mean keep because he's al-alameen he's yeah he's al-alameen yeah um but again it's that he's he's well he again he's up he's up there because he represents all the men who fought under him and some of whom died under him see this is the thing i think about statues there's always this presumption that by endorsing the statue endorse everything the subject

believed or stood for or said which obviously in montgomery's case you know pro-apartheid anti-gay nobody but by honoring monty i don't think you're honoring those views also i mean even in his lifetime he was seen as odd wasn't he oh everyone thought he was yeah they all loathed him yeah um but yeah the soldiers loved him he was the soldier's friend if you ever see footage or photos of him in his car and the soldiers are clustering around you don't want to shake his hand and okay get a glimpse yeah i i take your point so i'm very happy to keep all three but i do have i do have something against them against the three of them because originally up until i think 2001 there was a statue here of sir walter raleigh okay um the elizabethan potato yeah um who was um as 1066 and all that said um put in the tower by james the first

for being left over from the previous reign um and he was um he was executed on on this spot was he yeah so the statue was put here to mark the spot um and then they moved it basically because the statue of him the statue of raleigh was too too short so he looked kind of comically dwarfish right compared to the second world war generals yeah so slightly resentful of that but raleigh's been moved to greenwich so tom second world war generals i'm conscious that in this podcast we've done only men so far so have you any women for me a question i often ask you dominic i'm so glad you asked me that question. I don't.

You don't? No, I don't. But I do have a monument to the women of World War II, which doesn't actually have any women on it. It just has their... Oh, yeah, that's a very, very... Yeah, it's just their clothes. So it's their...

I guess it's kind of land girls and... Yeah, land girls, exactly, and ambulance drivers. Wrens and things like that. Wrens, exactly. And their uniforms and clothes hanging from a kind of great block. So that's... And it's obviously a counterpart to the Cenotaph, which is just a bit further down Whitehall, which I guess is the...

I mean, that was raised... So that's designed by Lutyens and it's raised to commemorate the First World War and it's still the annual focus of the nation's remembrance. Let's walk towards the centre. But I just wanted to say about the lettering on the monument to the women of World War II. World War II, I mean, that's an Americanism, I think.

It's a sequel, isn't it? World War II, the sequel. The Al Murray joke. Yeah. But, I mean, that's kind of disgraceful, isn't it? I ii the sequel the al murray joke yeah um but i mean that's kind of disgraceful isn't it um i can kind of live for that i suppose the second world war wouldn't fit on the on the side of the war they'd have to change the font and that would be a terrible faff um i think the women of world war ii is a great monument actually it's clever it's it's you know it stands out compared with the others it It really does. And it's the context, the militaristic, the all-male context makes it all the more powerful.

Yeah, I agree. And it complements the Cenotaph. And I think for a monument to complement the Cenotaph is quite something. Now, I think, I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I think the Cenotaph is an amazing bit of public art. I think because it's not figurative. Yeah, agreed. And because it's actually figurative yeah agreed and because it's actually surprisingly modest in a way it's not overpowering um it's kind of moving in its

simplicity you know as you say it's like a sort of altar or something built up on a plinth um it says the glorious dead at one end it It was built in, finalized in 1920. It doesn't go overboard with the patriotism. It's not an inherently nationalistic monument. It's also the first statue in either of these podcasts, Tom, where there are people actually looking at it. Yeah. So there's a family with very small children going to look at it,

which is actually, I think, in its way, quite a sort of moving sight. And they just laid a wreath, I think. There's a little girl going back there now. Yeah. Yeah, and there's a little girl sitting on the steps. You see, I think that's lovely. And I think that is what public art, historic art does. I mean, of course, people aren't doing that at the Statue of Charles Napier.

It would be pretty bizarre if they were but i think that is very moving that you know 101 years after it was built people are still going to visit it and to sort of i mean basically it it draws attention to the way in which um all the statues that we've looked at have been of single figures so there isn't a sense of of the commonality there isn't a sense of um tribute being paid to you know all the art people who've died or whatever whereas the cenotaph does that simply by not showing any figures at all cenotaph that means empty tomb does it yeah so? Yeah. So I said it was an altar, but it's not an altar. It's a tomb on the top, a tomb on the plinth, elevated above the traffic.

And I do think, I agree with you. I think, as it says, it's the glorious dead, as the inscription reads. I mean, it represents everybody who fell in the First World War. And that's more powerful than a single figure could ever be, I think. Yeah. Okay, we'll definitely keeping that. Okay, so that think. Yeah. Okay. We're definitely keeping that. Okay.

So that's definitely not a cancel. We should take a break. And then head to Parliament Square. Parliament Square. Very good. See you in a minute. 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. Welcome back to The Rest Is History history we're talking about statues we were on a lovely sunlit walk

down whitehall heading for parliament square and tom holland in his not unfamiliar way to me at least has insisted that we take a dog leg and we're now standing in the shade on a beautiful sunny london day we're lurking by a boarded up shop, looking across at Big Ben covered with scaffolding and a statue of who, Tom? Of Queen Boudicca. And the reason I wanted to drag you here is that I think that this statue is the most interesting because the most paradoxical statue of any that we have looked at. So for our listeners who don't know who Boudicca was. So Boudicca, Boudicca, Bodecia, as she was known in the Middle Ages,

as she was known quite popularly up until quite recently, was the queen of the Icani, which was a British tribe that rose in revolt against the Romans in the early years of the Roman occupation. Yeah. Was her daughters raped or something? So her daughters were raped against the Romans in the early years of the Roman occupation. Yeah. Weren't her daughters raped or something? So her daughters were raped by the Romans. Boudicca was beaten. And such was her fury and shame that she led her tribe on a murderous rampage

that incinerated Colchester, the capital of Roman Britain as it was then, and then descended on London. And torched London. And to this day, archaeologists can trace the devastation that she brought in the kind of the black soil that it left. So there's an incredible paradox in the fact that you have a queen who incinerated London in one of the most iconic spots in the whole of the capital, because she's on the end of Westminster Bridge looking up at Big Ben. So everybody who comes here will see her. She's in a chariot.

She's got scythes on the chariot wheels, which she didn't have, but was a popular legend. She's got her daughters with her. Boudicca, in the Celtic language that she spoke, meant victory, Victoria. But she didn't win. So this is also a portrait of Victoria, Queen Victoria. So it's raised in honour of Queen Victoria.

So there's all kinds of complications here. We've talked about the ambivalences that this kind of Roman inheritance of statuary provokes for people. So when we look at the statue of Boudichica are we doing so as britons or as as romans are we identifying with the romans who founded london so in a sense if you're a londoner you are an heir of of the romans or are you looking at her as as a britain as a member of the oppressed people and bearing in mind that this was put up in the heyday of the british empire yeah the ambivalence is a huge because yeah is this a monument to british imperialism or is it a question mark being raised over the depredations of imperial occupation very nicely done so i think that this channels all the tensions and paradoxes and complications

that i suspect that when we go to parliament square we're also going to be looking at. It's a demonstration, it's an embodiment of the fact that all these works of public art have multiple meanings. Absolutely. To an extent, you project onto that what you want to see in it. But I will say this, an awful lot of people, since you've been talking, I mean, obviously, I've noticed loads of people looking at you and whispering to each other, that TV's Tom Holland and the rest is history. But I can't help noticing that nobody has looked at the statue. No, there's a gentleman there just looked up at it. Yeah, I think he was looking at the sky. No, I don't think so.

I think he was at my... It's a splendid statue. It is. It's a very nice piece of... She's got a crown. She's holding a spear. Yes. Her horses are rising up. It's everything. And it's actually part of a whole tradition of European statuary

which asks exactly this question. So in France, you have statues of Vercingetorix, the Gallic leader who fought against the Romans. In Germany, you've got statues of Arminius, who again defeated Rome. But of course, these statues are themselves absolutely in the Roman tradition. So it's an interrogation of the inheritance of Roman statuary, which I think is fascinating. What we haven't talked about at all, Tom, is the importance of statues to kind of nation building and a sense of national identity and a national story. So the classic example of this, I always think,

I did a rival podcast series, a limited series, a couple of years ago, in which it was about invented history. It's called Hijacked Histories. And the final episode, we went to the republic of north macedonia as it now is where they famously have got into enormous rows with their neighbors the greeks because they put up statues of alexander the great and philip of macedon and claimed that these people were theirs and that they own them and people have always laughed at the the Macedonians because they put up billions of statues in Skopje, their capital. And it looks like a sort of statue of Disneyland now. But actually, although it's easy to laugh at them,

I kind of think putting up statues in the Western world is what you do. It's to tell your national story. You write it in stone and bronze, and that's actually just part of the sort of the canon of nation building if you like and it's a particularly greek thing because they're the the people who start it really yeah um you know that's the that's the great inheritance uh and i remember when we were doing um the podcast with michael wood on china the question of whether the um the the Terracotta army was influenced by

that Greek model of figurative statue. And I think it's certainly the case, say, in India, although there were absolutely kind of native traditions of sculpting kings in medieval India, the coming of the Muslims obviously irradiated that tradition. So you don't have sculptural representation, say, of the moguls. So in a sense, the modern tradition of figurative portraiture of sculpture in India, ironically, rather like the statue of Boudicca is an inheritance from the Roman colonialists, the statue portraying Indian freedom fighters is an inheritance from the British imperialists. So it's a kind of massive strip of cultural influence and cultural rejection. Now, Tom, two busts that we didn't talk about that we walked past are the Red Lion Pub, Charles Dickens and Geoffrey Chaucer.

And they're the only two writers that we've passed so far. So that's the massive gap, isn't it? So we've looked at people basically who who you know with the odd exception get their statues put up because they've killed people which is very greek and roman very greek and roman yes although the greeks and romans had statues of their great writers of course yeah um and that is something that we we don't have um i think dickens so dickens is probably the writer who more than anyone else... Well, Shakespeare. No, but it symbolises London.

OK, yes, yes, yes. Our image of London is completely fashioned by Dickens. And I think Dickens requested that there be no statues of him put up. So I would guess that's the reason that there aren't statues of him. But Chaucer also, huge influence on how we see London, because the Canterbury Tales begins with people meeting in a pub in Southwark, on the South Bank of the Thames. And this really powerfully struck me during the pandemic,

because I was meant to be, that April last year, I was meant to be walking across Kent with my brother, just as the Canterbury Pilgrims did. Of course, couldn't do that because of the pandemic and the lockdown. So I began reading Canterbury Tales. And it struck me completely afresh, the excitement of it, because Chaucer is writing at a time where the plague is endemic in London and it would be particularly endemic over the winter. So you would perhaps isolate, self-isolate over the winter. And then the whole thing about the joy of not socially distancing and meeting up with strangers in a pub and setting out across the spring with the birds singing and the sweet showers across Kent. It kind of filled me with this wistful yearning. And I say one of the things that I did over the lockdown was to follow in Chaucer's footsteps across South London. And for me, Chaucer and Dickens are far more vivid

representations, not just of London, but of England than any of the figures that we've looked at. I think that's probably fair. I think that's very fair. I think if you were redesigning Whitehall, if you were told to redesign Whitehall and to line it with statues to symbolise England or Britain and you weren't allowed military leaders, or indeed if you just started from scratch... I'd keep Nelson. I mean, I think Nelson is a

kind of charismatic figure. I wouldn't. I mean, nothing to me. Yeah, but you definitely have dickinson short and newton and i mean it's odd that we don't know scientists i suppose i'd have jenna i could keep saying yeah he's mad about jenna anyway um tom we always intended to get to parliament square we've been promising that for about a lot for the last two podcasts and we've gone on far too long because a we're we're slow walkers, and, B, you talk too much. That is the truth.

You've been going on about all these weird Elizabethan, I mean, Edwardian generals and their mistresses. Well, I think we've both been talking too much. I think we can all get that. Yeah, we've been wibbling on. So we should do Parliament Square in the third part of this mighty trilogy. And in Parliament Square, of course, you get to the big guns. You get to Lloyd George, Churchill, Mandela, Gandhi, Millicent Fawcett,

and the Earl of Derby. Oh, I know, everybody is. And Cromwell. Yes, Cromwell's come. And Richard I. Oh, very good. So we will do that in the return of the Jedi of this podcasting triptych on Parliament Square, and we will see you next time. Yeah, see you.

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