Synopses & Reviews
This humorous, informative, and user-friendly guide to Greenwich looks at the maritime, royal, and scientific history of the area. It also explores the preparations and plans for the Millennium as compared to the 1851 Great Exhibition and the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Synopsis
No more than a couple of square miles in area, the historical center of Greenwich is the birthplace of classical architecture in England, the spiritual home of its maritime past, a royal retreat, and now site of the Millennium Dome. It is also the place where the heavens were first comprehensively mapped out, where the most important chronometer in history was tested--John Harrison's H-4 of Longitude fame--and where the world's prime meridian runs across an ordinary pavement. Greenwich is Charles Jennings erudite, highly readable account of this most intriguing of places, exploring a history that is baffling, extraordinary, and genuinely unique. Charles Jennings was born in London and educated at Oxford University; he is the author of Up North, People Like Us, and Father's Race.
Synopsis
There is probably not a London suburb with more intense historical connections, more diversity and more astonishing buildings and artefacts than Greenwich. There are sections on MARITIME GREENWICH - home of the Maritime museum and the CUTTY SARK; ROYAL GREENWICH - Greenwich Park was Henry VIII's favourite residence and where he met Anne Boelyn; SCIENTIFIC GREENWICH - home of the Royal Observatory and GMT and of course The Dome itself...
What's it going to be like compared to similar vast jamborees - the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival Britain of 1951, what is that strange fabric stretched over those yellow spikes and WHO is going to settle in the 1400-home Millennium Village, to be opened in 2000, with the remains of the old gasworks lying a couple of feet below?