I started walking around London in my mind. It started when I wrote the entry about Jermyn Street. In mentioning Wilton's I should have mentioned that on my first visit there I ordered roast turkey with fresh peaches. I know, it sound like the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore routine about the Frog & Peach, but nevertheless that's what I had, with a raspberry syllabub for dessert.
In my mind my walk didn't stop when Jermyn Street ended at St. James. I imagined walking down St. James and into the park, and around the ponds. And admiring the view of Westminster Abbey from the bridge. And then perhaps out one end of the park toward Victoria or into Pimlico.
Pushing on now, following an instinctive guidance system in my mind, I stop for coffee at that little street (I know just how to find it) with all the cafes and an assortment of street venders. And maybe then veering toward the Tate. The original Tate, you know. And remembering the time I saw the Turner watercolors.
And then in my mind following the Thames all the way around to Hammersmith, and on along the way where houseboats are moored, and to Chiswick House to rest on the lawn, maybe have tea. But stopping first at the churchyard where Hogarth lies buried. And before that at the pub down from Hammersmith bridge with the deck overlooking the water. And of course near that bridge is London's finest vegetarian restaurant. If you know London you'll have realized I made a mental U-turn at Chiswick and retraced my steps.
I found many people who liked to walk around London with me, but only one who was always ready to walk, no matter how early in the morning. This was my grandson Emil Evans. "There's no such thing for me as getting up too early," he told me. We often walked down into St. James Park and fed the ducks, and made our way over to Westminster. We walked every morning. Our mission was always the same. We were not walking for health or to educate ourselves. We were walking to find the perfect cup of hot chocolate. We found the cheapest cup in London at Chubby's in Crown Passage, and the most expensive at Fortnum and Mason's. Both excellent. You always need a serious objective when you're walking.
On my imaginary walk I could have turned right at the end of Jermyn and walked up St. James to Piccadilly, and down to Park Lane, and up toward Notting Hill, and I could have passed the Mason's Arms on my way to Pembridge Square and nodded while passing the Hyde Park West Hotel, where I had a tiny room with a window that opened to allow me to stand on a wide roof overlooking London. I could have had lunch at Costa's, behind the Gate at Notting Hill, the famous movie theater. Or headed on west to Lord Leighton's House. Or I could have simply walked out the far end of Pembridge Square and stopped for lunch at the Sun in Splendor-- the Evening Standard Pub of the Year in 1968. Why do I know that?I realize this could get boring. It probably already has. I'll try to get to my point. Sometimes when I write, you understand, it's like when I walk around London. When I set out I have a general destination in mind, but as I poke around this way and that, I find places I didn't know about and things that hadn't occurred to me, maybe glimpse something intriguing at the end of a street, which is how I found Chiswick House, which I had no idea existed.
Daniel Curley, the writer, started me on this London walking in January of 1966. He was the first teacher I had in the first class I took in my freshman year at the University of Illinois, and I ended by taking all of his classes and considering him my mentor. That's a story in itself. Coming through London after my year in Cape Town, I found his note waiting at American Express. He and his family were spending the year on sabbatical.Dan was a walker. He had stout waterproof shoes, a slicker, and a knapsack containing a pair of binoculars and a bird guide. That first day he took me for a walk from the Belsize Park tube stop past Keats' Cottage and onto Hampstead Heath and to the top of Parliament Hill, where all of London was at our feet. And then we set out across the Heath to the tumulus where Boadicea, queen of the land, is said to be buried -- unless she's under the tracks at Kings' Cross, which is another legend. Curley pointed out the lane of trees where Keats first met Coleridge. We had lunch at the Spaniard's Inn, where Mr. Pickwick so unwisely proposed marriage.
It was there I first tasted a banger. It would not be my last. Made of fat, cereals and allegedly some meat, the banger is so beloved by the British that they nearly dropped out of the Common Market when Europe disrespected its ingredients. In some pubs they are served with a fork. In others, with a toothpick. They are much improved by Colman's English Mustard, which every pub supplies in a little pot with a tiny wooden spoon. No other mustard will do. If you insist on Dijon mustard you might as well drop your banger on the floor and grind it under your boot.
On that first day the Spaniard's was still broken up into cozy little spaces and cul-de-sacs, booths and hideaways. Later vandals came in and "modernized" it, which meant ripping out the age-old walls and "opening it up." Dan also guided me to to the Blackfriar Pub by the bridge of the same name when it, too, had a public bar, a private bar, a fireplace room, a snug, and so on. Also now denuded. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got, till it's gone?
Down the way a short distance to Kenwood House, the grandest country house near London. Rembrandts and Romneys, and a trompe l'oeil library. Gardens crowded with giant rhododendron and azaleas, blinding with beauty in the springtime, concealing tunnels you can walk through. Dr. Johnson's Summer House. It was chilly that first day. On later visits, if the weather was pleasant, I invariably rested on my back under a tree, my eyes shielded by my Tilley Hat, and dozed half-aware of the noises of children and dogs playing.
Then the 210 bus into Highgate and down to the cemetery and to the graves of Karl Marx and George Eliot, and then across the way to Old Highgate Cemetery -- because, this being London, Marx and Eliot were in the new part, you see. In those days the Friends of Highgate Cemetery hadn't yet started clearing the tangled growth that choked the cemetery during the war, when all the groundsmen were needed as air raid wardens. Tombstones leaned at crazy angles, some graves gaped open, and the Columbarium looked like a set for Hammer horror films -- which, indeed, it often was. A daughter of Charles Dickens rests there, and Radclyffe Hall, with a plaque signed by her lover Una. The cemeetry is overshadowed by the looming back wall of St. Michael's Church, where Coleridge is buried under the center aisle.
But there I go again. The thing is, Dan Curley started me on the walk of a lifetime. A walk around London, which you will never exhaust. We walked along the canals of Little Venice into the Zoo, and then down through Regent's Park. We walked the South Bank when abandoned warehouses still scented the air with the spices of the East. Clink Street. Southwark Cathedral. We went into the old Cockney streets of the East End, now home for East Asians, and into Tower Hamlets Cemetery. We prowled on another cold winter morning the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, so much older than the church.We stopped from time to time in pubs, where a pint of bitter would make a stop at another pub inevitable. It was then that I acquired a lifelong meme which I will now pass along to you. As Dan stood before a urinal, he would invariably intone, "As the man says in the play, for this relief, much thanks. Since January 1966 I have rarely urinated without repeating that phrase. It works wonders. Now it's yours. Years and years from now, a tiny bit of Dan Curley and me will live on as you quote your Shakespeare.
One thing Dan suggested was getting a cheap pass on London Transport, picking a tube stop at random, coming up and poking around. It was he who told me the Henry James line about a top seat in he front on a London omnibus, which I have tired you with time and again. We went to St. Paul's and the Wren Churches of the City. We walked past the gaping doorways of the roaring presses when Fleet Street still churned out newspapers. We walked Kings' Road to the World's End and beyond. We walked and walked, and I have been walking ever since.We only walked London together once again, when we joined Jack Lane the photographer in writing on The Perfect London Walk, describing that first walk over the Heath. But his influence was lifelong. Because of him, I daresay I know London better than he did. In every city, I would walk the same way. In Venice I would set out deliberately to get lost. Don't get me started on Paris, Toronto, Edinburgh or Stockholm -- where I didn't know there was an Old Town until I found it.
Some time ago I heard about the 10,000 Steps a Day Program. I bought a pedometer, and tried to use it 365 days a year. That lasted five years, until my first big surgery. I found streets in Chicago I didn't know existed. I did the lakefront in both directions, and the River Walk, on both banks, and the Loop, and the streets and shops of New Town, Rogers Park and Devon Avenue, where you could be in Mumbai or Karachi, and Chinatown, and Greek Town.I was not a fast walker, but I was steady. Walk too fast and you miss the show. I doodled. Dawdled. Moseyed. Sat down and thought. Gazed into space. Carried along a book. Sketched this and that. An iPod would have been an atrocity. When I was dive-bombed by angry cardinals protecting their nests in Lincoln Park, I wanted to hear their fury. By the ponds in spring I would marvel at small orange fish so thick in the water a duck could have walked on them -- bright fish you'd see in the shallows for two weeks, and never again. They made a soft splashes like a squishy washing machine.
After the first surgery, my leg muscles wouldn't support me. I had to be winched from the bed and lowered into a wheelchair. I went through four rehabs in all. Each time I began again with a few steps using a walker. One day I walked all the way around the nurse's station. When "Avatar" shows humans reclining indefinitely while occupying their surrogate bodies, I know that after a month they won't be able to take a step on their own. There should be a sequel named "Avatar Rehab."
I was able to walk again after each rehab. I'm doing fine now. I walk around the neighborhood and in the park, and at Cannes and Toronto I power down the street to make those screenings. It is important that I repeat certain rituals. Tucked in just north of the Lincoln Park Zoo, in a secret pocket of the city not everyone knows about, you will find the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond. It's surrounded by thick shrubbery. I've seen a lot of rabbits there, and once maybe a fox. Birders prowl it. I walk around it and affirm my continuing existence.Here's the curious thing. These memories are happening all the time now. I retrace those steps in my mind, and I remember details for the first time. I'm coming to believe that everything is stored away in my mind somewhere -- every step I took, every street I walked, every window I looked at and wondered, who lives there? At the east end of Pembridge Square there was a high window with a wooden silhouette of a palm tree in it. Whose was it?
I believe that I could pause right now and remember something I saw on a walk that I have never thought of again since that time. I'll play fair with you. I'm pausing. I'm going to go quote Shakespeare.
I'm back. Much thanks. After you leave the Belsize Park tube stop you angle down through an old churchyard on your way to Keats' Cottage. On the corner you will see a pizza parlor. I sign marks it as the location of the book shop where George Orwell once worked, the one that inspired his novel Keep the Aspisdistra Flying. That's not what I remembered. Some steps up the hill to your left you will find the Roebuck Pub, and a Blue Plaque marking the dwelling of one of the Huxleys, perhaps Thomas, "Darwins bulldog." Those aren't what I remembered, either. A door or two away, there is, or used to be, a nursery school, and displayed in its windows one day were colorful zoo animals, cut out of construction paper. That was thirty-five years ago, at least, and I remembered it again this moment.These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Have you laid in your own supply? Someone asked me what I would do if I had one day in London. I thought about that. I decided that one single day in London would be to frustrating to even think about. I would get out of town.
I would go to Liverpool Street Station early in the morning, and take a train to Cambridge. From the station I would ask a taxi to take me to the beginning of the foot-path to Grantchester. A taxi, because I don't know the way by foot and I want to be on the meadows as soon as possible. Once on the footpath, there is no getting lost. There is a series of pastures, the Cam flowing at their feet. You let yourself through turnstiles that guard the cattle. It is so quiet. The wind in the trees. At the end of the path, after half an hour or so, you're passing the back gardens of Grantchester Village.
You walk straight on to a small road, cross it and go into the churchyard. The Old Vicarage is to your right. Some of you know where this is leading. Beside the path to the church is the little War Memorial, and among the names is Rupert Brooke's. He isn't buried there. Some small patch of foreign soil will be forever England. You look to the church tower to tell the time.Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?For decades the clock was stopped, and undergraduates could point to it and prove it was not yet three -- pub closing time. Fools took up a subscription and repaired the clock, which now keeps perfect time. But the water is sweet and cool below the deep meadows.
"The Perfect London Walk," a miraculous video by Karl-Heinz. My heart leapt up when I beheld it. Step after step, street, path and lane, from the tube station to Parliament Hill.
"The Perfect London Walk," Part Two. I recognize individual trees, especially that giant felled by the high winds in the 1980s. I've rested on that very bench overlooking the secret meadow. Karl-Heinz, we now take this walk together.
"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," by Rupert Brooke.
Read by Tom O'Bedlam. Click here.
Thank you so much for writing this.
Sorry to be cliched kissass, but that was just great writing and I felt like I walked the routes myself. I enjoy your writing on other subjects as much as I enjoy your work on film.
Hi Roger,
I was born with Dandy Walker syndrome, among other health problems that, several months ago during a nasty virus that injured my liver, made walking painful and fatiguing again. Still, I walk. I agree that through walking slowly, you take more in. I live in Toronto and I love to walk downtown. There are so many sites to see. Well, I love to walk in general. It helps me clear my head.
Maybe you're like me and you appreciated walking even more after your illness. I'm so glad you are able to walk well again.
Thanks for this. You're one of my favourite writers and I have you on my blogroll. Your introspection and optimism inspire me. I write a lot about my health problems in my blog and I hope it will touch people like you have touched me.
Wishing you health and happiness,
Ashley
Oh, Roger, I so enjoy these reminiscences. Fate and fortune have conspired against me traveling as I should like to -- and London is a place I would most dearly love to linger. Such is your gift that I have a rich, vicarious experience every time you take one of these public strolls down memory lane. Please don't stop sharing them. I appreciate them more than I can express.
I too have always been fond of the "pop out of the tube and see where you've got to" school of tourism and it's always served me well. The first thing to do in a new place is get lost.
I envy you so your time spent in London and I hope you're still able to visit from time to time.
Enjoyed reading this one... I love walking too !
My goodness, Roger. You are the most extraordinary human, aren't you? I think I may be in love with your mind. Or, at least, very intrigued by it's contents. You seem to have become more empathic and generous in giving of yourself since your experiences of the great undoing that is our body's/bodies' natural digression/. Thanks so much for your walks of the mind. Got me thinking of great walks in my memory.
Walking the prairie around our Barrington, Illinois farm with my Dad, as he carried on a running commentary about the things we were seeing: rushes around the slough, prairie grasses, the red-wing blackbirds and the grackles. And solitary walks around the streets of 1971 San Francisco, when once I wandered, long-haired and scraggly-bearded, into City Lights Bookstore to ask the man himself; quietly working the counter and unpacking books, where I could find Alan Watts place out by Point Reyes. And he told me, Ferlingetti did. But mostly I think of Golden Gate park and the Seal Rocks seen from the Cliff House restaurant, and....
Thank you for your walking tours of the mind. You are the shizz, Roger Ebert. Huzzah!
With these frequent Shakespeare quotations you will end up in stream of consciousness.
Ebert: Thy wish is father to that thoiught.
"I started walking around London in my mind."
Walking in the mind is not a bad idea. No exhaustion,no expense,no need to have visited the place at all.
This was not half as bad as the real show.
When I was supposed to be studying for my exams at the end of my first year at Cambridge, I got up from my desk and decided, on the way back from the toilet, to walk to Grantchester instead.
I didn't know where it was besides it was "sort of south west" of town. I walked for an hour down main roads, taking turns when I felt the that was the right thing to do. I made it to the town but avoided the pubs and started back to Cambridge over the meadows.
There is an incredible sight from the meadows. If you look towards Cambridge, it appears covered in tall trees and only three things jut above them - the top of St John's College, the top of King's College Chapel and the University Library, built in 1935 and used for exterior shots as the Ministry of Truth in 1984. I looked at this view and it occured to me that the library is probably the only addition to it in centuries.
Ebert: Did you have lunch at the Green Man or the Rupert Brooke?
This has nothing to do with walking, per se...but when I saw the picture of you standing holding your umbrella with two other people, in what appears to be a cemetery, I thought something looked familiar- and sure enough, I've seen those tall doorway-looking crypt (?) entrances before, on the back cover of Harry Nilsson's Son of Dracula soundtrack album. Just wanted to share...
Ebert: That cemeetry has been used in more films gthan you can imahgine.
On my left was Daniel Curley. On my right, Jack Lane.
Roger,
I'm a 54-year-old gay woman and I am in love with you. :-) Thank you for your wonderful writing. I spent many weeks in London over the years and took many early morning walks. Used to hop on and off the big red bus and meander for hours.
You brought back many memories for me and now I want to go out and walk!!
I wonder if Google Maps street view would make us feel like we were back to our favorite places?
Ebert: Not quite. But you could try Street View.
Extraordinary essay- making your own walks compelling to other people is like making your nightly dreams interesting to your co-workers - a magic act.
When I was 8, we lived in London and I whined and winged my way around the place, the youngest of a family that loved to walk. Back then, it seemed like a place in which every foot, every metre I suppose, had somehow been stretched for the purpose of tiring my feet, and making me thirsty. Boring me to tears. (I was that kind of child.) And my childhood memories of the time are like that - streets like open prairies. Endless.
Returning as an adult, though,everything seemed to have been miniaturized, amazing details crowding every window, each facade. The streets flew by - except I would linger, try to slow them down. It's still my favorite walking town.
Thank you for your memories, which have brought on my own. Your writing is simply extraordinary, ever more so. Best solace for waking up too early, ever.
Thank you for this tender meditation on time, change and the consolation of memory as revealed step by step through a lifetime of walking. Once again, your writing illuminates so much more than the ostensible subject.
A fine refreshing walk, a wallow in the best sense, in ruminative appreciative depths rife with friend-anecdotes and historical incident. The goal you and your grandson had has such a tasty nobility. Thanks yet again for sharing your enjoyer's mind with us!
A great piece that made me so wistful for London. Thankfully, I have some stored memories from my years of walking London. Mr. Curley's notion of using the tube stops brought back the sharpest memory.
When I moved to Manhattan and took an entry level advertising agency job, I knew little about the city other than the Met, Times Square and Central Park. Ad agencies were pretty lenient with the 'lunch hour' and I worked a block from Grand Central, on Madison Avenue of course. At least three times a week, I'd get on the subway, ride to a stop where I'd never been before, get off, walk around and have something for lunch while walking. Thirty years later, those adventures are still as indelible in my mind as later adventures in other cities of the world.
My favorite one day walking tour is one I developed in Paris. Reread 'The Moveable Feast' while walking to every Paris location in the book. This is best done alone since it will involve drinking and if a friend goes along, it is too easy to become distracted from the task. Once I find a mentioned bar or place, I sit and have a coffee or glass of wine and read until I note the next place and off I go. I've bought a copy of the new rerelease with extra passages and hope to report back some added locations one day.
I love books that make me get a map out, and the Steig Larsson books make me want to go walking and traveling in Sweden. I guess everyone finds a reason for their missions. Books happen to be mine.
Ebert: The Movable Walk. There's a book there.
By golly, Mr. Ebert.
You may be nil by mouth, but since your surgeries, your written voice is clearer than water, and just as fluid.
Thank you for writing being you can't help yourself.
I lived in London for eight years, tried the "pop out of the Tube and see where I am" method a lot, and still didn't see more than a fraction of it. I went back last month and walked a pair of shoes off my feet. I thought I was exaggerating when I said I missed London, but I wasn't.
Only one walk was a "retread", but it's one my favourites, going something like this: Turnpike Lane Tube, walk up that street to Wood Green Shopping Centre (with its markets selling weird stuff); out the back and up the road to Alexandra Palace station; cross the tracks by bridge, then up the hill to Alexandra Palace itself, a beautiful Edwardian edifice that boasts a magnificent view of London. Down the other side, then up through the park to Muswell Hill, optional stop for coffee. Left down the hill to Highgate Wood, a great place to chill out and read next to the cricket pitch. Finally, a walk to Highgate Tube station, or optionally down the hill under the Archway bridge.
Ebert: And walking down the hill, you pass the statue of Dick Whittington's cat.
http://j.mp/ddGSP1
I love reading your Journal, it is a beautiful gift you have given your readers. Thank you Roger, thank you for this wonderful addition to an already blessed life.
This was just lovely, thank you. I've always been a walker myself, at least when I was younger. When I was a child we lived in a country-ish suburb and we were attuned to the natural world that most kids now will never experience. To this day, I would rather take a walk in the woods than a night at the theater!
I think, the very essence of life is found within the human mind.
I worked in rehab and with rehab patients for a year.
A few patients stick out for me.
One was a woman who had, had a left brain stroke. She hated me. No matter how quiet, how talkative, how distant, how open... she hated me. I remember looking into her bookshelf and seeing we liked the same novels: Marquez, Miller, Murakami - alphabetical even.
Still, when I came in to do her hand exercises, or I'd see her in the hallways - she would hit me or shout at me.
I always wondered what I could possibly have said, or done or looked like to her: it wasn't just that she hated the exercise, she allowed other to work with her. I'll never know.
The other patient was a 26 year old man who had a piece of metal remove the front half of his brain while he was in Kosovo.
The other therapists warned me: He's verbally abusive. You have to report to his caregiver when he swears at you.
This man swore in tic's. I loved it.
When I was introduced to him, half his head missing, head swaying back and forth, he said
"Bring me a cup of coffee please, you Bit** from He**"
I discovered through our conversations that he didn't have a short term memory, but his long term was intact. He was blind, yet he'd know what color I was wearing. He imagined I looked like Pamela Anderson. He liked Metallica. I made him CD's. Eventually and remarkably I discovered we had gone to the same High School, hundreds of miles away from the rehab unit. He would tic orders from the day he lost his head in Kosovo. He'd be there, in the mud, bleeding. And I'd hold his hand and cry with him - shutting his door so that I wouldn't get fired for having a soul.
Your blog is beautiful and true; the brain and memory are a marvel, as is writing, as is walking. Amazing. Even when it feels like there is nothing for you in a simple room- you discover it's all still there. Amazing.
Thank you.
xoxo K
Ebert: Rehab nurses are a special category of human being. They have souls. They don't get fired, because they can cast the light from their souls as a focused beam, like those lanterns in old Sherlock Holmes movies.
A young mother of three came in one day. A blood infection had required the removal of her hands and feet. Now she had been fitted for protheses and was ready for rehab. Her attitude was amazing. "Hi, Rog!" she'd say every morning in arm exercise class. Snapping her gum, grinning. The nurses and rehab workers said they'd have her changing diapers on her youngest. One day another young woman walked in. Also no hands, no feet. Promised her it would happen. God. Just, God.
The richness of your remininscences can't help but remind me of Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly where his memories transcended his sensory loss and became all the more intense and alive.
It also makes me think of re-reading The Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux.
"Sometimes when I write, you understand, it's like when I walk around London. When I set out I have a general destination in mind"
"I would set out deliberately to get lost"
Sometimes when I write it's like being lost too. I start writing not knowing what I want to write about and mid way through I realize what I'm writing about. It's as if I don't plan my words. I have an idea of what I want to write about but it isn't till I actually write that everything becomes clear, like being lost and eventually finding a familiar building or street ahead of you and you suddenly realize where you are. Is that normal for a writer?
I count myself lucky to have both read and walked "The Perfect London Walk", if any of you readers haven't read it, you can find it on amazon. It's worth every penny. If you live around London or pllan on going there, take that walk. If you can't afford going there, you can always watch Karl Heinz "Youtube adaptation" of the walk :) (Part 1: http://j.mp/aozefo Part 2: http://j.mp/aHSSDi)
The walk is indeed perfect and very memorable, which is what makes a walk great.
Roger, how many times have you been to London? I don't want an exact number just an estimate. It's just that you seem to know the city like the back of your hand.
Sometimes getting lost is the best thing that can happen to you. It lead me to discover one of my favorite shops in London, VinMag. The only shop that seems like it's hiding from the world in Soho. It sells everything vintage from posters to retro gifts to restro postcards. However, it's the lower underground floor that has me revisiting it every time I'm in London. Go down that narrow staircase and you end up in the past. With hundreds of used books, magazines, and newspapers from each and every decade. Everything is labeled there by decade and type. Visit their site to have a complete list of magazines they have and chances are they have the issue you're looking for (www.vinmag.com). It is there that I bought a rare first edition used copy novelization of Paul Schrader's "Taxi Driver" by Richard Elman. (As great as the book for different reasons..a post modern masterpiece). On my last trip there I bought a nice original newspaper from April 15, 1912, the day following the sinking of the Titanic.
I walking off road/off topic :) here, so I'll stop before I end up writing about kangaroos or something.
Thanks Roger, I wouldn't have thought of some of these walks if it weren't for this entry. Excellent!
Ebert: My god! Until you informed me, I didn't know about those two videos by Karl Heinz! I cannot imagine a better representation of the Perfect Walk! I can't even begin to tell you how they made me feel.
You wouldn't even need my book. You could download them into your iPhone or iPod and simply follow them. They're that good. I just added them both to the bottom of the entry.
Since 1962, I suppose I've been to London 100 times.
London has never been on my list of places "I have to visit before I die", but now this has changed. I have always wanted to visit the sites mentioned in Mary Stewart's books based upon Arthurian legend: Tintagel (isn't it fun to say that word?), Caerleon, etc., but now my trip will not be complete without a ramble through London towne.
Thanks, Roger!
I finally went into the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond this past spring. I've lived in Chicago most of my life and I couldn't believe I'd never been in there before considering how many times I've been to the LPZ or the Lincoln Park Conservatory.
Thank you for this wonderful post Mr. Ebert.
Mr. Ebert, your photographic memory shames me and my sophomoric undergrad memories of the streets near Euston Station, where I stayed years ago at University College London. I wish I had paid this much attention. When I could have been exploring cobblestoned paths, I was instead holed up in the dorms, listening to a fellow American’s sad breakup story about a boy who only cries when Goose dies in “Top Gun.”
Why have you never written a travel book?
You're not like many Americans; so few of you walk anywhere (truly, no offense meant to americans). I'm used to it now, but asking for directions in the states can be quite a comic experience... explaining that you don't have car, and the look of total incomprehension that follows on the otherwise incredibly helpful receptionist's face. People seem completely incapable in estimating a walking time- They usually just add 5 or so minutes onto how long it would take in a car, which used to confuse me a fair bit. But then, aside from a few cities like Boston, Manhattan and Chicago, things just aren't laid out for walking, so I can't blame them.
People say walking is a great way to combat depression. It certainly seems lead to really moments of serenity. A couple of summers ago, I was in Manhattan, and a friend of mine, who had never been, was meeting me that evening. We were starting a coast to coast trip and I wanted to show him the best of they city in the couple of days we had, so that morning I got up at about 6am (jet lag can help that way, travelling west) and it was one of those totally clear blue sky days, only a few joggers about. I started in Washington square and walked to central park all the way up 5th avenue, just to reorientate myself. I had one of those incredible, beautiful morning feelings where you know the whole city, and in a few days the whole of a country lying ahead of you to explore. There is absolutely nothing like it in the world.
Reading this blog is not helping my wanderlust...
Ebert: The cities you mention, and San Francisco, are densely settled. You don't have to walk half a mile to see something new. Houston, now, has been destroyed by corporate architecture. They want to surround themselves with concrete and give themselves phony addresses like #1 Bullshit Plaza.
That's sweet that your grandson is always ready to take a walk with you, and I agree about having a mission. Rather than hot chocolate, I'm always on the lookout for good pastry.
To walk for the sake of a walk is to take advantage of a natural, God-given therapy. In my adolescence I walked gritty parkways in Alabama to sort out what you sort out at that age (and a little more). The soft patter of the Mobile Bay and the clinging wet air offered steady companionship. In college, the tree-enveloped night streets of Athens, Ohio became a solace. And now too and from shows in DC, I enjoy treading the upscale areas, mingled with stoic white monuments - though the shady semi-ghettos have much more character. Some people enjoy the planning, some people can't wait to arrive-- I'm far more interested in the period of transition, place to place.
Ebert: Walking absolutely works for depression. And I dsicovered back in the day that you could just about walk off a hangover. It might require quite a distance.
i was only in london a short time, but its amazing the way i can walk around in my mind. it's truly a wonderful feeling, to be walking through the heath, passing the pond and up the hill toward the one lone windblown tree, where the kite flyers like to set up on a good day.
i spent a good deal of time getting lost in the highgate, and i can see it all so well.
thank you for everything you've written.
This post makes me want to dig out my old diary entries about London, my photos from that semester abroad, and the map that came with it. Too bad they are in Connecticut, and I am in Seattle.
Though I got lost plenty in London (well, not lost, just couldn't find the right street home), I didn't try to get lost until I went to Japan. By climbing paths that were a little too steep in Kamakura, or just wandering here and there in Kamikochi, I often discovered beautiful sights, and views, and vistas, that could only be come across accidentally, and were not in my guide book. Even when I went to places that were in my guide book, there were always out of the way places I would discover along the way, like the restaurant/gift shop on the side of the Path of Philosophy in Kyoto, where I drank homemade plum wine and ate donburi. After I finished, the proprieter gave me postcards with some old style Japanese drawings and calligraphy on them--as a gift.
I still have the postcards.
When you were in London did you ever listen to a BBC panel game called I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue? The last time Radio 7 rebroadcast it I caught some episodes. One of the games they played on the show was called Mornington Crescent. It involved getting from some random start point anywhere in Metro London to the Mornington Crescent tube station as directly as possible without ever leaving the tubes. Your opponents, meanwhile, are trying to divert you as far off course as they can. I tried to follow a game once with a London transit map, and got totally lost. Goodness, their rail system covers everything, seems like. CTA rail is just a rough sketch of one.
Ebert: There are Underground game players who compete at passing through the most different stations in the shortest possible time.
Between this and the Jermyn Street reminiscence, I'd be surprised if the rate of London vacations among Roger's readers doesn't spike in the next year. Boy, do I wish I knew about Roger's book when I was in London for a week (in '96, I think -- they were almost done re-building the Globe). You can be sure it will accompany me if and when I find my way back.
Still, my favorite thing to do when I was there was take the various "walking tours." The guides would be standing outside the tube stations, and the fee was nominal -- between five and ten pounds. I took several, including a "Dickens" walk with a woman dressed in period costume and a British Museum walk with an off-duty cabbie who could have stepped out of a Kingsley Amis novel (and who was very proud of being one of the official guides who earned the right to wear the little medallions around their necks -- I forget the name of the honor, something like Blue Medal?). Most had somewhere from a half-dozen to fifteen people walking along, and grew in size as they went and tourists would start to hang out nearby trying to be inconspicuous so they could take the walk without paying. Cheap bastards. The most popular walk was the relatively cheesy "Jack the Ripper" walk late one night, on which the crowd must have stretched out two blocks.
Being originally from the Boston area taught me to enjoy city walks. It's not a city you want to drive in. More than once I walked from the North End, across Government Center, to the Common and Public Garden, down Commonwealth Ave., past Fenway Park, and then caught the T to Harvard Square and my favorite bookstores. Now I live not far from D.C., which is a pretty good walking city, but in a different way. It's not an organic city, the way London and Boston are, but walking around the Tidal Basin, between the cherry trees (not just in blossom time) and through the FDR Memorial -- the most under-rated spot in the city -- is remarkably peaceful, and of course a trip up either side of the National Mall, with the various parts of the Smithsonian beckoning to you every block with free admission, offers its own pleasures. It seems every time it starts to rain or I get a little too hot, I'm in front of the National Gallery, where you can cool off by looking at a Monet without paying a cent.
Last August I went on my honeymoon -- a Mediterranean cruise, but we got off the ship every chance we could and for as long as we could: Barcelona, Nice, Eze, Florence, Rome (where the Protestant Cemetery was closed for Ferragosto, despite the claims of its website, and so I missed out on Keats' and Shelley's graves, which are basically Mecca for me -- arrghhh!), Taormina, Mycenae, Epidavros, Olympia, Corfu, Dubrovnik, Venice. No single sight or memory stands out more than just the feeling of being in these places, walking along the streets (or ruins in some cases), taking in the sounds, smells, and tastes, because buying something to eat along the way is a happy reward for burning all those calories. However, I do remember getting to the walls around Dubrovnik just as they opened and walking the whole circuit of the city in about eighty minutes, and my wife -- who has lived in Paris and loves that city with something close to obsession -- saying, "This is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life." I also recommend Venice as the ideal "Let's see if we can get lost" city. You'll eventually hit one of the two major bridges, so there is only so lost you can get.
And yes, Roger -- we were both wearing Tilley hats, which I had purchased for the trip. What they say is true: you can spot someone wearing one a block away, and the feeling is a kind of Freemasonry of haberdashery.
One small quibble: if you are by yourself and know an area well, an I-Pod can be a good walking companion. When you are first exploring, you of course want to hear the sounds of the city as you walk, but when your path is a familiar one, an I-Pod gives you the chance to create a soundtrack in which the music both somehow reinforces and makes you focus on what you are seeing, just as good incidental music can serve that function in a film.
Ebert: I love the way they advise you to put the hat in your will.
More recent residents of the Old Vicarage at Grantchester were the novelist and peer Lord Jeffrey Archer and his wife Mary (I don't know if they still own it and live there or not). Long before Jeffrey was jailed I saw Mary give a charming slide-show about Rupert Brooke and living at the Vicarage; woe betide them if they ever had guests to stay and ran out of Honey! Apparently if the Grantchester church clock stops they do usually set it to 2:50 until it can be repaired, but it's more useful as a working timepiece for the villagers.
Ebert: Mary Archer. Was she not fragrant?
Small world. Jeffrey Archer was a friend of Henry Togna Jr, one of the heroes of my previous entry.
I have been to London once... I'm now re-tracing my path from Victoria station up to Buckingham Palace, around the ponds in St. James' Park, down to Westminster Abbey and the houses of Parliament, up the embankment to Covent Garden, across the Waterloo bridge to the Royal National Theater... Thank you for helping me remember how wonderful it is to remember!
Ten days is far too short a time to spend in London, and I hope to get back there and wander some more one day. While in England, though, I never made it out into the country. Your description of a single day in London, which was a a day in Cambridgeshire, makes me wish I had. I was surprised you didn't include this link among the videos the end of your post:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SpokenVerse#p/search/0/18kPqOpUjNU
Between the two of you, Rupert Brooke and yourself have managed to make me homesick for a place I've never been. And for that I'm grateful.
Ebert: I've added it now. Tom O'Bedlam has the best site on YouTube.
Mr Ebert, I walked alongside you, step by step. You are a splendid writer. I used to live in an attic flat in Pembridge Square with my ex-girlfriend and her sister in the 1990's. It was in a decaying state because the owner of the whole block was trying to get rid of the long term tenants so he could sell the building to a luxury apartments developer. So there was the faint haze of something being ground down by the big city when I lived there, but at the same time, an irresistible beauty and enchantment. All of those white stucco buildings around Notting Hill and Holland Park represent to me the essence of a certain romance of London, that excited and dazzled me when I first moved there from Liverpool. The grandeur, the culture, the shiftless cosmopolitanism, the wealth and old money that exists beside a certain bohemia and restlessness in Notting Hill.
Mr Ebert, you write:
++++
"At the east end of Pembridge Square there was a high window with a wooden silhouette of a palm tree in it. Whose was it?"
++++
I wonder, are you referring to the library at 1 Pembridge Square, just off and down from the Sun in Splendor? The most cosy library I have ever been in, and I remember a palm tree, or at least an exotic tree that belonged in Kew Gardens in the foyer, the frosted glass of the entrance obscuring it sometimes. I would spend time in that library at the window lazily strumming through a novel, people-watching along Pembridge Road as they flowed to and from Portobello. Such a light, romantic atmosphere to be ensconced there, at that time, in that part of that town. London is one of those cities, an agglomeration of large villages, that seems to hum with anticipation of something sublime and special about to happen. A mellow sensibility of the possible, of an adventure or romance discernible from the minutiae of the city - as time or place or angle of light upon your face promises you something more than yourself.
I also lived once in South End Green, near to Keats House. You may remember that opposite that pizza joint at which George Orwell once lived and wrote there used to be something of a fleapit Odeon cinema. It was perfectly placed, close to everything, Hampstead High Street, the Heath, the pubs, the cafes and restaurants. It was not an arthouse, but it had that certain worn out charm that old cinemas had, a tatty lived in quality, suitable for the area. I watched many a matinee there, stumbled out of pubs having had a few too many pints and on a whim decided to catch the late night show. Anyway, I went back a couple of years ago and the cinema had been demolished and in its place an apartment building had been built, a millionaire's abode, with penthouse flats overlooking the Heath and London.
London is a city of millions of secrets and whispers and enticing possibility. Thanks for sharing your secret pathways. What I remember most now is that each journey in London is actually a journey into your own self - the streets are inside you, they evoke and move something when you tune into them. Something is evoked, tingled by them, and its difficult to say exactly how and why London does this. But it always comes back to the faces, the millions of people, the glow of its history, at places its futuristic appetite, its grind and spatial and urban poetics, the open spaces of Hampstead and the grand parks, a million sensory and architectural and human presences - and all these atmospherics break the line between the internal and external. It is a city that becomes your very memory.
Ebert: I know that library, but the window I refer to was at the east and of the square, as if you were walking toward the Mason's Arms or the Chinese restaurants in Queensway.
Years ago there was a blind guitarist named Bobby who used to sing in one of the Portobello pubs on Saturdays.
Mr. Ebert,
I'm moving to London in September for graduate school, and reading your words remind me what youth can so easily ignore: Take your time! The hustle and bustle of life and study can prevent you from pausing and observing the world. The spirit of exploration you express reminds me of my Dad, who through a cancer diagnosis of his own, found the means to pause, breath, and watch.
Next year, I'll seek out your favorite London spots (those that are still around), as well as find spots of my own. The iPod will stay home, for sure.
M Foley
I keep trying to spend a weekend in London, I'm mortified that it's been a year since the last time, but the Eurostar keeps failing (that's my excuse, which convinces some people, not really me), and recently I imagined what I would do that one day. I didn't think of it as A Walk, but since you shared yours with us, this would be mine:
Because London will always be the city in which I studied, I set out from Goodenough College and walk down Guilford Street until Russell Square, which I cross diagonally. I keep walking past the back entrance to the British Museum (always use that one, it's never crowded), past Bedford Square and I run into Tottenham Court Road, which I follow south until the busy intersection with Oxford Street (which is never NOT crowded).
Here I get to the point of the walk, which is to stroll down Charing Cross Road. All the chain bookstores at first, and then the independent, smaller ones (I was so sad that they closed Murder One). If you've read 84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff, and its epilogue The Princess of Bloomsbury, her bookstore was in a corner where there's now a very cheap second-hand bookstore (and a plaque).
At the end of the street, to end on a high note, Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery right there. Because they are open everyday and free, when I took this walk I only ever visited the galleries one section at a time and left before getting tired. Sometimes on the way back I'd retrace my steps and have takeaway curry on a bench in Russell Square...
Ebert: An excellent walk. I would add the small shop that sells model automobiles. I get my Studebakers there.
Thank you so much for this. Its wonderful. And what a very nice and observant young man your grandson seems to be. Such a pleasure!
To ChicagoMolly: Mornington Crescent is famously a spoof game: it is not supposed to make any sense, has no rules and if you should be worried if you were ever able to follow it. Of course, your post could be a spoof post, in which case, more fool me.
The words you write about this city that I love. There is nowhere I've been that compares to London. I could read words like these endlessly.
I moved here from Dublin five years ago. I live in Kentish Town, which is just down the road from Highgate, as I'm sure you don't need to be told. I make a point of getting up every Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, and walking until I need a coffee to go with The Guardian (can't believe you read The Telegraph!). Once it gets to mid morning, some of the mystery, even some of the history, that you think you can sense, it dissipates. It's still beautiful, it's still the same, but it just feels that as more people start to appear, I'm not alone any more. The real world commences its proceedings, and I'm no longer invisible.
Five years ago, when I was in my mid twenties, I was rather more fond of playing hooky from work than I am now. I'd often take a stroll up to one of the pubs near Belsize Park or Hampstead, for an afternoon pint or two. To chat with the fulltime daytime drinkers. To read, or to write. I was in good company with middle-aged men wearing smart clothes two decades old, as they read their hardbacks with hard to read gold lettering on the spine.
Scribbling rubbish into my notebook, at least partially inspired by the atmosphere of a stolen North London afternoon. Those afternoons, regular as they were, were my way of partaking in a lifestyle whose path I've not ended up taking. Part of their appeal was time - if it's a weekday afternoon, I'm one of only a few who are doing, who can do, this. Everyone isn't here.
Anyway, I'll walk with you in mind this Saturday morning, if you don't mind. Early, before too many people are up.
Ebert: Of course I read the Guardian, too, and the Independent. But the Torygraph always seemed the most particularly British. Truth to tell, it lost a lot of magic when Auberon Waugh died.
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. May I recommend a book? It's "Period Piece" by Gwen Raverat. She's a grand-daughter of Charles Darwin and her book is about growing up in Cambridge at the turn of the last century. Your description of your and the meadows along the river Cam brought her book vividly back for me. It's out of print (sadly), but perhaps the library?
When I have traveled alone in London, Durham or Paris, my habit is to walk or use mass transit to get to where I want to walk. I, too, meander (but purposefully--one must have an end goal when walking, no matter how long it takes to achieve it) down side streets. I just want to Look and Take It All In. Most recently, I walked through Reykjavik last June and now have more fragments to store away. To sit in a cafe or tea shop after a walk and watch the world go by is true contentment for me. One of the joys of Icelandic strolling is that spontaneous street theater occurs at times. To be an outside observer, yet still a part of the scene and its structure--what a happy privilege!
Ebert: Is it true that Icelanders have a way of acccidentially on purpose bumping into people on the street?
100 times WOW! You sure do love that city, seems like your other hometown.
I agree the Karl Heinz videos are amazing but I disagree on not needing the book anymore. Don't get me wrong I love the videos and they're great but you'd still need the book to know the legends, facts, and stories behind what is displayed in both parts.
Karl Heinz did an extrodinary job with both videos and the book would work as a perfect companion.
Roher, if you're interested in a sonic journey through London, much of the music of The Clientele (especially their 2005 album Strange Geometry) does a great job of capturing the beauty of the city.
When I started reading Donna Leon's books almost 10 years ago, after a brief trip to Venice, I would read them with a map of Venice at hand, so I could trace Commissario Brunetti's footsteps. Much to my delight, one of her later books had a map of Venice printed on the endpapers. Last year, full circle, "Brunetti's Venice" was published which is a collection of walks with the fictional Comm. Brunetti.
Some day I will expand my horizons to other locations, but the alleys and thoroughfares of Venice are always a delight.
That is SO funny! Catt and I are moving to nicer digs one load at a time, and I just got back from putting up a shelf of books.
Well... er... actually... I was squatting on an old milk carton reading Roger's THE PERFECT LONDON WALK.
I'm pretty sure she won't see this post. Everybody do a lot of posts now to make sure she doesn't. O, what a tangled web we weave...
Roger, you must have supped a few pints and wetted the tongue with a few whiskies at The Flask pub in Highgate Village? Just a short hop off the 210 bus stop before it begins its descent down to the bustle and conjestion of Archway? And from the pub, its just a short stroll from Swain's Lane, which takes you downhill to Highgate Cemetery, thence round again to the Heath and Parliament Hill. Its one of my favourite pubs in the world.
From Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55935853@N00/2883805442/
From the Guardian Review:
+++++
A locals' favourite, The Flask in London's cute Highgate village is as steeped in history as it is in great atmosphere. With its massive garden, it is a must-go destination and this summer the manager, Glyn Morgan, is installing an outside bar and barbecue to make your drinking and eating experience even more alfresco. The new bar will be based in the outside stable block, complete with original stable partitions, which is believed to be the oldest part of the building, dating back to 1663. From here you can fetch cold bottles of Sol, Peroni, Bulmers and Westons - as well as chilled wine and Pimm's. That icy chill you feel might not just be coming from your drink, though. It is claimed that the famous highwayman, Dick Turpin, hid out in this stable and there are also rumours that it is haunted by the ghost of a Spanish barmaid who hanged herself over unrequited love.
Ebert: Well do I know The Flask.
Turpin the highwayman was also said to be a regular at the Spaniard's, which even has a Dick Turpin's Room. Legend has it he took advantage of the traffic slowing because of the narrowing in the road for the old Toll House. I'm pleased the Toll House survives. A London bus can just about squeeze through.
http://j.mp/b08aEp
The nursery school in Pond Street (above the Orwell pizza shop and the Huxley town house) still exists - I attended it forty-odd years ago and now my own children are pupils.
Thank you for one of the finest essays of remembrance I have ever read.
L
Ebert: Good gravy! That means in theory you could have been a student there the first time I walked past in January 1967.
I love it when I write an entry and an eyewitness writes to confirm something that people might possibly think I made up. After all, how many readers of this blog can be expected to know if there was a school there years ago?
Ebert: Walking absolutely works for depression. And I dsicovered back in the day that you could just about walk off a hangover. It might require quite a distance.
Not sure about a hangover, but you can walk off a buzz. Being drunk, on the other hand, requires dancing..and time (don't ask how I know this, though it is related to London ;-)).
One time in Japan, I missed the last train from Hagiyama to Kokubunji. Seeing as it took ten to fifteen minutes to get from one location to the other by train, and not wanting to pay an outrageous rate to travel by taxi, I decided, "The heck with it! I'm gonna walk to Kokubunji."
I can't verify how long it took me, as that diary entry is still at my parents' house, but I'm thinking it took me a little under an hour to walk between those stations (with two stations along the way). In fact, since I rode that line all the time (the Seibu Tamako Line), I knew that when I passed Omekaido about twenty minutes after leaving Hagiyama (which took about five minutes to reach by train) that I could make it by foot to Kokubunji. Needless to say, the alcohol I had consumed that night had worn off by the time I boarded a train at Kokubunji on the Chuo Line for my apartment, which was one stop away (the Chuo Line, being a main line, runs later than the minor Seibu Tamako Line).
But to return to London, I do remember getting off at the wrong station one time and, following the advice of one of my classmates (who, like you, recommended getting off at random tube stops in London and just walking around), began walking around. There, I discovered a park, in which there was a statue of the poet Robert Burns. In fact, some random wandering in Seattle led to a similar experience, when I came across the large glass door that marks August Wilson Way, complete with a photo of Wilson and a timeline of his life and works.
And yes, Wael, getting lost while writing is perfectly normal, and beneficial, for it allows us to discover places within ourselves that we didn't know existed.
To Isaac:
"Mornington Crescent is famously a spoof game"
Ah, well, there it is then. I feel better now. But listening to the game being played, it does sound as if it ought to be making sense, especially with the map in hand.
What I meant was:
*Thank you for writing ~because~ you can't help yourself.
It's the "because" I meant to put in there. Not "being."
In any case, a great journal entry, no matter how you slice it ;-)
I can't say for sure if Icelanders "bump into people accidently on purpose", but if they do, no one could be kinder or more considerate. Of course, in Iceland the person you bump into is probably related to you or went to your school... :) Even if that is not so, most likely you'll make a friend.
The generosity of spirit I have met in Iceland (and in UK) astonishes me, but then so does the genuine courtesy of CTA bus-drivers. That is the ultimate gift my small travels have given me: the charitable nature of mankind.
I once shared a laugh with a volunteer in Westminster Cathedral. Apparently, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I are buried in the same vault with the cathedral. I raised an eyebrow at that and the lady volunteer snorted, "But I'm sure Liz made sure she was buried on top!" Fantastic. :D
Dear Roger,
Your London blog is just great. I am a Londoner, but I moved to Vancouver Island twenty years ago when I was 35. From when I was very young, it was always obvious that the best way to see London (or for that matter any big city) is to walk through it. I remember when I was a teenager, getting up at around four in the morning and walking over to Covent Garden. This was when it was still a flower and vegetable market. Watching the trucks come in from the country loaded with fruit and veg was wonderful. I go back every year or so, and almost all of the days are spent walking. Your blog regarding the vanishing London hit hard. There are so many places that are vanishing from my home city that it is very depressing. I am from Battersea, South London, which has quite a history. The Duke of Wellington fought a duel in Battersea Park, and many film and TV stars live there. My favourite personal story about London happened when I was in New York in 1982. I was in a bar and got into a conversation with a guy who was very proud of his city. We started mentioning pubs and bars that we knew, and he said that there was an old bar somewhere down near Battery Park. I asked how old and he said he wasn’t quite sure, but he knew that soldiers had a drink in there before going off to fight in the First World War. I said that was old, and then I couldn’t help myself. I said that we had a pub in London where soldiers had a drink before going off to war. “Mind you,” I said, “that was the Crusades.” It was almost twenty minutes before he spoke to me again. So for the six weeks or so when I go back, it’s almost constant walking. The only time this stops is when I find myself outside the British Film Institute. I ALWAYS end up going in and accessing their archives, and spend hours watching their old films.
OT -- I read your interview in Esquire; great piece. I'm glad you agreed to it.
Re: Kelly Oxford,
What she said put tears in my eyes, and that NEVER happens. Probably never has. But it did that time.
"..but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover."...from "Travels with a Donkey"
Watched "Blowup" again last night on TCM. Had also seen it not too long ago, so watched it this time from a bit different perspective.
Interesting how many shooting locations listed in its Wikipedia article that correspond to sights you mention in this entry. The movie itself must have been filmed there at about the time of your early visits. I did discern that Maryam Park-where the alleged murder takes place-was in another part of London. Don't know if you've ever made it there or not?
What a neat movie. Had almost forgotten what an interesting and likable leading man Hemmings was in his youth. And young Vanessa Redgraves and Silvia Miles. The Yardbirds. And of course the irrepressible Verushka. Read where she still lives the artist's life, both in New York and abroad with her musician/lover who doubles as her assistant. "You go girl!" Nice to recently see her impressive turn in "Casino Royale."
Would also recommend your dozen year old review from the Great Movie archives to anyone still interested in Antonioni's classic - "the opening salvo of the film generation" kicking off in the "60's"- a movement whose discoveries and artistic contributions are still very much with us today.
What do you recommend as the best time of year in London for a nice walk?
Ebert: May or October.
I have never lived a life. I have only existed in this world. My world has been in my house. Lonely, sadness are replaced for a few minutes as you make me forget for awhile. Your memories and storyies can be mine for awhile as I escape when I read your journal. Thank you.
Ebert: Seth, man, what can I say?
Nothing. You don't need my advice. What do I know?
But what the hell. Try this. Start walking. Just walk. Anywhere.
And check in occasionally.
Please don't forget to keep an umbrella in these virtual strolls-one never knows.
Ebert: Have I got the shop for you!
http://www.james-smith.co.uk/
"Sometimes when I write, you understand, it's like when I walk around London. When I set out I have a general destination in mind, but as I poke around this way and that, I find places I didn't know about and things that hadn't occurred to me..." - Roger
I know how you feel. :)
However on this occasion, I know exactly where I'm going...
If time can hold its breathe long enough for you to see the past while standing in the present, then no other place does that so well as Charing Cross Road and specifically, the passage leading into Diagon Alley!
Most Muggles are under the impression that it doesn't actually exist, but it does. It's a real place - here, see for yourself:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/51270454_6dccb0a052.jpg
That's looking back towards the entrance off Charing Cross Road. Behind you is the famous brick wall with its secret access to Diagon Alley...
"Harry wished he had eight more eyes.... There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon...."
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/harrypotter/images/2/20/Diagonalley.jpg
And what's more, I've been there! Oh, not past the wall (I didn't know at the time to press the bricks) but the Muggle alley is still very nice and I spent hours snooping through it and places just like it.
Like Lumley Court...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3037/2952587317_98438b7578.jpg
It's off the north side of the Strand, not far from Charing Cross Station, between Bedford and Southampton Street, just past Bull Inn Court - this place...
http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/AdelphiStrand/BullInn2.jpg
That's the London which speaks to me. As much as there to recommend it, I fell what you can't see, ironically recommends it best.
The hidden places of a city are where all its best secrets are kept and ergo, why the innately curious will be rewarded for intuitively sniffing them out. :)
Ebert: And not to forget Crown Passage:
http://www.fancyapint.com/pubpics/pic845.jpg
Or Flask Walk, Hampstead:
http://j.mp/c1PZwn
"Walk too fast and you miss the show. I doodled. Dawdled. Moseyed. Sat down and thought. Gazed into space. Carried along a book. Sketched this and that."
I will keep your adivce in my mind when I visit your city, except sketches. To put it mildy, mines are quite abstract even compared to yours.
I walked a lot in New York, but I walked too fast and focused only on what I planned to see for each day. Although I don't think I wasted my time with strict plan, I seemed to miss lots of things. Small things I saw here and there are remained most clearly in my brain. I saw father and son at basketball court from long distance while briefly visiting Brooklyn. I still had picture of them and sometimes I wonder how they are now. I witnessed fight between customer and employee at fast food restaurant and that was something I had never experienced in South Korea. And I remember small antique shop near Washington Square. Delicate chess boards were on display in the shop window, but they were too expensive for me. And I still don't know how to move pieces.
P.S.
Seoul will be your worst nightmare. You will be lost in the maze of streets within seconds and there will be lots of tasteless concrete buildings surrounding you. They will suffocate you in this drab environment. In fact, our city is No.3 in Lonely Planet's "the least favorite cities to visit" list.(No.1 is Detroit).
Another wonderful entry...
I haven't had the chance to go to London yet (or anywhere England, for that matter), but here's to hoping it'll happen soon, someday. I can't believe you've been there 100 times!
It's been so long since I've been on a nice long walk. I went to college in a rural area, and everyday on my way to class I could walk past multiple gorges, underneath giant oak trees, up and down grassy hills, and see a couple of waterfalls along the way.
Now, I live in Houston, and the farthest distance I walk is determined by the size of the parking lot in which I've parked my car. It's pretty sad.
Most of America is, unfortunately, not made for walking.
I remember Tokyo as a city of umbrellas--you see retinues of transparent umbrellas proceeding in the drizzle in chattering groups.
Just visited the incomparably Victorian, or shall we say dickensian James Smith Co and settled for a Stripes and Plaids. Nifty!
They sell combs, key rings and whistles too. I bought myself a horn whistle and can you suggest a corner of London where a gent can safely blow his whistle.
Know-alls in umbrellas as they are their last advice on umbrella care is never to lend it.
So, sorry, Old Chap!
What Kelly Oxford wrote that made me teary-eyed was I think when she said about shutting the patients door to cry with him: so that she "wouldn't get fired for having a soul."
There was probably some elevation there, but what made it so powerful and so hard to keep at a distance were those last words.
That's what makes me sad: is when God is killed, and there's nothing really lower than that kind of mindset.
Thank you so much for this beautiful piece - I was lucky enough to live in places like Chiswick and Hampstead for 15 years and knew and loved so many of the places you describe.
But so much is going and gone - as you and your commenters say the pubs have been vandalised, old cinemas, churches, chapels and libraries often replaced by luxury flats owned by absentee Russian millionaires, the old Routemaster buses - the most perfect form of mass urban transit ever developed with their jump-on and-off platforms - replaced by articulated Mercedes leviathans trundling slowly from stop to stop, the real ales and stouts supplanted by overchilled lager, the bangers and mash by easily microwaveable ready meals or pretentious and overpriced 'gastropub' fare.
And yes walking is the only way to see any city worthy of the name - even though its meant that I've had to take most of my holidays alone as none of my friends and partners have shared this passion.
Your walks are wondrous, Roger. There is a children's picture book that I give away whenever I get a chance: Frederick by Leo Leonni
Frederick the little field mouse stores memories in his mind and gives them to his fellow hungry mice when winter is at its worst and the stores have run low. If you are not familiar with it, I highly recommend it.
Thank you for having put the memories where you can now find them to breathe back life into them.
Too much snow here this year. Children will be making up snow days well into June.
I have to apologize straight away. This isn't a direct comment on your London article (which I did love) but rather a brief letter to tell you about Friday in my school.
I am a student teacher at a high school in the Denver Metro area. I teach ninth and eleventh grade English. I have tried to make them understand how much I love and need and the world needs good readers and writers. And how fun it is! How magical the world is! On Fridays, I take the first five minutes or so of class to tell them about something wonderful.
Two weeks ago I told them about Herzog. I have you to thank for knowing about Herzog. Last week I told them about Buster Keaton. That one I owe to a college professor, but still.
They were transfixed. I had slides and stories and I wish I could have shown hours of footage but Shakespeare was calling and we had to get class underway. They were skeptical, at first. They are skeptical of me. I am a student teacher! What do I know? But one of them went out and rented every Herzog he could find. Another drew a poster for me on a sheet of paper trying to visualize Ecstatic Truth. I hung it up over my desk.
I met you when I was young at CU when you were discussing a film. I can't remember what it was, much to my regret. Anyway. I have the day off. President's Day. I work during the weekends and find that I don't get to write or correspond in any way. So I wanted to take this morning off to write you and tell you how much I owe you.
How often do you get told you are someone's hero and have been for twenty years? More often than I do, certainly. But still. Here's one more.
You are not shouting into nothing (the belaboured ending of Garden State comes to mind) but passing the good word along. I will keep trying to make my students listen, too.
Thanks.
Rob Bowman
While other people are on the topic of their favorite pubs, I'm sure you've been to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, as it is one of the most famous. No one else we took seemed to really understand why, but it was a favorite spot for me and my friend to go get away from the hustle and bustle of our dorms and London. Despite its fame there never seemed to be any tourists when I went -- it was mostly filled with businessmen in suits grabbing a pint after a day of hard work in the City. It close fairly early but we used to get some chips or chocolate pudding to share and he would get a pint or two and we'd sit at the tiny cellar tables and talk for hours. I miss that place probably more than any other in London, but it wouldn't be the same if I went back without him.
Roger,
I have to ask: Who did that sketch at the top of the entry? And is it of you walking? What a wonderful rendering!
Also, while reading the last section of this entry regarding Grantchester, I couldn't help but to be reminded of a somewhat obscure song by Pink Floyd titled "Grantchester Meadows". Here is a link to it with wonderful video of the area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZPNQPNw-U
Ebert: Yep, a self-portrait. I love the video.
Thank you for another trip down your memory lane!
Cheers!
Chris
I lived in London for two years while attending the London Film School.
Jamie -- a fellow student, flatmate, and now a lifelong friend, no matter how far apart we live -- and I would, after a long day of shooting, exit our school in Covent Garden and head to the bus stop, as the Tube had closed by then and we lived in East Dulwich, a place you would never visit unless you lived there.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, we'd wait about 10 minutes. One time, it was 90. The buses had been rerouted because of construction up the road, which we couldn't see.
Once bus 176 came, we'd climb up to the top and collapse into the front seats, one per side. Each of us would try to be the first to say, "Wake me up when we get there." Within seconds, we'd both be asleep. Somehow, in two years, encompassing probably two dozen such episodes, we never missed our stop when we rode together on that 75-90-minute bus ride.
Such is London. Not even close to the most attractive city, yet its charms and rhythms are inescapable. I have never visited, though, only lived there those two years. My wife and I planned to go back (she studied in a summer program at Cambridge) last summer, but finances and a welcome pregnancy forced us to postpone. But we know we will return. The memories and ties are too strong for both of us.
For me, it's where I spent film school, the most formative years of my professional life. But probably not because of what I was taught. Because of what I learned and experienced.
I'll add to the places you mention, most of which I did not visit:
-- doner kebabs at 3 a.m.
-- any of the bookstores on Charing Cross
-- stumbling across the juggling unicycle riders at a nightime performance in Covent Garden
-- the ride over London Bridge while the London Eye was being build horizontally across the Thames. ("What is that going to be?" we wondered aloud.)
-- jam donuts from Tesco (a bag of ten for a quid, quite a deal for starving students)
-- getting caught up at a pub in a football game between two teams you'd never heard of 30 minutes before
-- mind the gap
-- The Two Brewers, the film school's go-to pub
-- the cheese shop nearby
-- writing a script while sitting on the roof of our flat
-- perhaps most importantly, a free ticket to any film (that wasn't likely to sell out) at the National Film Theatre for film school students
-- the National Film Theatre's "no food or drink" policy inside
-- sneaking a drink in anyway
Thank you for the post.
My wife and I took a London walk very similar last October: Started of at Grosvenor Sq., through Hyde Park to Harrod's (viewing purposes only) to Green Park, to Buckingham to the Catholic Cathedral, back to Buckingham (for 5 mnutes of the changing guard), through Pal Mal and St. James (fed the ducks) to Trafalgar, through Jubilee Bridge to Waterloo St., had lunch at a BK there, took a bus 2 bridges down to the MI& building (I'm a big Bond fan) crossed the bridge to the original Tate and saw Turner, then took a bus to National Gallery and from there walked to Square 1.
Probably the longest walk of my life.
Question: I would think those Turner sea battles can't be watercolours, they seem too large to be just that. I would think they are oil paintings.
Ebert: Oh, yeah, the big ones are oils. In the Gallery in Edinburgh they have Turner watercolours they only dsplay in January, when the sun is at its weakest. Sunlight is the enemy of watercolour.
Dear Roger:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You continue to amaze me with your observations, thoughts and view of the world.
I do hope you are archiving all your entries - dare we hope that they will become a book someday? I worry that the electronic big dark hole will eat them up and we will be unable to re-read them in the future.
I agree with Keith - for some reason this entry simply brought tears to my eyes - so human, so real and so tender.
Cheers,
Sarah
San Francisco, CA
I loved the videos Mr. Ebert. Especially the use of Eddie Vedder's Song from the oscar snubbed film Into the Wild.
I helped me to visually accomplish the trip in my mind. Hope I can do it "on location" one day.
This article reminds me of the great Chicago Band Poi Dog Pondering song "Ancient Egyptians" The last part of the lyrics go something like this:
Well now it's the 1990's, and the gasoline does flow,
but I still try and walk most of the places I have to go
But sometimes my friends will stop and say,
"Hey Frank! There's a bus or a cab over there...
Why don't we go ahead and get in it?"
But I say no, no, no, and didn't you know,
you get to know things better when they go by slow.
And that is the wonderful thing about walking: You get to know the area you are in intimately. Some of my fondest memories are of my college years, when I was a poor car less student, would hike all around Carbondale, Illinois. On the walks I would discover small shops filled with interesting wares.
One of my other joys is when I go see my brother in Palo Alto California. We will take a train into Downtown San Francisco and take a walking/trolley tour of the city. My brother love showing off the city, and enjoys playing tour guide. And I appreciate him playing that role, even though I'm middle age.
One "Black Friday" My brother just strolled, taking in the sights. As we headed up a street, we heard a wonderful soprano voice singing an aria. In an alley that could have been seen on a Bogart film, was a thin haired, pot belly man with Teddy Roosevelt spectacles and mustache.
He was sing alley acoustics to give to my brother and I a once in a life time experience, one that my brother just stood and took in for five minuets. Unfortunately, we had to meet the shopping half or our expedition, so we could not stay to talk with him. We both smiled at him, tossed a 20 in his jar and gave him a wave and nod of gratitude. He smile broadly, not breaking from his task, and gave us a jaunty salute and a wide toothsome smile.
Fortunately, I've been hitting the treadmills and loosing weight. My goal is to as close as I can to the walking fool I was in college. And I will, because you never know when you will run into a presidential look alike singing opera on the streets of San Francisco.
I can't believe my one trip to London is already thirty years in the past. Recently I tried to revisit via Google Street View, but it's not the same when you can only go where the Google camera truck has gone.
Thanks for helping me keep a few good memories alive.
Funny, the connection between words and steps, sentences and long winding roads taking you one place, then another. I was reminded of standing on Tower Bridge as a 16 year old girl, watching the houseboats in the distance, standing next to a best friend-- companion on the walk-- who I don't talk with much as an adult. Words and steps both form our memories, and I can see my own experiences in what you write here.
And I am reminded of all your words over time, companions to me and so many others as we grew up. The films you introduced me to, many of which are now old friends-- the humor and ease in your writing style-- they are like friends on a long walk, always there every day of every year, and remembered fondly. To me, and I'm sure to many others, your writing over the years can be recollected with the same warmth as these walks you describe.
It must be strange to be so warmly regarded by so many people you do not know, but I want to tell you you will always be in my thoughts and prayers.
Another great read Roger.
When I was a kid, I saw a movie on TV. It was a cold war cautionary tale. Toward the end, a U.S. Air Force General speaks with his Soviet counterpart on the phone. They are trying, in vain, to avert a global disaster. Despite deep mistrust, they need to work together if this looming catastrophe is to be averted. In the process, they bond, in part, over this simple dialogue:
“Did you like London?” The American General asks.
“Very much.” The Soviet General replies
“So did I.” The American General agrees.
“The Great cities are those where one can walk. I would walk all the time in London. Wherever you turn, there’s history.” The Soviet General observers.
That film was Fail Safe.
During my first trip to London I walked all over the city. For some reason, this movie came to mind. I must have walked everywhere in London that first trip. And he was right. History was wherever you turned. Maybe that’s why I have been partial to living in places like London, Paris, Boston, Chicago and New York.
Hope you are well and all the best…
Roger, Roger, stop doing this to me! There is no way I can get to London for the foreseeable future, and you just reminded me again of what I'm missing. Well do I know the streets and crooked by-ways of Hampstead, and as for bangers, I keep promising myself I will make my own since they can't be found in the U.S.
And there is no place like London for walking. I have walked there in tour group, alone, and with friends, drunk, sober, angry, happy, sad, and just in a hurry to catch my train. I once walked all the way from Hampstead to Green Park in a drizzling November rain, sick as a dog, and it remains one of my proudest accomplishments. One of my favorite walks was from Knightsbridge to Blackfriars in the middle of a dark December night. There's always something to see, inspect, wonder at in London, often side-by-side with the most quotidian of artifacts.
I believe all London walkers would do well to read Peter Ackroyd's "London: The Biography." It is not a guidebook or a history, really, just a mental perambulation around "London" - the geographical place and the idea. I wonder if you've read it?
My mind is not organized in the same fashion, to remember all details. I can, however, remember every cruel remark that was ever said to me. I can remember all of the "loose threads" of my bad behavior affecting the warp and woof of my life. Tug on those threads and more are revealed.
My walks through the streets of Paris neighborhoods are woven into the fabric of my experience, but I can't tell you the name of the small obscure neighborhood bistrot I had lunch at during one of those daily sojourns. I can't even remember which trip it might have been. I remember the warm duck salad in the southern style, much like I remember a Mozart melody fragment, however. Have I forgotten everything else? No, it's just part of me.
"A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness." --- Elbert Hubbard.
I'm not suggesting that my lousy memory is a sign of greatness. I would amend the Hubbard quote, "but the ability to SELECTIVELY forget is the true token of greatness."
That is what I would define as forgettance.
I just wanted to chime in on the Esquire story as well. I thought it was very well written and eye opening, as a lot of us have no idea what you've gone through and continue to go through. I have to admit I teared up a couple times while reading through the article. Picturing what all you went through with the surgeries and almost bleeding to death in the hospital brought me to tears because as fans, we never expect to see or hear about those we admire and look up to have moments of weakness. No one is immortal but to regular folk, celebrities and sports stars all seem to be. Thanks for everything you do and continue to do, Roger.
I do so enjoy your perambulations, particularly since, as others have said, I'm not as well-travelled as I'd like to be. I'll have to try your hot chocolate tactic someday. :)
Dear Roger,
I have been in love with London for a long, long time. In fact, my second full length collection of poetry has just been published in the United Kingdom/Ireland and it's called "This London" (Salmon Poetry). Every poem is a snapshot of life and history in London. It was a real pleasure to spend three summers there doing research for the book.
Although I understand this is a public posting, I'd be delighted to send you a complimentary copy. I never knew that my trusty movie critic also felt this way about London---it's the unofficial capital of my imagination.
With gratitude for the words and memories,
Patrick
What a handsome, and very lucky - to have walked London with you, grandson he is.
One of your best articles yet. I can't relate at all to London, having only set foot in Heathrow as a stopover. But, I can relate to the joys of exploring a city.
These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Have you laid in your own supply?
What a sublime and meaningful question.
Someone asked me what I would do if I had one day in London...
I had that experience often during my business travel years. Less than one day even. I had from the time my work was done until the time that the light was gone to not only explore each new city that I was in, but to capture it with my lens. Hopefully in a way that a resident of that city would appreciate and see new. Those are my treasured memories.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
Great writing, as usual! I was wondering,
have you ever thought about publishing a book of your early sports writings from when you first started out as a sports writer? I would love to read them and I'm quite sure that your other fans, avid readers, and sports fans would love to read them. Thanks for reading!
Yours truly,
Bobby
Ebert wrote: And not to forget Crown Passage...
That's what I'm talking about - the good stuff! :)
And it led me to snooping and sniffing around some more and for my efforts, to be rewarded with the actual filming location for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films:
LEADENHALL MARKET!
http://www.yourlocalweb.co.uk/images/pictures/05/37/leadenhall-market-52511.jpg
And which I happen to recall you sketched, as it's part of your flickr collection! Ta da!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2672/4050748181_745c9c007d.jpg
Meanwhile, here's the most beautiful place in all of Vancouver - the red brick back alley behind the old Irish Heather in Gastown, across from the Whiskey House, looking up towards the black wrought-iron gate beyond which, lies "Blood Alley" and so named for the butcher's blood that once ran down it...
http://www.seevancouver.ca/downtown/gastown2.jpg
And if you peer through the glass, you can see the white-washed stone wall inside the pub, with its wooden stools and tables.
Now there was a place to down a pint! Inside an old haunted pub next to an equally haunted alley; smile.
I dare say that's why I love the Potter movies so much. They tap into my affection for such things; all the dodgy, tucked-away, bric-a-brac to be found in hidden nooks and shadowy crannies. For after you find a hole in the wall and slip through it, then comes the really good part - sifting through the treasures. :)
And I was doing just that when I stumbled upon a small antique shop in Vancouver one day. And for the next 3 years, I'd spend a portion of my paychecks there buying extraordinary things. Time and necessity would eventually force me to part with virtually all of them. However my collection was well documented and how I'm able to show and tell the following...
Antique perfume bottle c. 1900, red carnelian glass w/gilded baroque-rococo overlay:
http://www3.telus.net/thiliasspace/Marie/jpegs/ancarnel.jpg
Antique English sterling silver pocket watch, pristine condition, with Birmingham silver hallmarks, 1898: 12 jewel Swiss movement, engraved & gilded. Came with ornate leather travel case w/sterling silver Art Nouveau decorative face, hallmarked:
http://www3.telus.net/thiliasspace/Marie/jpegs/watch.jpg
And that's what you can find when you snoop around and more importantly, listen to the walls. For they whisper to those willing to heed them - "Psst! Come over here..."
"Who, me?"
"Yes, you! I've got something to show you."
"Okay..."
GASP!
Smile.
Ebert: Oh, yeah, the big ones are oils. In the Gallery in Edinburgh they have Turner watercolours they only dsplay in January..
I took a walk one day from my hotel to the Tate, specifically to view the Turners. He has his own gallery now, I'm not sure when it opened. I had a particular painting in mind.
"Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhon coming on"
I love the clash of colour in this painting so much that I had a local artist make me a copy. Well, not exactly a copy, let's say an inspired version. It's hanging above my dining table.
I assumed the original would be in London, but as I went from room to room I couldn't find it and then I began to worry. Hmmm, perhaps it's in storage, nope. Turns out it's permanent home is now in Boston. Sigh. Missed it by a thousand miles or so.
I was consoled by the fact that they had my second favourite Turner on display. "The Fighting Temeraire" is a poignant painting for anyone that loves the age of sail, and I do.
Actually, I've approached more new cities by sailing ship then airplane. When I was a teenager I went aboard a schooner that was going all the way to the northern tip of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia. One town was nestled between cliff, old growth rain forest and ocean. The available space was so tight that it seemed half the town overhung the water on a boardwalk. Beyond this tiny slice of civilization was the grand forest, with trees so big twenty of us couldn't surround the trunks and still hold hands. We explored and wandered far and wide. Most of us followed the cold river to the waterfall and had our morning shower in the pool just below it. Bathing is a luxury on working ships, so sailors are always looking for waterfalls. After that, some of us found an old narrow gage railway track buried in the moss of the forest floor and decided to follow it up the hill. It ended at a closed off mining tunnel. Well, not quite closed off. Three of us wiggled through the gap at the top of the rock pile and dropped in behind to the tunnel floor. We had no flashlight and the blackness in front of us was total. Behind us was the glowing hole of sunlight we had crawled through. We marched along with our hands sliding over the damp walls. A really stupid idea. The light behind us growing dimmer and dimmer. On we went, until we lost our nerve. I recalled the feeling I had in that mine when I was walking down the cold corridor of the Highgate Catacombs in London. Roger told me in the Blog of my Blogs thread that these catacombs once had their own hunchback giving tours. If I had come across him at the end of that corridor I probably would have jumped through the roof.
In regards to deliberately getting lost...
London is great for this because in point of fact, it's almost impossible to really get lost. Their public transport is just that good. All you have to do is find a tube station and presto, you can always get back to where you started. I love the underground. I love the buses too. The only problem I had was when I wondered a little too far and ended up outside of zone 2. This meant my transit card wouldn't work anymore. But no matter, a short walk back from whence I came solved that problem. I've heard some stories about unbearable heat down there in the tunnels during the height of summer, but I think they're exaggerated. We'll see.
Of course, you have to use good judgment when you decide to get lost in a city. I was in a town in Costa Rica once and wandering. In third world countries you will eventually come to areas where you get the distinct feeling that the people surrounding you are 'neighbourhood security'. The next feeling you'll get is 'I'm being watched'. The feelings are real of course because police are non-existent in many of these areas. That's why all the walls have barbed wire on top of them, or broken glass. As I strolled along in this very poor neighbourhood I saw a young girl walk out of a tiny hovel made up of wood scraps and corrugated iron, she bounced across the plank that went almost from her front door, over the ditch, to the street. She was dressed impeccably in a very stylish black skirt and white shirt. Obviously going to work in the touristy part of town I just came from. I'm sure those cloths were the most expensive thing that family owned. But then, they probably didn't own them. It was an interesting contrast to watch and one of the payoffs of traveling. I say traveling deliberately and not vacationing. Lord save me from the boredom of lounging around a pool for a week.
I'm taking note of the comments people have been making about Japan travel. I'm going to Japan in another month or so. I'm sure there are many cities I'll be getting lost in. I bet their undergrounds are even better than London's and there will be plenty to see. (Sadly, Toho studios doesn't seem to offer tours.)
BTW - Thanks for posting my videos with your article. I'm getting a nice bump in my view count! :) How wonderful it would be to actually take that walk again, but with you. I'm sure every corner has it's own story.
Ebert: Thank YOU for those videos! You can imagine my emotions as I viewed them, and more than once. They say what no words can duplicate.
Roger,
I have been a fan of yours since the "Siskel and Ebert" days. Bought several of your books. You are still the critic I turn to. I have always trusted your reviews and generally agree with them ("Blue Velvet" notwithstanding...).
This blog however, is a treasure.
I check it every day for new entries.
I never post to blogs, but I feel the need to thank you for everything you've given to the rest of us. Your good taste is appreciated here in small town PA.
Thank you and good health.
An insanely good piece. I laughed out loud out of simple joy.
Stay awake? To watch a dying man shoot an elephant in the zzzzzzzz..
"Here's the curious thing. These memories are happening all the time now. I retrace those steps in my mind, and I remember details for the first time. I'm coming to believe that everything is stored away in my mind somewhere -- every step I took, every street I walked, every window I looked at and wondered, who lives there? At the east end of Pembridge Square there was a high window with a wooden silhouette of a palm tree in it. Whose was it?"..RE
"The collective unconscious, which forms the deepest stratum of each human life, also forms a foundation common to all mankind. It is said that the entire spiritual heritage of man, gathered over two million years, flows within this deepest stratum. One of Jung's followers, C. S. Hall, analyzed man's fear of snakes and darkness, and concluded that such fears could not be fully explained by the experiences of a single lifetime. Personal experiences only seem to strengthen and reaffirm the inborn fear. We have inherited a fear of snakes and darkness from ancestors back in the unknown past. This is, then, a hereditary fear, according to Hall, which proves that ancestral experience is an engrained memory living in the deepest stratum of human life.
The unconscious contains not only all the experiences of our human ancestors; it also contains the experiences of our pre-human predecessors as well. The footprints of each change in the course of our development are etched into the deepest stratum of each human life, reflecting in some way the vicissitudes of the universe. I suspect that Jung conceived of some four billion human beings on the earth living as one being, and the great universe as a huge living existence. Each human being perhaps seemed like a cell which absorbs vital energy from the original force --- universal life itself. This, I think, is the reality that Jung tried to articulate by his concept of the collective unconscious."..Dr.Daisaku Ikeda
Reading your post I was reminded of the Medieval mneumonic device, the "memory palace." By linking knowledge to the construction of elaborate dwelling spaces, the memory palace allowed people to commit an extraordinary amount of information to memory, including books, foreign writing systems, oral stories, etc. One of the significant ways this technique differs from our now cyborgian methods, was the way in which knowledge became embodied (through imagination), and thus colored with the affective and material details of life. Essentially knowledge was a living thing you inhabit rather than two-dimensional code you translate. Cheers to you, for it seems that you have made of the world a palace of memory, alive with the sounds of all the other living beings you've encountered, a place to which you can forever return. Here's to treading lightly through all the corners of this planet, and shaping our forms of consciousness to the intriguing and joyful sights and sounds of this living, breathing world.
I think most of us spend 99% of our lives traversing paths we've been been down before, many times. To school, to work, to market and back home again. The goal is efficiency, to make the journey as short as possible, to minimize the unexpected. Even when travelling, much of the journey is on a plane, too high to see, or on interstates, which all look the same. It's such a rare thing to get out and really see a place you've never seen before, to go in search of nothing particular and find something new. A park, a pub, a painting, a bit of history, the people along the way. It just takes some time and funds, a decent pair of shoes and a willingness to be circuitous for a little while.
Roger, thanks very much for the inspiration. We resolve that wandering in places unknown and yet unseen will be part of our lives this year.
Ebert: May or October.
Allow me to suggest the same timing for walks around New York.
So glad you have the time and energy for this journal!
The fox you saw at the lily pond may have been, or it could have been a coyote. They pull one out of Lincoln Park periodically; there was a den discovered near the south end of the zoo. I've seen adult deer in Rogers Park, too, and ospreys nested near Montrose Harbor one year.
My Chicago walking tradition was dropping off my stories at the Sun-Times, Chicago magazine or the Reader, then making tracks for Addison and Lincoln where I lived -- attempting as many different routes as safe or possible.
Cycling is my passion -- but for really getting to know a place, it's tough to beat the infantry.
Ebert: Animals live all around us, disregarded. Nor do they care overmuch about us.
Roger,
Your Esquire article is amazing, very moving.
Dear Roger,
It is always a thrilling experience to walk hand in hand with you along the streets of your mind. What a wonderful entry!
I just finished reading the article done by Chris Jones in Esquire Magazine.
This piece gives one a three dimensional perspective and point perfect imagery of what it must feel like to be in your townhouse embraced by thousands of books, devoted nurse and exceptional loving wife!
Oh, to be in the shoes of Mr. Jones. The portrait that he paints is one of a great writer, sensitive scholar and a man whose spirit which has remained intact thru much unwanted illness and its aftermath.
I felt a visceral anger about the deletion that is mentioned regarding your solo appearance. How unfair! While watching you and Gene, it always seemed to me that the conflict was never deep and only showed two guys who loved movies to the point of argument. In my mind's eye, I can still see the little twinkle in Gene's eye and the shrub of your shoulders.
It always appeared to me to be like a family squabble which was a ruse for unbridled sibling affection and great love masked as confrontation. You were the Fred and Ginger of the balcony.
With the images ripe in my head, I am taking a relaxed stroll thru the rooms of your home with wordless communication we have formed a bond.
Judy Shuster
Hi Roger,
I haven't read this blog entry yet, but I just had to write you after reading the peice about you in Esquire. It was such an intimate and beautiful peice but I felt especially moved not from the writer's words, but once again the words that came from you. I just wanted to say I'm so glad for this online journal of yours, because I can't seem to get enough; no matter what topic may be pouring from your heart and through your fingertips and onto the screen.
Be well,
Stephanie
Thanks so much for this. I need to forward this to my mom, as she is incapable of "just" going for a walk. She loooves walking, but just for the sake of walking? Never. She goes on long walks to get the groceries, go to yoga, whatever. Coffee, too.
I agree completely about how, if you walk too fast, you don't enjoy the scenery. I didn't realize that until, oddly enough, some tourists in my city, notified me of this.
Well, thanks so much for the walking tour. Greatly enjoyable.
Roger I used to take long walks in Hampstead and sit on the benches of Parliament Hill on a summer evening and watch the lights come on over London as it became twilight and then dark. I wish I had bumped into you once and shared a conversation with as you do on London walks with friendly strangers sometimes.
I love this entry. I have read your reviews for close to 20 years now and I feel that your online journal allows you to expand on many of the thoughts that you can often only hint at during your movie reviews.
Mr. Ebert, I am most uplifted to see that you are continuing your work as a film critic and commentator. Your courage in the face of great adversity is incredible. Being something of a cinephile myself, I have consulted your writings many times, and generally am in substantial agreement (though I recall taking some exception to your opinion of "Picnic," I did agree with your assessment of Joshua Logan's body of work as a whole). I trust you will continue writing for some time, and I shall remain a loyal reader. Very truly yours, Shane Usary
Randy Masters commenting on less-than-a-day trips put me in mind of a conference I attended a few years ago in D.C. They had us going 9-5, and it was fall, so the days were getting shorter. I was staying at the old Dupont Plaza (file under "the things which I have seen/I now can see no more"), quite a few blocks from the Mall, so I got up early the first day, rushed toward the White House, then slowed down so I could poke around. It was early enough that I was able to spend a minute alone with Lincoln, and I found a neighbor's son on the Vietnam wall, and peered into (I think) the Rose Garden. No plan, just wandering.
On a previous visit I had been with crowds of tourists--albeit interesting ones at the Mall, always some with signs, costumes, good old-fashioned leaflets--but it was nice to be alone with our too-easily cliched shrines. Meandering around them made them seem less monumental, more intimate--more mine, just like Civics class told me they were.
Once more, Roger, thanks for sharing your walks.
Roger: I have never attempted to write to you before. I am one of the countless listeners/readers/Siskel&Ebert watchers that have held you in high esteem since the days (30 years ago?) when I took your film classes held through UofC at the Spertus College. I have silently enjoyed every minute in your company, I have worried and prayed for you when you were ill, I have reminisced with you about growing up in the 50s & 60s, rejoiced for you when you married Chaz, and looked forward to your movie reviews being delivered to my email box every Friday. Only recently have I found your journal, and am slowly working my way through the archives, savoring every word. I have just read the new Esquire article and am so happy to learn that you still find joy and curiosity and serendipity in the world. I am also a cancer survivor, only too aware of the brief journey of our lives. Thank you so much for being in mine, for bringing me laughter and tears and amazement (and sending me, on your recommendation, to see so many good movies!). I remember your voice, I will always be able to hear it in my head. I hear it when I read your words. You, your words, have been a great gift to me, which I hope to continue to read for many years to come. With love, your faithful and silent friend, Janice Sollenberger
It's OK if you don't publish this. It's meant just for you.
I think I wrote something like this the first time I posted here, but the sentiment -- if not the prose in which it's couched -- needs airing again: I admire you, Roger. This journal of yours gives something to me. I wish there was something I could give to you. I'm open to suggestions. The first tulip of spring sent pressed inside an envelope?
What's the Ray Bradbury story where someone listens to a Buenos Aires street scene through a long-distance line?
The Esquire article was good but hard to read. I didn't realize you had grown so frail. That never comes out in your journal. There, you sound as though you've never been better.
Dave
Thank you for that. A few years ago I got to spend roughly two days in London. It was one of the greatest trips I've ever made, and one of the worst mistakes of my life. When I remember that trip, I often think about all of the things I missed, rather than the things that I saw. I walked...A LOT. However, I spent way too much time inside--in the National Gallery, in the Tate Modern, in the British Museum. When I go back (I can't bring myself to say "if"), I will walk the neighborhoods more (and bring more comfortable shoes--my feet nearly packed up and went home without me). I will try to get lost. I miss the inside of tube stations, the cramped alleys off of Charing Cross, the shops around my hostel near Kings Cross, more than I could possibly miss paintings or marbles.
But my one day in London would be this: I would visit every major train station in the city. I believe that places like Kings Cross, St. Pancras, Paddington, Grand Central, Union, Gare du Nord, and all of the rest, might be the last great contribution to the world that urbanization made. But in between each station, I would walk the neighborhoods around them.
My own city offers far fewer places to get lost, but I will find them.
I'd just like to say how much I've enjoyed your reminiscing about your time in London. I was wondering how much you've travelled the British Isles and apart from London if you had any favourite places?
I wonder if you're familiar with Patrick Keiller's 1994 film 'London', a piece which uncovers a stranger city, a world away from the usual view of it.
Dear Roger,
This last post has been such a great read,and so enjoyable, as the sights and sounds and history, of so many spots in London, have come alive in my mind.
My wife and I had an all too short trip to Englang back in 2003, and we travelled over much of England during our eight day stay.
It was wonderful to see where my ancestors came from, as we visited Whitby and Brandon, and wondered about their long voyagae taking them eventually to Ontario, canada, circa 1832. How brave they must have been, and at the same time due to the extreme hardships of their lives, in 'Merry Ole", I suppose they needed to seek a way, to better themselves, by packing up their belonging, and heading out for the adventure of their lives.
During our England trip, we spent a day and a half in London. It was great, but not near enough time.
I promise you this Roger, we shall return there soon; and have more time in London, to really explore. We shall perambulate in your honour.
Now sir, I must thank you for the note you left on twitter (where I follow you) regarding the article about you, written by Chris Jones.
This article stirred me beyond belief, and even though we are about the same age; well I am much younger at sixty five :-) I will publicly say here for all to see; you really have become one of my heroes. I thank you Roger for that alone.
Now, I also must quote this paragraph you wrote, which evoked in myself, the feeling that these following words by yourself, are perhaps words of deep wisdom, which I shall cherish, and repeat, for as long as I am given air to breath on this earth. Here is the link for the readers: http://twitpic.com/13lmqe
" believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out. "
Roger, thank you for the above,and I send you my honest love and appreciation.
Cheers
Gary
Well. That just made my toes curl with delight. I could just about hear the cardinals squawking and did hear the deep cool melody of the Cam. My niece is doing a term there, now, lucky girl.
I walked around London with my father on several summer jaunts, after we discovered a friend of his had a flat at the corner of St. James and Pall Mall (an orange and white-striped bit of gorgeous masonry) purchased because he and his wife had met in London during the Blitz and promised themselves one day they'd have a flat there. Friends and father are all gone now, but I do have those times and those walks to remember.
Like the time we fetched up at St. James Palace for the Queen Mother's birthday and my minister father, normally quite elegantly attired, was wearing one of those "I'm cutting loose during the summer" madras plaid patchwork sports jackets, a pink and blue one, and some cameramen from Atlanta, working for CNN, shouted greetings at him, saying, "Preacher, what are you doing here?" And he - in all innocence - asked, "How'd you spot me in this crowd?"
When I stood in St. James and Piccadilly, I thought of Lord Peter Wimsey, and somehow managed to accurately ferret out Turnbull & Assers for my dad (he strolled in wearing That Jacket) and Fortnum & Mason's for myself, where I wandered around the food hall in a daze.
Though, I do have to say, the best tea I ever had was from a tiny little jewel of a hotel right around the corner from our flat, tucked next to the gardens, that really had the platonic ideal of scones, clotted cream and jam. (That, instead of hot chocolate, was my mission.)
There were walks with my dad in gardens and to theatres and through museums in cities from Budapest to San Francisco, but it's walking around the streets of London guided by literary-fueled intuition, one must-see church after another or just for the pure pleasure of exploration, him by my side, whistling cheerfully and the light of a treasure hunter in his eye, that are among my favorite memories. Thank you for sparking those memories today.
Happy walking, Roger.
Roger, I have always wished to tell you that I believe you saved my life. There is much to be told concerning your impact on a twelve-year-old girl who grew into a woman who grew in a lover and a writer. I hope one day I have the opportunity to share it with you. Until then, keep writing and saving lives.
Mr. Ebert,
You have brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat. It seems I have forgotten the value of a good ramble. I'm only 29, but I feel I've gone and let life get in the way. I envy your having such intimate knowledge of a place, let alone many places. I have lived on the northside of Chicago for a few years, but know surprisingly little about this city. I think this year shall be different. I will know Chicago as I should. 35 years from now, I will be able to venture out in my mind's eye, and recall the city, block by block, building by building.
Thank you.
"Down the way a short distance to Kenwood House, the grandest country house near London. Rembrandts and Romneys, and a trompe l'oeil library. Gardens crowded with giant rhododendron and azaleas, blinding with beauty in the springtime, concealing tunnels you can walk through."
Let me try that with my town:
Down the hill from my house to Goodie's, a tiny convenience store that's not remotely convenient, because of being sandwiched between two busy streets with an awkwardly placed parking lot. Across from it is a small plaza, containing a nail salon (never been), a little shop called The Nut Lady (also never been), and a Subway (twice a week). On the other side of Goodie's is a small green, containing nothing but a rather sparse garden and a bench I've never seen anyone sit on. A little farther down the road is a Domino's and a Sarat Ford.
Doesn't hold quite the same appeal, does it?
I really have to go to London. I'm with Marie Haws; the first thing I want to see is Diagon Alley, then maybe I'll visit King's Cross Station (I think that's what it's called), where I'll depart from platform nine and three-quarters on board the Hogwarts Express. Who knows where I'd end up? (Possibly a mental hospital.)
Mr. Ebert,
I remember one of my favourite walks like I just had it yesterday. It's the journey from my home to Marylebone Tube Station, where I board a train to Mile End Station. Once there, I perform another shockingly short walk to a small independent cinema called Genesis; where I get a free ticket (because my friend works there) to see a movie you've just written movingly about... Synecdoche, New York.
After which I exit the cinema having suddenly decided to gun for a McCarthy Genius Grant so that I can also capture this minute moments of my life that seem to fleet by before I've just about completed a blink.
Thank you for this journal. It's soul-quenching. You move to a beat I wish I knew how to keep up with. Shoot, these legs of mine can do with some exercise.
Hi, Roger - I worked at the Sun-Times from 1986-1989, two/three of the most intense, power-packed years of my life. I remember seeing you, never having/making the chance to talk with you, though we exchanged a word here or there. I remember you as one of the most generous, thoughtful, open people there. And there were many in that storied crew.
You are an inspiration. Your writing is an inspiration. Your story is an inspiration (just read the Esquire piece).
It's obvious from all these posts how profoundly loved you are. I'm privileged to have shared some space with you.
... oh, and give my best to the lovely Eng sisters, if you remember them.
My very best,
John
Ebert: Remember them?
Hi Roger. I couldn't find anywhere else where it might be appropriate to post this, so I figured I'd do it here. I just wanted to let you know that you have been a huge inspiration to me, even more so in recent months. I don't even want to try and count the many hours I've spent on the "At the Movies" website watching your old reviews, and perusing through your archives here. I've always felt a certain degree of comfort when I shared similar opinions on a movie with you. Indeed, I remember after I first saw "The Cell", with Jennifer Lopez, I was shocked by the number of critics who panned the movie. Then I came across your review, and felt elation when I saw that you had given it four stars. I know there have been a number of occasions when I was wondering why a movie struck me so starkly, and on a majority of those occasions I remember thinking something along the lines of "Well, Ebert liked it."
I am grateful that you are still able to write your reviews, and that I am still able to read them every weekend (or when I feel like reminiscing on certain flicks). Thank you for your wonderful determination to keep going, and I'll be reading your reviews for a long time yet to come.
My best,
Logan Ogden
My first trip to your blog, and I am met with The Frog & Peach! I'm still trying to decide between Peche a la Frog, or Frog a la Peche.
Bless you! I'll enjoy this perambulation today!
Ebert: Try the Frog Melba. You'll love it.
I love that you still mention Dan Curley often. He was my first writing professor, and I am forever indebted to him! You are my hero too, and I'm so glad to read how well you're doing.
Oh goodness, I cannot tell you how much I have needed a vacation this dreary winter. At the moment I can't even heat my apartment much less get out of the country. Thanks to your entry I can at least take a mental vacation! It's surprising how refreshing that can be. I'll be putting off venturing out into the snowy weather for awhile (snowing? again? seriously?) to watch these videos.
Now if I ever do get myself to London I will know exactly what to do.
Yes,London is the best of all...this past year I finally visited the house on Fitzroy Road where Sylvia Plath died. I love asking people in London directions as they are always so helpful and better than maps. Happy to say I was there reading you from Day one in Chicago,and it has been a lifelong thrill,we seldom are in disagreement. You are the only person who makes me see a movie I would hasve skipped,namely Knowing,which I just received from Netflix. I do not know what my lifelong movie going would have been like without you and Pauline Kael to guide,enlighten,and enhance.
Amazing. I am moving to London in September to do a graduate program in film studies. One of my favorite things to do there is walk around and explore. This entry gave me some new ideas. Thanks, Roger Ebert!
I'm surprised that we haven't started a debate on "Where do you find the best cheeseburger in olde London town?"
OK, I'll start.
Best bun:
Byron Hamburgers: Buns baked daily by an on-site baker. Dry cure bacon, mature Cheddar, and Byron sauce.
Haché: Menu features the Steak Catalan burger, topped with chorizo and chili jam.
- ten different Scotch beef steakburgers
-lamb burgers
-venison burgers
-chicken burgers
-fish burgers
-Le Mexicain with Cajun spice
and
-duck burgers.
Smiths Of Smithfield: Beef Burger is topped with mature cheddar and Old Spot bacon.
Joe Allen’s: The menu starts with Salmon and Herb Fishcakes, but where do you find the burgers? You have to order "off the menu" for a burger made entirely of ground sirloin with no seasoning.
Automat: Nothing says True Love on Valentine's Day like a burger from the Automat.
The Diner: Double Decker burgers with Monterey Jack cheese.
Lucky Seven: The Kalifornian. Bacon, cheese, guacamole, half a roasted tomato and sour cream.
The Wheatsheaf: Topped with cheddar, bacon, and a special house relish.
So, I guess the question is, does the best cheeseburger in London come with guacamole and Mexican spices? Bacon? Or do you wait until you can find a restaurant that serves duck burgers a la orange?
Roger:
I have never had the opportunity in life to travel the places you traveled. I will in time, visit both places of comfort and adventure. I read your words and I hope I can recall these words when I walk in your path. I may not be wearing my poet's mind at the time. But I hope to recall them to others as you have recalled them to us.
I just read the Esquire piece. I know family, friends, and clients in similar tumult. But it is obvious that you have a wealth that not many people have. I am envious of you.
As I start Mickey 2.0 without a partner in life, but two lovely kids, the world oftentimes seems bleak. But I am constantly reminded of "you don't know the trouble I seen" and tell myself I am lucky to at least have two children that I adore and at their age, love me. I have that going, which is nice.
I am thankful to have had an opportunity to converse with you through words. You constantly remind me of their purpose and value. I thank you also for the note that you sent me last summer when I was at the nadir of my existence.
Hi Rog, here I am late in the office and out of nowhere the urge to google you arose leading me through the esquire interview and into your blog. I recall in detail your telling the London walks, and Dan Curley and his capuchin haircut. Thanks for the memories kiddo be well and happy. m
Ebert: A capuchin hair? So that's what it was, Doc! Down in Urbana (you remember Urbana?) we called it a Bowl Cut.
Thank you. I can't express what your blog means to me - and the beautiful thing is, writing transcends politics and place and time and person. I don't agree with your political views...but I love, love, love you prose. You are transparent and real and your work brims with emotion and care. Thank you. I am always shocked when you write something biting or harsh on twitter...but we are all many faceted. Bless you for being real.
I've read both this article and the Jermyn St article twice now. (A treat each time)
In places, I was wondering if you were speaking English. Okay, American English. Certainly English English. :)
Walking..
After my father passed away, I found he had left a note for me to take possession of a trunk, in that trunk was photographs going back to the early 1900's including many many pics of my grandfather as a boy in Ashtabula Ohio. I had no addresses, did some google searches of old maps, found the neighborhood, and my luck or chance came acroos his boy hood home, the windows had a particular wood carving, once I found the house, I looked at the photos I had scanned from the trunk, and in 2008, there I was where in 1913 these photos were taken, the neighborhood was run down, and it was mid December in Northern Ohio, but, no I could not just drive, I HAD to take a walk, with photos in hand, I walked the same sidewalks, and in back of my mind tried to erase the 21st century things I was seeing and go back to or imagine what this was like in 1913, seeing much of what my grandfather saw almost 100 years ago, most of the houses were still there, the Finn sauna, now derelict, but was stil there, tying this visual current day memory to stories my grandfather told me when he was an older man and I was a boy. By chance I went to the local library, asked about local history, and met a woman in her late 80's who worked with my great , great grandmothers sister. Lived nextdoor to my graqndfather , he was in his late teens and early 20's when she was like 5. One trunk kep in attics for 90 years, one note from my father tucked away in his desk which was not found until after he died, one trip, and most importantly one walk, in an old neighborhood, one I had never visited before, and result was a connection with history I would have never have had unless I took that walk.
Hello,
I read your interview in Esquire today, and I wanted to say you are very brave.....I am only 29 years old and you made me see every day happiness in a different way. Just waking up and saying good morning to the person next to you, or the cup of coffee I drink while I am at work in the morning. Despite all that you have been through you and your wife still have a positive attitude. I wanted to say thank you, I enjoyed the interview very much and it did bring tears to my eyes, happy and sad ones.
Good Luck with everything that you and your wife face.
Tina English.
Yesterday while "perambulating" a certain locality somewhat like a "chop shop", I thought of this article. There were many interesting objects of study--an abject tramp and a pair of professional travelling sadhus basking on the sunny green, grease stained kids chattering at a wayside tea-stall, an ancient lady peddling a pile of guavas, salesman types with their coats slung on the shoulder, ties loosened in the waning winter--and it occurred to me that the journey was part of the destination. Wherever there is a human face, there are books to be read, there is London.
Like several others, I just wanted to comment on how moved I was by the Esquire article about you. It confirms what I suspected, that you seem to use this blog as a way to make up for your difficulties in communicating in person. This must be like your own personal Avatar. No wonder you seemed to relate so much to Sulley. I gather that you were/are quite the raconteur. Before your surgeries you must have regaled many fortunate people from Chicago to London, to Cape Town with your stories. Now those of us here get to sit in the pub (or walk with you) too! Thanks for including us.
Places I remember stumbling upon on my one and only trip to London...Burlington Arcade...Houses of Parliament lit up at night (not exactly a surprise, I had righteous intent to find it) ...the theater where "The Mousetrap" has played for ages - probably still is...Regent's Park and the Crescent... Gandhi's statue...The Friend at Hand pub near Russel Square...
Now I have no idea what streets I followed to get to these places. Wish I had your memory. Your mind walk is fantastic.
Been awhile since I've checked in here. As per usual, your writing on London tends to make me wish that I'd gone ahead and went to London for six months, finances be damned.
I was going to take exception with the "iPods are an atrocity" bit, as I tend to have a good time walking around with my iPod, but, remembering Philadelphia, Chicago, Toronto, New York, etc., the days when I forgot the iPod in the suitcase are much more vivid than the days without. Not that you could soundtrack something like Philadelphia's naked bike ride, which I was fortunate enough to stumble across on my way to a play.
Unrelated, but "They want to surround themselves with concrete and give themselves phony addresses like #1 Bullshit Plaza." might just be the quote of the week.
Mr. Ebert,
i'm a 17 year old, a senior in high school on Long Island, and a lover of Tolstoy, Bergman, Hammet, Stanwyck, Nykvist, Sargent, Renoir (Jean), The Beatles, Aimee Mann and Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. I've commented on your blog a few times, but I feel compelled to add: right now, at this point in my life, I am a lover of your blog above all else.
you are a truly incredible life force, and fill my head with some of the clearest prose and most vivid characters ever committed to paper (or the internet).
I just read your recent interview with Esquire online, and have to tell you what a powerful, thrilling effect your blog--and you--have had on me over the last few years. Your reviews, your "Great Movies" books, and your blog entries (most notably the ones concerning Elevation) have been a primary force behind fostering my dream to be a filmmaker.
I'm starting at NYU next fall to study film, but I'm not sure that anything I will learn there will compare to the effect or match the value of what has been the most significant contributer to my education so far: you.
Ebert: If I'd had taste that good at 17 there would have been no stopping me.
Although my mother passed away six years ago, reading this reminded me so much of her and our adventures in walking. My mother had no sense of distance, and in every city, village or somewhere off the beaten trail we would amble along with no idea of how long it would take to get to a certain destination. In Toronto we could see the CN Tower, therefore it wasn’t that far to walk there, and we could also enjoy the storefronts along Young Street. In Vancouver we could see Lions Gate Bridge, and gee we would also enjoy Stanley Park along the way. This happened many other times in many other places, and I wouldn’t change any of those walks with her, for they gave me stories to tell for many, many years. We met wonderful people, saw unusual things and would never have experienced any of this if we had gone straight to our destination.
I can recall a dream I've back in 2006; I believe it was right after you made the announcement of your first surgery. I was walking along during a cold, foggy night in London. I remember seeing you alone on a corner. I ran up to you and said "I always wished I'd met you."
First, you looked at me. Then you looked away. And finally, you walked away.
I don't remember many of my dreams at all. For some reason, I found this one to be profound.
Wonderful writing just wonderful, your credentials are paying off in spades, I have
nothing much to add about this great and beautiful city (found it later; including spending
three wondrous years in San Francisco to be greener than Los Angeles) except that I
had the privilege before coming back to the States, we stayed about a week at the
Marriott, (I have two cousins whom reside their) in which I spend it by cruising the city
and staying up late at night watching SKY TV; managed to catch two nice and popular
movies at that time and still (Leon & Mrs. Doubtfire) for a teenager; its a blast.
That Esquire piece depressed me. What was that Ebert they described? A person that has suffered and continues to suffer gracefully until he dies?
"Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it."
What the hell was that? Aren't we all dying in increments? How do you/they know that in your case it's more true than in others'? Why would you/they care to think about it and share that thought? To depresse me (and others, I suppose)?
"There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one afternoon after someone parting looks at him a little sadly. Look how happy I am."
1) If someone pities you, he has no idea how much more interesting your life has probably been than his. He also has no idea how many more people admire and respect you than him.
2) "Look how happy I am." I know you are. I don't think many people who read this piece know it. It was all "Yeah, he tries but, it's really hard." You're anything but pathetic and this piece doesn't seem to know it or care about it.
I won't complain if you don't post this. I just wanted to say that you didn't need that piece. Information about you is good but creating that image is bad. I don't know. Perhaps it will make more people start reading this journal and find out who you really are, which would be great.
Ebert: Some people got the idea that I was dying, and trying to write what I could "in the time remaining." Statistically I have as much time remaining as anyone my age. I appear to be cancer free, and apart from the obvious difficulties I'm in sturdy health. My cholesterol is sensational on this liquid diet.
However, I think Chris Jones did an excellent job. I know what he had to work with and I see what he did with it, and I feel he can be proud of his work.
You're correct that a lot of people found the Journal. It was linked hither and yon, and I've had 67,000 uniques today, which is probably a lot of first-timers. I hope some of them were impressed that we maintain a civil tone here, which is rare in the cesspool of discussion boards.
you are an inspiration to us all, roger. you continue to produce shining words in the face of adversity. the recent esquire article made me cry like a baby, but this is not pity, it is admiration.
keep doing what you do. don't stop until you have to.
This is beautiful. I lived in London briefly years ago, and yet reading this makes me feel like I never left. You perfectly captured the solitude and beauty of parks scattered amidst the orderly chaos of the city. Many, many thanks.
I've been reading your journals since you've started them, and I just read the Esquire article, and I wanted to send you an e-mail and can't find your address so I'm just putting here what I wanted to say.
I've never written to celebrities or even cared very much about them. I know you don't want praise or pity, but I am getting so much out of your journals I feel compelled to give something back to you.
All I can come up with is that I think reading what you're going through and the grace and dignity with which you are doing it is making me a better person. Thank you.
Dear Roger,
We build a communicator for people that have lost their voice.
to see it go to the our website:
www.commquick.com
It might be able to help you out in your daily activities.
Thank you,
bob
Another great article, I've enjoyed your film criticism for a long time, and am now enjoying your journal just as much, if not more.
I started watching Sneak Previews when it first appeared on my local PBS station back in '77. As a 10 year old in rural PA, the program had a huge impact on me. Almost 33 years later, I find that the love of cinema that you and Gene Siskel helped foster in me has only grown. I just wanted to thank you for all the wonderful memories, I only wish I could have thanked Gene.
In my mind I've just stepped out of the front door of the Regent Palace Hotel on the north side of Piccadilly Circus. I walk across the circus, glancing up at Eros hovering above me and turning my head to the right to see the great curve of Regent Street turning north toward its eponymous park. I walk due south down Regent Street, past the clubs of Pall Mall, until Regent ends in a waterfall of steps beyond the bankrupt Duke of York's really rather ugly column. I cross the Mall, cut through St. James Park (Horse Guards is on my left and beyond it the horizontal spire of a construction crane makes a perfect tangent with the upper half of the London Eye). Just past the park, on Storey's Gate, I pause at Old Queen Street for the best view of the towers of the Abbey glowing in the June sunlight. I continue walking, cross the busy street curving into Parliament Square, and enter the Abbey, proceeding immediately to the Henry VII chapel to look up at one of the most beautifully labyrinthine ceilings in all of England. (For me, the three best ceilings in London are the Henry VII chapel, the library at Kenwood House [which is like standing inside a piece of Wedgwood pottery], and Rubens's ceiling fresco in Banqueting Hall). When my spirits have been sufficiently lifted, I pass back through the nave to the cloister and rather than following the tourist trail around the large cloister and back to the nave, I walk through a turning series of corridors to the Abbey Garden. (I'm always surprised at how few visitors make it back to this lovely spot, a pretty piece of pastoral within shouting distance of the Houses of Parliament). When I reach the middle of the main path across the Garden, I turn around and see my second-favorite view of the Abbey exterior: the great transept window and the bright cathedral roof seeming to float above the mellower brown brick buildings on the north side of the Garden. After ten minutes or so sitting and wandering around the Garden, I walk back through the Abbey, pay my respects to Chaucer and Rare Ben Jonson in Poet's Corner, and then walk back out into bright sunlight (it's like leaving a movie theater; I shade my eyes for a few seconds). I walk up Whitehall as Big Ben tolls ten behind me, Virginia Woolf's leaden circles still dissolving in the same air Clarissa Dalloway breathed. I pass the Cenotaph, pop into Banqueting Hall to see that Rubens ceiling and reflect that it was one of the last things Charles I saw before he stepped out of one the windows onto a scaffold and lost his bloody head. Then I continue up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, scaring pigeons into flight as I walk across to the National Gallery. I go through the revolving door at the Sainsbury Wing, up the massive, glassed-in stairs, and turn right toward the older part of the Gallery. The large Venetian Renaissance room opens around me, and I see on the end wall Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne with its blues that redefine the color and greens that are like seeing green for the first time. I linger here for a long time, studying the painting, thinking about it, enjoying it. When I leave the gallery I walk around behind it and try to get lost in the narrow streets back there, eventually finding myself in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Sir John Soane's museum beckons. I enter and walk slowly, lingeringly around Soane's crazy house, ending up in the basement room directly below the picture gallery (the room with the skull in the middle of the table). I meet a woman there, and we agree that Soane was a very weird guy, then we walk together up to the top floor, go into the back room and look out the windows overlooking the roof of the 'museum,' a gorgeous crazy quilt of domes and skylights. She thanks me for showing her the view and I say, "Have you seen the view from the top of St. Paul's?" This walk has only begun...
Thanks for the Proustian rush, Roger.
Ebert: Readers: Clip and save.
When I moved up to London from Devonshire to attend art school the halls of residence for that first year was just across the Albert Bridge in Battersea and I had a room overlooking the park.
On the Sunday before the start of term I set off early in the morning, crossed over the bridge and walked up through Chelsea into Knightsbridge, up Exhibition Road (between the Natural History Museum and the V&A) into Hyde Park. Through Hyde Park I went up Baker Street to Regents Park then on up to Primrose Hill, then up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead Heath. It was a wonderful journey with very few people about to begin with. Of course when I got back and the folk asked me where I had been they looked at me like I was a complete idiot when I told them what I had done.
After a couple of weeks of suffering the morning rush hour on the Piccadilly Line I figured if I left earlier I could get the 19 bus, sit up on the top deck and admire the beautiful architecture as it went along the Kings Road, up Sloane Street and then along Piccadilly.
Years later, working at an animation studio on Goodge Street, when there were tube strikes I'd leave my flat in East Finchley at 7:00am, walk up Bishop's Avenue to Kenwood House, pass Spaniards Inn and cut across the Heath to Hampstead and then just follow the Hill down into central London. All the while I'd be passing people crowded at bus stops getting all het up that the buses passing were full and they were going to be late for work.
It was during the summer, amazingly the weather was good. I'd wonder why they didn't do what I was doing. All in all it would take two hours to get to the studio (depending on how log I lingered at the windows of the Hampstead book shops) but those were the most relaxing journeys to work I ever took. Fresh air and beautiful surroundings beat a tube carriage any day.
After reading your last post about Jermyn Street, you might like to know that the Chris Beetles Art Gallery on Ryder Street (one street down) is showing a retrospective of photographer Terry O'Neill. There is a wonderful shot of Pete and Dud, along with a picture of David Niven and Sammy Davis Junior.
http://www.chrisbeetles.com/gallery/artist.php?art=2492&gclid=CMXV4cjH-J8CFSGElAodEx8lWw
Ebert: Chris Beetles is a very, very nice man, whose exhibition catalogs are essentially reference books. HIs gallery is a gold mine of watercolours and illustrations. I have a Hercules Brabazon Brabazon from him, and two Paul Cox illustrations, one of Two Men in a Boat. And a Lear. The great thing about illustrations is that, although some may be expensive, many are quite reasonable and you don't have to be a museum to collect them.
And, yes, the name is Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. Sometimes reminds you of Turner. Refused to sell a single painting in his lifetime. Chris is quite an admirer.
"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."..RE
This is truly inspiring and truly true! The Esquire article is informative..
Hello, Sir,
Haha! I know exactly what you mean about the bangers. "This can't possibly have any meat," I'd tell myself. Then I realized that all that fat was a great vehicle for their pub mustard.
Thank you for writing.
Roger:
This blog is fantastic.
I greatly admire the clarity of the thoughts you so ably express in words.
Also, I'd like to thank you. When I was a young reporter in La Crosse, Wis., in 1998 or 1999 I wrote an article about Will Kilkeary, former owner of O'Rourke's.
You responded to an e-mail I sent with a brief comment. I don't remember the comment and I can't find the article online, but I remember thinking it was thoughtful of you to respond at all.
So, thank you for that.
I also worked in Palm Springs, Calif., with a former colleague of yours who had nothing but kind words and good wishes for you.
Not much else to say, other than your remarks to Esquire about working to make the world a happier place for others was a good reminder for me to do the same.
Best wishes,
Ben S., Las Vegas, Nev.
The Blow Up Game
Since you are kind enough to reissue this fresh and clever commentary, thought I would expand on my previous remarks in this thread. A couple memories remain from my first viewing of "Blow Up." How neat it would be, I thought at the time, to have an airplane propeller on display at my crib. And how groovy was the car he drove. Much like recently seeing again, years after my initially screening, "Mon oncle d'Amerique." I remember thinking back then how the lead actress looked like a 1980 French version of Angie Dickinson and yet found the film itself-in my original two word review--mumbo jumbo.
Now many moons later, I am much less thrilled by the prospect of having a huge propeller in my living room, but the Rolls convertible would be a delight to have parked out in the garage. And in the latter work, there still remains a certain resemblance I note between the actresses, but I have totally reversed my overall review of the film. Now with my hard earned cinematic maturation, better subtitling, and the capability to rewind at will-my new, updated two word review--jumbo mumbo.
I find "Blowup" much more fun and involving than I did "Mon oncle d'Amerique." My overall take would be quite dissimilar for the earlier film-if I was playing The Blow Up Game- that is. And I'm not. Although the game is long out of circulation, bet you Haneke plays it as well as anyone.
Roger,
Being only 25 years of age, I often find that fond memories such as your London Walks are difficult to embrace. Longing too much for past happiness seems to occasionally distract us from what lies ahead. To be quite honest, some of my fondest memories often seem unbearably bittersweet. Your thoughts give me hope and reason to reflect on how I relate to my memories, and I wonder if you've ever had such feelings and if so how they have evolved through the years. Thank you.
Totally off topic, but could you put your reviews for Exorcist 2 and 3 online? Probably gave them mediocre but I'm still interested. Then again, Dickens was a mesmerist and a doubting Christian and I think he would be fascinated by the Exorcist films.
Mr. Ebert,
I can't explain adequately how much I enjoyed this entry. Being a huge fan of London myself, I now have a new direction to take when I visit next.
I give full credit to the fantastic Esquire article I read today for leading me to your journal, and I am so very thankful. I had no idea that just reading your film reviews (which I have loved for years), was only exposing me to a sliver of your written treasures. I look forward to reading all your older material here and I want to thank you whole-heartedly for sharing your gift with all of us.
Even though I am here typing on a tiny qwerty smart phone, and your long list of comments intimidates one against commenting further, I had to let you know that you have a new excited fan.
I wish you good health, a sharp mind, and a steady hand to continue loving life and sharing it with the world.
I look forward to a long walk in London and your next entry.
-Steve
Mr. Ebert,
I can't explain adequately how much I enjoyed this entry. Being a huge fan of London myself, I now have a new direction to take when I visit next.
I give full credit to the fantastic Esquire article I read today for leading me to your journal, and I am so very thankful. I had no idea that just reading your film reviews (which I have loved for years), was only exposing me to a sliver of your written treasures. I look forward to reading all your older material here and I want to thank you whole-heartedly for sharing your gift with all of us.
Even though I am here typing on a tiny qwerty smart phone, and your long list of comments intimidates one against commenting further, I had to let you know that you have a new excited fan.
I wish you good health, a sharp mind, and a steady hand to continue loving life and sharing it with the world.
I look forward to a long walk in London and your next entry.
-Steve
Hi Mr. Ebert,
Did you ever walk up the Parkland Trail? It starts in Finsbury Park and wends thinly behind many houses, crosses bridges, and winds up at two abandoned railway tunnels, and you then pop out into Highgate. The best bit is midway, where an unsettling statue can be seen emerging from the brick beneath a bridge, a statue perhaps of Peter Pan, or perhaps of the Green Man, but it's unidentified, and quite creepy.
So but I was hoping I could show you my You Tube channel, lots of the stuff of which takes place in the nooks and crannies of London. I'm an artsy-fartsy, no-budget moviemaker, and when stranded in London with an English wife I began churning out the short and feature-length movies until stuffing three memory drives full (there's 200+ movies and performance videos on the channel). Much reveling in all the British detail if you dig past the Pacific Northwest stuff. There's a link below, or if you want to search 'Guy J Jackson' on You Tube that'll take you there too.
Thanks so much for your time and consideration and for teaching me understanding of movies each and every weekend when I was growing up in the 80s. All the best and do take care, Guy
http://www.youtube.com/user/Guyjjackson
Ebert: That is a fascinating video collection. Sort of like very early silent movies demonstrating "here I am moving before the camera" crossed with performance art, educational videos and "The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film."
@ Sean Kelly wrote:
"I really have to go to London. I'm with Marie Haws; the first thing I want to see is Diagon Alley, then maybe I'll visit King's Cross Station (I think that's what it's called), where I'll depart from platform nine and three-quarters on board the Hogwarts Express. Who knows where I'd end up? (Possibly a mental hospital.)"
Oooo! Do I have a link for YOU!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je3rNGpG7qc
Ta-DA! Filming yourself running into a brick wall at a train station and then uploading the video onto you tube, is what You Tube was invented for, dudes.
P.S. yes, it's King's Cross Station. :)
And no, you're not crazy. 'Cause the next time I see London, I'm gonna take a run at those bricks, too!
Chuckle!
Dear Roger, After reading your wonderful article and the marvelous variety of heartfelt comments, it occurs to me that your site has truly become A Destination, in every sense of the word. I love to escape here whenever I can..
Nicely put, Mr. Ebert.
I have always been a "walker", even after i paralyzed myself in a diving accident in 1986. I do it by hand, on wheels now, but i wander and meander and stroll wherever I go, and i appreciate your ability to express just what it is that can make this sort of leisure and activity such an important part of a person's life.
I live in London now (I grew up in the US), and i am still finding little pockets here in the East End that slow me down with a firm, invisible hand on my shoulder, and demand that I look around and forgo my schedule in order that I put one more board on the structure of memory that will never be completely finished.
*THIS WILL BE AS BRIEF AS POSSIBLE*
Thank you Mr. Ebert for entertaining me and informing me throughout my earliest childhood memories. I will never meet you, shake your hand or buy you dinner as I pick your brain about movies, however, I take some solace that you may read this and know that I am one of the million plus fans of yours. My New Year's Resolution was to let someone know that I really appreciate them every week and THIS IS YOUR WEEK. Just so you know, you were picked because your health has made the news again, but you should also know that I would have selected you regardless, based on your combination of intellect and likability, passion and humility, your written words and television appearances. You helped form my love and appreciation for cinema. Thank you again Mr. Ebert, your books, those that I have long owned and those that I look forward to buying, will always have a special place on my shelf as my memories and anticipation for your upcoming movie reviews reside in my heart. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK and I would be very proud to know you read this.
Always-
James
Thanks for letting me watch all those films with you and Gene in 1994-1995 and The Cable Guy in 1996. I miss those times and I hope you are doing well. I listen to Nick Digilio's radio show on the web and keep in touch with Dann Gire too. I put up the film i made at columbia college back in 1994 on my youtube page. Some of it was filmed in the chicago screening room and you were there to watch Dann and Roy Leonard be in my film about two film critics watching a film about a guy late for extra work. I just did extra work on Extraordinary Measures with Harrison Ford and I project films when i'm not acting. Here's the link to my youtube page to see the film I made. Just click on (see all)on my videos to watch it. Its called The Extra Screening. I hope you are doing well. cheers, geoff
http://www.youtube.com/user/FILMDUDE75#p/u
Hi Roger,
This entry has made me really look forward to visit London again (the only time i've visited it was really short), i guess I'll get a job there this summer and enjoy a good immersion.
I've read the Esquire article and, though it had a depressing tone, I think it gave a good look into how admirable it is for a person who has gone trough all this to keep working on what at the same time is job and a great passion. You are a walking lesson on how life must be seized, and I'm sure you optimistic attitude is and will be for a long time one of the causes that will keep you at the top of your capacity.
I've lived in London for ten years and have still never been to a lot of the places you mention, having read your blog I'm now motivated to go out and discover them!
Ebert: Statistically I have as much time remaining as anyone my age. I appear to be cancer free, and apart from the obvious difficulties I'm in sturdy health. My cholesterol is sensational on this liquid diet.
Thank you for that.
Roger, don't change the way you write. It really is like taking a walk with you.
Another gem of a posting. I like going into cities, ditching the car and walking around. Even in well-documented metropolises, there can still be hidden gems and joys that make the effort worthwhile. I plan to be in Chicago this spring or summer - what do you suggest for a walk - for someone who has already been to the city and wants to see more of its core vitality ...
PS - you're an amazing soul. I've been reading this blog for a couple years now and look forward to its unique insight.
Just read the Esquire piece where you said someone took down your tribute to Siskel on Youtube. I don't know if someone else has already sent you this (likely), but in case they hadn't, here it is reuploaded...
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tRNy9rELg
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtO4_--TRgo
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKR9pQmMXv0
My mother came to the U.S. from England (she was born in Bedford, and fled with her family to London during WWII after many a German bombing forced them to seek new shelters) close to 60 years ago.
She never returned, having too many children to raise and too much fear of flying and being at sea. Her brothers and parents became strangers to her, known for only a small portion of her long life. She is 77 now, but can still recall every detail of every place she ever lived or visited back home. She, too, remembers the most strikingly minute details, and those are the very sorts of things that make up most of her reminiscing. These things even crowd out most of the worst memories of bombings, homes destroyed, or fear of Nazis and invasion.
She only catches glimpses of things back home when it's in a movie, or briefly on the news. But I know she spends a lot of time -- more, lately -- remembering and thinking about her home and everything she hasn't seen in so long.
My mother isn't an Internet person. She has no e-mail, has never (and I mean NEVER) used a computer, and knows almost nothing about the Internet or how it works. But my father became ravenous for computers and e-mail and everything online, and even after several years still has a wide-eyed wonder at the technology. So I am sending him a link to this journal entry, so that he can enlarge the videos of the walk through London to fill his entire screen, and then help my mother into the room and into a comfortable chair so she can take the tour.
Thank you for this. I suspect it will move her very deeply.
Dear Ebert
I know this comment has nothing to do with this actual article and because of that I apologize in advance. First I want to say that for about 2 years now I have tuned into your blog at least once a week and have gotten much out of your reviews, and musings about life in general. I have even made it a life goal to watch all of the movies on your great movies list.
I am writing to ask you for a bit of advice. I want to become a successful screen writer (and yes I am writing) but I am unsure of what steps I need to take. I am about to graduate with a BA in philosophy and recently figured out that this is what I want to do. I am wondering if you think there is a correlation between going to film school and screenwriters making good scripts and getting their ideas made into movies. And if I should go what school do you think is ideal? Any advice that you can give to me would be awesome.
Thank you so much
Jared
Ebert: I/m of the opinion that you do need to go to college to learn a non-technical, scientific, licensed specialty. Like brain surgery, say. But when it comes to screenwriting, what can they teach you that you can't learn from movies?
My notion would be: Study things that would people or add substance to, a good movie. Fiction, poetry, theater, history--and the cinema. Add sciences that allow you to perceive more deeply: Biology, astronomy, anthropology. Act in theater companies. Make videos. Most important, have a good time.
And avoid teachers who don't believe their subject is the most important one in the school. I took a course in practical typesetting and typography once that was invaluable because Prof. Glenn Hanspon brought vivid meaning to his use of the word exacting.
Off topic, less so than on the Sundance thread, but why hasn't Tom O'Bedlam done "The Face on the Barroom Floor?" I've listened to several YouTube versions and I can't stand them, not even old Hank Snow's. What is wrong with these people that they insist on jazzing up simple rhymes? Are they trying to outsmart the author?
On topic -- Rodge, have you ever had the uncanny sensation of taking a walk on some hallowed route you haven't been on in a good while, where it seems your old thoughts are still hanging in the air? I am certain that if some impossible gizmo were invented to detect them, long and layered strips of my old thoughts spread out behind me could still be excavated out of thin air in different parts of this country.
OIpresents a film directed by Screenplay by Running time: minutes. MPAA rating:
Ebert: Most certainly. I not only follow in my own footsteps, I precede in my own footsteps.
You, of all people, should be able to understand the quantum truth of that.
Dear Roger;
You've been holding out on us. Not that I blame you. The details of your medical crises outlined in the Esquire piece are harrowing. You've given us bits and pieces and I had an idea of your situation but reading about it all at once was difficult.
It's a very well-written article but it paints a somewhat pathetic picture. Something I know from reading you on a regular basis is simply not true. You have lived and are living a wonderful life, full of wonderful people and wonderful places. Most importantly you have the remarkable talent to share it with us.
The depth of fondness and affection I have for you seems irrational since I have never met you and probably never will. It's all due to the vivid details and emotional impact of your writing of course. Thank you for sharing so much.
This reminds me of Thoreau's walking essa: "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer — a holy-lander."
It also begs me to wonder why Nassim Taleb recently said NYC was the only walkable city in the US; for Chicago is highly walkable.
Anyway, thanks for writing this!
Mr Ebert,
I've been reading your material for a long time. This is the first time I've felt uncontrollably compelled to comment. I'd like to just say quickly that I have a huge admiration for your work, and its had a huge influence on my own meager offerings.
As a Londoner, I might say you're over-romanticizing, but I think the fault is mine for always having to be somewhere while I'm walking in this city. Perhaps you see London roughly as Woody Allen sees New York. Perhaps we all should.
Also, I noticed this while scanning the comments:
Ebert: There are Underground game players who compete at passing through the most different stations in the shortest possible time.
My father told me that it was once possible to visit every station on the map in a single day. Sadly, this is no longer physically possible.
I just went through the roughest three months in my life. I felt like I needed to go to Cancun or something. But, maybe I could start to decompress with a walk around Toronto. This entire blog is one extended carpe florem! I remain appreciative. Its good to read thing that make you want to get out and live and experience things.
Thanks.
The Esquire article didn't seem depressing at all; I thought Mr. Jones did a magnificent job of trying to stand aside and let your appreciation of life and living speak through his writing. If anyone got a purely mordant impression from the piece, I pray they might find their way to this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this realm, this Ebert's Journal!
And I've enjoyed this entry more than I have any right to, not yet having been to England other than in books and a few Powell & Pressburger films, but I think the true gift is to invite people to look around corners near the undistiguished (they think) streets where they live, and find those hidden secrets that even downstate Illinois farm towns or Ohio rural villages have in abundance, if not quite so packed per square mile, like fat in a banger, such as London obviously has.
Dear Roger,
What a fascinating essay.
Can everyone recall memories through walking with the most vivid of details?
I am only 28 now, but I grew up in a small victorian age town in canada. I only lived there until I was 10, but I can recall every step I took there. One of my favorites was when I ventured down a fenced in path overgrown with shrubs that ended in an open field of grass. I remember the mosquitos buzzing around, and the swarms of tiny bugs I would hold my breath through so as to not inadvertantly swallow one. Disgusting! I recall the smell of the dried grass in the field, and even though it is january, I remember and can feel the warm sunshine from that day in summer I walked through there.
At the other end of the field there were some trees, I won't bore you with the details of the trees, but through the trees was a gate, with a sign that read private property. Hesitantly I hopped the gate into another field, with a single oil derrick, still pumping away. Next to the derrick was an old, rusting, broke down troop transport, that I still suspect would have been used during WW2. Who's truck was that? At the time, those questions did not concern me. I was sure a battle must have taken place on that very spot, and the transport had to be abandoned because of land mines. I then turned around and hurried home, happy to have avoided the fate of the soldiers from that truck.
I thank you for your memories Roger, and for helping me to cherish my own.
I'm off now, to go for a walk.
Joel.
I made my niece (who was studying abroad in London) take your favorite walk. I asked her to take photos of certain locations but her 21 year old mind did not quite grasp the significance of that particular request. She has not the heart's eye of a photographer nor the sentimental yearnings of age, though she told me that she loved the walk...
"How'd you come up with this?" She asked. I told her: "It's Roger Ebert's favorite walk in London! He sent me the book." She sent it back to me. It was autographed after all...
I will go to London this year. I will shoot photos.
Love the Esquire piece.
This essay is extraordinary. After reading it, I understood why Florentine artist Verrocchio reacted as he did after examining an angel painted by his pupil Leonardo, on the Baptism of Christ.
I cannot decide. By the power of this work, have you inspired would-be essayists or severely diminished their numbers?
I love London.
And I love YOU - what I know about you, the manner in which you write, the general way in which your mind seems to work. ;)
You are the only film critic I know of whose taste I consistently find close enough to mine, so I can rely on your reviews. (And when we disagree... you usually make me see it in a different light.)
Thank you for this lovely excursion!
And please, get well A.S.A.P.
I have been wanting to write here for a long time but I was always at a loss for words, or just typing some hysterical and shameful mumbo-jumbo that I just can't hit the submit button...
I am 18, sir, and one significant thing in my life that was missing was passion. Then I read you, almost 5 years ago, and I realized I could have it - and now, I think I have earned it a little.
Thanks to you and your beautiful prose, my short journey of movie watching has been more than entertainment to me, from watching a few feel-good, crowd-pleasing flicks, to seeing films you review best. Whenever I'm reading a review of your writing, it never ceases to amaze me (and make me hunt the DVDs), and makes me chuckle, with lines of unsurpassable wit and honesty. I love movies! (Although I did never, ever truly embraced Knowing a four starred film.)
I think, I will try to persevere and continue writing that screenplay I've been so longing to write and finish. Even if it'll turn out downright unoriginal, trashy and sappy, it will be in honor and love for Roger Ebert. Plus my family, and of course... God. Well now I hope it doesn't.
And before I forget, I always wanted to comment on your journal piece about the current youth and movie entertainment (the one with the Transformers thing) - I have a few (sadly) friends who are in the same boat as me. So I guess hope is not lost, eh? :D
"Ebert: Walking absolutely works for depression." Thumbs up, sir! But I hope it doesn't say that when you walk miles for hours, you are just darn depressed, or else I might see my doctor materialize in front of me!
Ebert: It's quite permitted to walk when you're not depressed.
Everyone says they agree with my opinions "except for Knowing." Agree with my opinions, agree with "Knowing.
I'm fairly sure you're not a religious man, at least not in the way I am (a Christian), but God bless you Roger Ebert. You are a true gem.
Mr. Ebert,
I've just finished reading the Esquire piece, and simply wanted to thank you for your invaluable ongoing contribution to the critical community.
As a Chicago-based aspiring film critic in his 20s, I grew up watching you, and more importantly, devouring your books of essays and reviews. I love movies, writing, and reading, and I love reading and writing about movies. Your passion for the same have inspired me countless times, the most recent of which was a couple of minutes ago, after reading that article.
So, thanks.
Best,
John
I'm an American expat who currently works at "the pub down from Hammersmith bridge with the deck overlooking the water." You'll be happy to hear that the Dove is still alive and kicking, with a newly renovated kitchen after the old one caught fire over a year ago. When I've scrounged up enough money, I'll definitely have dinner at the Gate - I keep meaning to and never seem to find the time... But if your entry has given me anything, it's a renewed sense of finding the time, MAKING the time, to do something of beauty every day. That, and get a really tasty hot chocolate.
Ebert: The Dove! Of course! Sitting on the deck...having a sandwich...watching the river traffic...wondering who lives in those houseboats...
Me: Rodge, have you ever had the uncanny sensation of taking a walk on some hallowed route you haven't been on in a good while, where it seems your old thoughts are still hanging in the air?
Ebert: You, of all people, should be able to understand the quantum truth of that.
---Well, sure... it's just that I'm always the patsy who brings stuff like this up, hoping somebody else chimes in.
Roger,
Your writing these past few years is not explosion, but terraform. Look at the life you've produced in these entries and the resulting comments! It's simply wonderful. I'm heading to Glasgow for the first time this year and am learning about places to walk there. Then, revisit walks in Edinburgh. I have a friend who is new to London who needs to see these words and pictures. He's going to get introduced to your blog immediately after I hit "submit" on this comment. The terraforming continues...
Hi Roger,
Look at what St. Pete Times Movie Critic STEVE PERSALL wrote about you on his blog today.
We all LOOOVE you Roger! I said it before, & I'll say it again .... you are the TOP POINT of my "Holy Trinity of Movie Critics" ... along with Roeper & Persall.
http://blogs.tampabay.com/movies/2010/02/roger-ebert-still-gives-life-two-thumbs-up-says-hes-happy-even-after-cancer-surgeries.html#comments
"Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it." What the hell was that? -- Jim T didn't like that statement.
I think the words are powerful. We all die in increments but response is a determinant of character. We might focus on the misfortune of serious ailments or we might give thanks for senses that remain. Indeed, if the most valued instrument remains strong, even stronger, the music gets better.
Chris Jones' article focuses my realization that, if we live our lives well, we can influence a few souls but those on the short list of greats will inspire a society over many generations.
Roger,
I may be only 19 years old, but like you I am an avid walker and movie-watcher. I can tell you that if you ever travel a bit west and end up in Iowa, Dubuque is a wonderful place to walk in the spring and summer. I love walking through downtown and admiring all of the beautiful architecture and history.
I would also like to say that, as I am a writer for my university's student newspaper, you are a monumental inspiration and a brilliant critic. Thank you so much for sharing your passion with the world.
Mr. Ebert,
I'm very sorry if this is completely off-topic, but after reading that magnificent (but depressing) article about you on Esquire, I felt like cheering everyone up with something funny:
http://www.inmirror.com/humor/roger-ebert-carl-fredricksen
The resemblance is uncanny, is it not? 73% of people agree.
Just wanted to share with everyone. Perhaps you had noticed yourself? Or perhaps someone had already compared you?
We've had our disagreements: Juno, Slumdog Millionaire [read as, City Of God v. 2.0], etc., but I agree with you on Knowing. Of course, since we agree, I don't need to tell you why it's a good movie, but for everyone else: if nothing else, at least give the film credit for having the testicular fortitude to destroy the planet.
(I've gathered that you're a fan [and were a friend?] of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, so I'm curious: did Knowing evoke Childhood's End for you?)
Oh, and... THANK you for setting the record straight (in Esquire) about you and Gene Siskel, and how much you loved each other. It is a strange facet of humanity that dictates we are generally more interested in other people when they're not getting along, and yet the simplistic depiction of you and Gene as seething combatants never rang true to me. You don't get the kind of chemistry you two have without about 65 pounds of love in there somewhere.
Mr. Ebert--
I might be breaking the rules of this section because my comment is related to the recent Esquire article instead of your journal entry.
After reading the Esquire piece, I felt compelled to let you know of your place in my life. As simply as I can put it, you're one of my "voices." I'm 38 (soon to be 39), and I grew up on your reviews. When I could, I'd stay up until 2:30 in the morning to watch "Siskel and Ebert at the Movies." As I got older (and the Internet came around), I became a religious reader of your reviews--but only AFTER I'd seen the movie myself. I wanted to compare notes with the master.
Other "voices" in my life--David Letterman, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Brokaw...these are individuals with whom (as strange as it sounds) I've felt a particlar kinship. That's not the right word though. Connection? Maybe. I've grown up following all of you; the music, the words, the opinions--it's all mattered, and it all STILL matters to me.
As an adult, I also understand that it's not JUST about the music, words, and opinions. I consider you (along with the the other gentlemen I've mentioned) to be one of the country's strongest and most relevant voices.
I'm not writing this the way I want to, but if nothing else, I want my main point to be clear--I admire and respect the hell out of you. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing Shutter Island, and then once again, comparing notes with the master.
Thank you, Roger.
I don’t ‘know’ London – I have only been there about 7 days total in all my too many years. But this is what reading your blog recalled to me.
I first learned about London as a child from a book “This is London”. It starts “This is London …” showing the wall of green murk of a pea-souper fog. It goes on to say “… but don’t worry most of the time, it looks like this.” showing a panorama of London with the Thames and the House of Parliament. Thereafter, London grew in my imagination from countless British TV programmes and the occasional movie.
I finally got to see London, 25 years later as an afterthought to a trip on the Trans-Mongolian railway, I had been to China, Mongolia and Russia and seen many buildings of heroic proportion (the Kremlin, the Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square), which can only be built at the command of an autocrat indifferent to the cost in materials and in lives.
And then I saw London. Everything seemed small, almost parochial, or perhaps the word should be ‘human’. It was like a collection villages that have grown outwards but not upwards. Many areas of central London would not have seemed out of place in my native Christchurch. It had the feeling of a truly democratic place, not just in politics but in it way of life.
You're so amazing! Loved this. I went to school in Reading, England (where Kate Winslet's from) and started "walking" there. Do you know this thoughtful blogger/web site I think you would love? I've seen you at Chicago Shakes a few times and she writes about a great Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry today.
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/
Roger, I've been reading your blog for a long time now. I just read the esquire article and it said something about you posting your thoughts on atheism. I must have missed that entry, I don't recall it. If I misunderstood what the article was saying and you wrote nothing of the sort, you can discard this message haha. If you did write on it, would you please point me in the direction I could find it? I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the subject. Thanks in advance.
Ebert: I choose not to label myself. Here's my entry, "How I Believe in God."
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/how_i_believe_in_g.html
I have enjoyed reading your journal for some time now. But after sharing in these virtual "walks" and "dinner conversations", and investing in a rice cooker along the way, I never stopped to say thanks. So, thank you, Roger, for all that you share here. I'm looking forward to cooking with your new book on The Pot and How to Use It.
I read your recent interview in Esquire and became aware that someone had taken down the video of your first show without Gene Siskel. I thought I'd try my best to find the link for you to see if someone had re-posted it, and luckily someone has. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzsmNHrZVeY&feature=related
50% off-topic - it was shot in England, that should count for something. :)
I finally got around to watching "The Wolfman" last night. And moonlit architecture and creepy interiors aside, there's not much there to praise. For in successfully resisting the "temptation" to update the lore, what we get instead is a tired, worn out cliche. In other words, I was bored.
And with nothing better to do, consequently sat there on the sofa picking it apart like a meal I wasn't excited enough to actually eat but couldn't summon up the energy to throw out.
The design of the Wolfman doesn't work here. It's a retro horror film aesthetic from the 50's and imo needs to be approached with the same sensibility shown by John Landis in "An American Werewolf in London."
Black humour. Something to undercut it.
For the Wolfman (2010) takes its subject matter "too" seriously and in doing so, gave rise to mentally comparing it to earlier efforts, such as this:
http://i.inhaps.com/the_wolf_man_over_gwen_conliffe.jpg
It's a thin plot covered by CGI and fog. I wasn't scared. The animation was too obvious and he looked more like a chimp than a dog. Zzzz.
"I am not sure of the natural history of wolf men. Is the condition passed through the blood? Apparently. How exactly does one morph from a man into a wolf? By special effects, obviously. The werewolf has much less pseudo-scientific documentation than the vampire. I understand why he sheds his clothes when he expands into a muscular predator. What I don't understand is how he always succeeds in redressing himself in the same clothes. Does he retrace his path back through the dark woods by moonlight, picking up after himself?" - Roger's view of the Wolfman
I cannot praise the following show highly enough. Seriously; it's that well written.
"Being Human" on the BBC... a series about a ghost, vampire and werewolf all sharing a flat in Bristol England. And where the writers actually think about the sorts of questions you've asked, Roger. In fact, the answer them:
George transforms in a werewolf:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpQxGFmyK3g&feature=related
1. you take your clothes off before you change.
2. you put them back on afterward or steal others
3. your infected DNA just needs to get into someone's blood stream
4. and changing really, really really hurts.
George is a rare exception when it comes to werewolves. 99.9% are dull as ditch water and boring to watch and why they've never achieved the same status as Vampires. But George?
He's more interesting to watch than the Vampire; and that's saying something.
I can't complain too much of course; cough. :)
You can pay to watch it on the big screen and for the location, sets and creepy atmosphere, but all things considered imo it's more of a rental, you know?
Roger,
I'm an American living in London, and believe I live on one of the streets you mention with the cafes and street vendors.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/183406
Hope this is good information for you. I love the St James's Park area so much. I'm glad you love London as much as I do.
Ebert: If that's a snack shop on the corner, it's the very same or very close.
We've had a lot of downturns and rough times recently and I have become somewhat reclusive as a result. Your last two posts (the only ones I have read since finding your blog two days ago) have inspired me to get out and take my own walks. You reminded me that no matter what is going on in life that there are still good things for me to enjoy, like that bend in the road and the fabulous hidden treasure that may be just around the bend and the lovely people there.
Thanks for that. I'm getting out my walking shoes now.
I really enjoyed these London pieces. I realize now how little of the city I've seen - I need to get back there soon.
On the subject of London walking, I like Iain Sinclair. He has a sort of walking trilogy: walks in London (Lights Out for the Territory), around the outskirts (London Orbital), and out of London to the north (Edge of the Orison). His style is off-putting to some, but I've found the extra effort to be well worth it.
I left London last summer after 3 years at Kings College and my memories of walks become stronger the longer that I'm away. Whilst many of your walks are ones that I know and relish, my heart has always been south of the Thames, in the South Bank and the National Film Theatre, in Borough Market's indulgent food and drink humming to the sound of the trains running overhead, East St and Walworth Road's West African bustle - one of the great boroughs where lives are lived on the streets (something that undoubtedly made my move to Lagos, Nigeria, far easier), in the mad pagoda in Battersea Park, and in Kew, where my favourite building in London looms in Orwellian fashion - the British National Archives. Never has such an ugly building held so many hidden treasures.
Whilst these memories are fresh, I feel that, much like yours, they will only grow in significance as I move further away. Lagos is a phenomenal city, one that I will never tire of, but you cannot explore it in a manner comparable to London - heritage is swiftly disregarded, with few buildings more than 20 years old. Even the geography is inconsistent, which more of the lagoon being reclaimed for further property development every year. For Lagotians, this has always been the way, and it is to an extent a means of erasing unwanted memories, of which Nigeria holds many. Lagos' transience makes me long for the intransigence of Chancery Lane and Lambs Conduit Street.
P.S. I love that you have done the Granchester walk - my friends and I punt there every summer for their birthday, rain or shine. There is talk of going to New York this year instead - I am doing my best to dissuade them.
Ebert: Lambs Conduit Street used to have that great bookshop with the wax museum figure of GBS.
Roger, I felt like I was there with you on these walks....well, almost. Now, you have inspired to make these walks my own...I will be adding this to my list of experiences I want to have in life.
Roger, you are the greatest! I can’t thank you enough for your fabulous London walking journal. It so happens that this May, my husband and I will be visiting London for the first time in our lives. As we are inveterate walkers who love to explore cities and various neighborhoods, we are indebted to you for your invaluable insights into so many prime spots in London. We will have a printout of your journal tucked under our arms as we revel in a city we have longed to see all of our lives. It is very much our thing to wander and explore (not to mention to get lost!), and we couldn’t ask for a better guide than you. By the way, I have just ordered the book of which you are coauthor, Perfect London Walks, and I’m so looking forward to reading it.
I am very proud and glad to count myself among your fellow Chicagoans. I see that you enjoy the Caldwell Lily Pond. Sometime after spring arrives, you and Chaz should check out the Jens Jensen Rock Garden and waterfall, which lies in between the North Park Nature Center and Peterson Park. It’s another little slice of heaven from an architect who loved and understood Chicago so very well.
All best wishes and much love to you.
I sometimes feel like there are two Rogers writing this blog. This is a wonderful piece.
Someday, someday...
PS. I'll be sending in my piece for the F.C. today.
Your blog inspired me to once again look through my photos from the month I spent studying in England. The summer before my senior year at U of I, I spent a week in Stratford and three in London, attending plays four nights a week. While in London, we had afternoons free to explore the city, and while I was confident I saw most of London, I'm not familiar with every spot you mention in this blog. You've made me even more determined to go back and see the places I missed the first time.
Also, I don't know if you remember this, but you were a guest lecturer in my Intro to Journalism class during Ebertfest in 2004, along with Jim Turpin, who broadcast the talk on his radio show. I remember opening my notebook (with "Jim Turpin and Roger Ebert" written at the top), preparing to take notes, but I didn't take any. Just listened. Everyone in the room was starstruck, and it's one of my favorite memories from that year.
Thank you so much for all you've done for U of I and CU. And for possibly inspiring me to take another trip to my favorite city in the world.
Ebert: I do remember that. A man like Jim Turpin is part of the very fabric of a community.
Someday I will return to London, I vow. I will walk about and see sights other than Abbey Road Studios and Paul McCartney's house in St. Johns Wood. (I did see other sights, but those are the ones I remember best.)
Your story about the urinal struck a chord with me. When I was pregnant sixteen years ago with my son, he somehow worked himself into a position which blocked my urethra. I panicked when I realized that I couldn't urinate--and I had just drunk a sixteen-ounce bottle of Coke! My husband got me to the ER, where my stomach had swollen up like a balloon, making the doctors there think I was eight months pregnant when I was actually closer to four. When I was finally cathaterized, more than a liter of urine drained out. I have never experienced such blissful relief.
Even now, I still say a prayer of thanks often when I visit the bathroom.
I've never been much of a walker, but I find since moving to Lincoln Square in Chicago and starting a new job in the suburbs, it's all I do on weekends.
I think it's just something that my body craves and needs after the 2 hours I spend in a car commuting each day, five days a week. Thankfully, Lincoln Square is a wonderful starting point (and sometimes endpoint, if I get too distracted in a shop, restaurant or coffee shop).
Thank you so much, Roger, for this marvelous blog and for all your writing. I was lucky enough to have a talk with you about London in the middle of my two years living there (it was on a bus ride in Baja, in fact), when I had an annual tube/buss pass in my possession and had been delightedly putting it to good use. Your recommendations helped me put it to GREAT use when I got back to London -- I popped up in a lot of places around the city and deliberately set out to get lost. I started by wandering the canals around Mile End and through the East End and west through all the Dickensian streets (Threadneedle has to be my favorite street name ever), and having a few pints at the Cheshire Cheese in your honor. There were so many moments in those years and the years since, whenever I've returned to London, that I felt indebted to you. Your blog brings so much of that back, and makes me even more eager to meander there again - London is inexhaustible and fascinating! I am so happy to hear the words "cancer free" in your comments, and hope that you will find more opportunities for travels both actual and imaginary. I look forward to reading more.
Cheers,
Victoria
Ebert: That bus ride in Baja was, I deduce, taking us to another great place to walk.
Of course "cancer free" should always be joined with "for now." But you must act as if it means "forever."
Well I am still sniffling as I write this comment. Sniffling brought on by the tenderness of your writing and my memories of England where I was born and from where I left at a young age.
At my memories of Marble Arches, and my mother and I and The London Zoo, and Granddad O'neil and sleep overs in the murphy bed at his flat in Liverpool. And my recent visit to Kings Cliffe and walking the Church Walk, down little alleys and paths and out to the fields. Peaceful.
And sniffling at the truth of what you say of shoring up against those times when a memory walkabout becomes vital. Well, actually, a memory walk about can only improve ones daily life regardless of whether one is physically frail or not eh? :0)
Thank you so very much for sharing yourself so openly and for reminding me (again) of the importance of the simple things.
Going to go get my tennies and jacket on in a bit and go down to the beaver pond to find the Blue Herons nesting there.
You are a wondrous man Mr. Ebert. Wondrous.
All this talking and walking of London has led me down a path as of late to where all things quintessentially English lie; you know, like murder, tea cups and orange marmalade.
And of course detective mysteries. :)
But there's something else the English are known for and the world over; ie: being right proper basterds. And why I borrowed "A Passage to India" from the library last night; as we mustn't romanticize them "too" much.
I've read Roger's review from 1984 (4 stars) and clearly, he liked it a whole bunch! I liked it too, although for me nothing will ever beat David Lean's other film "Summertime" as that was set in Venice with Katherine Hepburn. Exactly; I rest my case. Smile.
Anyhoo, Roger wrote something which gave me food for thought:
"In Forster's novel, it is never clear exactly what it was that happened to Miss Quested after she wandered alone into one of the caves. David Lean's film leaves that question equally open..."
Really..? As that wasn't my reaction at all.
I think the cave is a metaphor for what lies within us and waiting to be discovered. And that for each, the experience will be different. In the case of Miss Quested, I think she had a sudden, wild sexual thought about their host, Aziz. I think that's why she blew out the match; like turning out the lights before you, etc. And the novelty of feeling that - and for it likely resembling the eroticism she'd stumbled upon earlier, shortly upon her arrival (there was a temple with erotic carvings and statues alla Kama Sutra) ultimately proved too much for her and overwhelmed, she panicked.
She'd literally scared herself with the graphic nature of what she'd been "mentally" picturing; a passionate sexual encounter. I dare say the sheer force of the image pierced her repressed English upbringing, and that's why she accused Azis of a sexual assault.
And because of who she was thinking about and how those thought had made her feel, at the time.
I've never read the novel so I'm just guessing that that's what I was supposed to surmise. Either way, it's a wonderful film.
Although... why was Sir Alec Guinness playing an Indian? I like him, but he's not an Indian and they have no shortage of actors, so..?
That did strike me as quite odd.
Ebert: Well, he was known for impersonation, and once played every member of a family.
Roger-Roger-Roger... You are my kinda guy. Big brained. Full of vision. Excited like a kid over the free things in life.
Like you, I re-ran my walking habits from my Evanston years. Down to the lake and up to Northwestern campus. Once, in the 70's, I took a stroll from Ridgeland in Oak Park down North Ave to Wells Street, zig-zagging to Michigan Ave, stopping for a quick visit to The Art Institute - which was just closing. Got home in time for dinner.
I followed your walk with Google Earth and I've decided for all future walks, what's needed is a Tilley.
You are invited into that room in my head anytime. Just had a recliner put in there for your next journal entry.
Ebert: The Tilley Hat. Leave it in your will.
@ Ebert: "Well, he was known for impersonation, and once played every member of a family."
Kind Hearts and Coronets! That's a great movie! I love that one - almost everyone in it dies and in ways both amusing and well timed.
A quick word about the Americans...
"American version"
To satisfy the Hays Office Production Code, Kind Hearts and Coronets was censored for the American market. Some ten seconds of footage was added to the ending, showing the manuscript of Louis' memoirs being discovered before he can retrieve them. (This ending is an extra product in the Region 1 Kind Hearts and Coronets Criterion Collection DVD.) The dialogue between Louis and Sibella was altered to downplay their adultery; derogatory lines about the Parson were deleted; and in the rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", sailor replaced the word nigger. The result is a version that is six minutes shorter than the British original." - wiki
And okay, we don't need the "N" word but 6 minutes is a lot to take out - and jeepers, now I'm wondering which version I've seen?! Hang on, checking online library catalog...
GASP! I've never seen the UK original! I know because of the dates; they've just recently added that Criterion DVD 2-disc to the list. Well there's only one thing to do in the face of such tampering - as I shall not be thwarted, dammit.
"To reserve item click select"
"Click"
"To pick the location of pick-up.."
"Cameron Library: click"
DONE. And that take, Americans! (Making face.)
Note: The title - "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is from from Tennyson's poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere: "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood." Yes, I looked it up. :)
And then went searching to see if Tom O'Bedlam had a video recital of it over on You Tube? Nope.
However I did find one I've heard before and like very much indeed! For it's English as only they can be and thus in perfect tune with murder, marmalade and tea...
"Disobedience" by A A Milne
http://www.youtube.com/user/SpokenVerse#p/u/97/iHCxmhLJ3DM
Grin.
P.S. it's got an undercurrent of Edward Gorey, etc. And speaking of creepy and for those brave enough to watch it... :)
"The Tuning Fork by Edward Gorey"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t5a829z-4w&feature=fvw
Ebert: Rescued from Spam!
Has anyone been here to Little Green street? How about you, Roger?
I was looking for pictorial reference of old English cobblestones - which of course led to me to a Jane Austen site:
http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/little-green-street/
And where I discovered Little Green Street and learned all about it and a website devoted to saving it!
http://www.littlegreenstreet.com/
"Little Green Street off Highgate Road in Kentish Town is one of only a few intact Georgian streets in London.
Most of the dozen houses were built in the 1780s, are Grade ll listed, and both survived the Blitz and more than two hundred years of wear and tear from the generations who have raised their children in the narrow cobbled terrace.
The street, only 2.5m wide remains a very real threat of being turned into a truck route which would see a vehicle pass within inches of the front doors of these homes every three minutes, all day every day for up to four years down this delicate cul-de-sac.
Although, after eight years of campaigning by more than fifteen thousand people, many visitors to this site, planning permission has lapsed, Camden Council are still vacillating about whether the construction work on a gated community with an underground car park should continue..."
There's even videos about it over at You Tube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSRpl5od_vg&feature=related
I think it's official: real estate developers SUCK.
@ Marie Haws
I saw "A Passage to India" weeks ago and though worth it's penny, quite derogatory and certainly unrecognisably un-Indian. The Alec Guiness character is ridiculous and like nothing that trod on earth. (Guiness has always been a favorite from his roles in three other Lean movies.) You might see what I wrote of the film.
@ S M Rana wrote:
"I saw "A Passage to India" weeks ago and though worth it's penny, quite derogatory and certainly unrecognizably un-Indian. The Alec Guinness character is ridiculous and like nothing that trod on earth..."
I've just read your review of Lean's film and found myself nodding.
I grew-up around Vancouver: main demographic is predominately White, Asian, East-Indian. And so I can tell when I'm looking at a stereotype.
And thus why I knew Alec Guinness's character was wrong. He's still too English under the make-up; more like someone's slightly eccentric old uncle, than a Brahman.
It was shot in 1984 but its sensibilities feel even older, and thus out of sync with what you should have been seeing. True; Lean does show that not everyone is smiling at the British, but even so. If you're going to say something about the British behaving badly, use an Indian to do it. Show me the British through their gaze, you know?
Ever see "The Jewel in the Crown" based on the Paul Scott novels known as "The Raj Quartet"..? That BBC 15 hr mini-series? I thought that was closer to the truth of things, and it was done in 1984 too. At least Indians were playing themselves.
Basically, I loved all the cinematography in the film and that courtyard with the pond of water and the tree. And the actor playing Azis, Victor Banerjee - as he was kinda cute. :)
Note: English actor Mark Strong was born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia in London to an Italian father and an Austrian mother. He played the villain Lord Henry Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes (2009) but he's also well known for playing non-English roles - like an Arab, Hani Salaam in "Body of Lies" and Mussawi in "Syriana."
And yet this is the same guy who gets cast to play Mr. Knightly in a TV version of Jane Austen's Emma.
Which is to say I'm not against casting someone in a part outside their country of birth, but at least try and get it right, eh? And he was believable as the head of the Jordanian General Intelligence Department.
Alec Guinness as an Indian? Not really.
I'd like to assure Jules Garnett it's still possible to visit all the London Underground stations in a single day, though not without a lot of planning and effort. It's called a Tube Challenge and the fastest time, as recognized by Guinness World Records, is 17 hours and 13 minutes.
Roger, I don't know if pigeons play any role in your fond memories of London, but if so I thought you should know there's a foul-mouthed blog written by a London pigeon.
@Marie Haws
No,I haven't read the Quartet, though I have heard a lot about it. What's the BBC 15 minute series, never heard about it? I think Satyajit Ray has given the best account of India in his movies but they are so recognizable to an Indian that I wonder how much someone who does not live here can catch their flavour. (I just saw the stunning totally Egyptian 1958 film "Iron Gate" aka "Cairo Station" by the director Chahine).So I think maybe authentic stuff remains so even across cultures. I think it would be difficult to match Ray's historical comedy "The Chess Players" as an account of British India. Ray was also a writer of children's books, an illustrator, and he even calligraphed in his own hand the credits for his movies.
Oh, Roger, that makes me so sad! I still remember when you introduced Rex and me to the Eyrie Mansion. I loved that place. We stayed there many times, always having visitors so they could be amazed at our spacious digs. Even though it got too pricey for us, we still make a point of walking down Jermyn Street every time we are in London. I dread to think what we'll see this summer.
Ebert: Donna, at least we can remember it.
Readers, Donna was my first editor at Andrews & McMeel, who in fact came up with the idea of the Yearbook, and gave a green light to the Perfect London Walk!
Your words are like hot buttered popcorn. I love every word. Been reading you all my life. Saw you on the street once (1980?), State and Lake. Should have said hello but you looked deep in thought.
Join Fred's Hiking Club! We do what you do around the city here. Thanks for being you.
You were right about the great walk, but sadly, we were riding FROM the mountains and not to them. Still, your marvelous recommendations for reading and walking and drinking traveled with me from California to London, where I immediately and with great pleasure heeded every last one of them. Any tips for walking tours of Torino, by chance? I'm heading there in the summer, and would follow any trail you set! In meantime, I will wish for forever for you but will behave as though it could be any moment for me. It gets me off my butt more and inspires me to let people know how much they matter.
cheers, Victoria
Beautiful read - makes me want to get walking!
Highgate Cemetery is still overgrown, with tombs cracked and falling over. It's a magical, green place that feels forgotten.
When I was there about a month ago, I took pictures, if you're interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladybug/sets/72157623321982324/
Ebert: Those photos are breathtaking. I tweeted them. But you're right here, not there: It's Highgate, not Highbury.
Roger,
The other night I watched Craig Ferguson and Stephen Fry discussing their affection for their newly adopted home of Los Angeles. Have you ever met a Londoner who's adopted (or been adopted by) Chicago?
Thanks very much for all your writing.
@ S M Rana wrote:
"No, I haven't read the Quartet, though I have heard a lot about it. What's the BBC 15 minute series, never heard about it?"
"The Jewel in the Crown" was a mini-series on the BBC back in 1984. It's 15 hours long and about the final days of the British Raj in India during World War II...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_in_the_Crown_%28TV_series%29
Note: Tim Pigott Smith played the sadistic, menacing, social-climbing Capt. Ronald Merrick and it's a performance which marks him as one of TV's greatest villains!
Roger,
I'm attending university in Sussex at the moment, but from when I was 7 to last autumn I lived in and around Hampstead. After a year on Gordon House Road my family was lucky enough to buy a small flat on Nassington Road, which you might remember leads directly on to the Heath. Countless hours I've spent walking my dogs on Parliament Hill, past the ponds, the running track, up to Kenwood etc.
And even though I return to London fairly regularly, and will in fact be there next week, picturing your walks in my head and imagining walking the route myself has made me terrifically homesick. So, thanks I suppose.
Oh, and to Billy, if he should happen to see this. I know the Odeon you're talking about that, and have vivid memories of seeing the Pokemon movie there (yes, I'm that young). But did you know, as part of the whole 'hidden London' thing, that a Temporary Autonomous Zone was set up in the abandoned cinema, albeit temporarily? I was a mite too young to attend regularly, but my brother would go down every week and join the squatters/amateur thespians in their creative endeavors. The TAZ, as it was known, was a very nice collective, and I did manage to spend a couple of nice afternoons in its hippy-embrace.
So, rest happy in the knowledge that the dingy-ness of the Odeon was multiplied tenfold, as was the creativity and enjoyment that occurred within, before M&S came along.
Sorry for the rambling, I should really be working on an essay/sleeping now, but as I said, was very moved by this whole article.
Another fabulous entry.
Reading his comments about joining your walks I was reminded of a remark you made in one of the blog entries, or perhaps in a response to a reader, or an interview somewhere. You were asked what was the nicest (it may have been most compassionate) thing someone had done for you lately, and you said "Something my grandson did for me." Reading of Emil's eagerness to join
your walks, I thought, "I bet that's it."
When you go walking through Knightsbridge you have the opportunity to combine all three interests. Stop into Harrods for some hot chocolate at their amazing food floor. Since they won't allow you to use the restroom unless you spend some spectacular amount of money, you've done yourself a favor. They allow you in if you've purchased a drink. Your server gives you a little pass with your beverage.
I read the Esquire story and agree with some of the commenters above who found it overly maudlin.
And man, that is a serious house. I've been in plenty of fancy houses and all, but this looks like your interior decorator was a consultant from Levenger. If it turns out that I can't retire to 221 B Baker Street after all, I am moving in. It will be like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and I will just live there among the stacks unnoticed.
Ebert: I am indeed a serious fan of Levenger, and as I type there is a Levenger lap desk on my lap.
Anticipation for me to read this. I'm moving to London in May from Seattle. Scared. Anxious. Where will I go? Eat? Movie Theater? Now, I have a good idea for my first walk. Maybe I'll see you there one day.
what a great life you are having.
Good lord! This brings back so many wonderful, luxurious, fantastic, romantic memories from way back when I was 21 (1971) and shared a flat in London with my new bride. London is my all-time favorite city, and these videos are just overwhelming! I haven't been back in decades, but it seems like "only yesterday" that we were strolling through Green Park and looking for treasure in the bookshops just off Charing Cross Road. Our flat was in South Kensington, and we ended up visiting Amsterdam, Paris, and Munich, but London was "home". What great, great memories!!! Thanks so much for the videos!
(I'm an American, by the way - but of British ancestry.)
Hello Roger. Looking forward to seeing you on Oprah today. In the meantime, I'd like to share a walk with you. It was the most epic walk my wife Diane and I ever took, and it happened on Christmas Day 2008.
Leaving our hotel near Lancaster Gate after breakfast, we headed up Sussex Gardens to Marylebone Road and Gloucester Place. It was cold, but at least it wasn't raining. And when the locals told us the night before at St. Martin-in-the-Fields that everything was closed Christmas Day, they were 98 percent accurate.
We strolled up Park and Wellington into St. John's Wood, where I felt compelled to be photographed crossing Abbey Road (original, I know), and heading back via Cavendish and Regent's Park (to see where Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson went rowing in Brief Encounter) to Baker Street, all the way down to Oxford Street. Starving by this time, we ducked into an Italian joint on Duke Street and donned the requisite paper crowns to join the others who had also found the only place open for lunch in a mile radius.
Plodding on to New Bond Street and its quiet, high end stores, we headed past Picadilly and St. James (past the mouth of your famed Jermyn Street) and through Marlborough Gate into St. James Park. We made it to Westminster Abbey just in time for the Christmas evensong, a memorable event. Afterward, my wife gamely followed me into yet another pub, The Albert, on Victoria Street, where we shared a table and conversation with a couple from Vienna, the warmth and conviviality heightened by the cold and dark outside. (Side note: when are Americans going to be able to replicate the atmosphere of an English pub? Just as well; it's a good excuse for return visits.)
At Hyde Park Corner,a security guard, knowing our destination and deeming us harmless, allowed us passage into the park, where the German Market was set up, but closed for the night. What followed was the most magical portion of the exhausting, day-long hike: slowly walking along the northern shore of the Serpentine with not a single other soul in sight, just holding hands with my wife on Christmas night strolling through Hyde Park by lamplight.
By the way, the photos of your workspace in that Esquire piece made me drool. Wall-to-wall books. That's the way to live.
I saw you on Oprah yesterday and had to write. I googled you and found your above blog entry: The London Perambulator. What prompted me to write was your insight about bringing joy to others and experiencing it for yourself. In addition to the joy you have brought me through your career as a writer and film critic, you are a part of one of the best (well, maybe not the top 10 but close) days of my life.
My friend, Kim, had found a copy of The Perfect London Walk in a flea market in the 1980s, several years after our first pilgrimage there and the month we travelled the country the following year. Although she had done the walk several times, I finally joined her and our husbands in the early 1990s. When we got to Keats House, we mentioned the book to the clerk and gave her our copy to look over. (Was it a coincidence that a few years later, on the same walk, we found stacks of your book in the Keats giftshop?) What a wonderful day it was--an overcast summer day--what beauty, what fun! We had a particularly hard time finding the trees on the Heath that were a landmark for the walk--we had so many laughs trying to figure it all out. It was bittersweet for us to find the bench dedicated to Daniel Curley by his family.
On our return, Kim wrote to you and you were kind enough to send her an autographed copy of the book--she promptly gave me her original flea market copy, which had a sentimental value to her as well. You also forwarded her letter to the Curley family and they wrote her a beautiful letter in return.
I knew you were sick, but didn't realize it was thyroid cancer. Kim was diagnosed with the same this past year. She is doing well and has a good prognosis--thank God.
Seeing you yesterday brought back those memories for me--particularly as I'm now separated from my husband, and its nice to remember the many wonderful times we have shared over these last 20 years. So I want to thank you--for that day, and for the memories of that day, and for the example of how to best live our lives--bringing and experiencing whatever joy we can to and with those we love.
God Bless You (and your wonderful wife!)
Dawn Ellwood
PS Almost got to meet you years ago at an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I had to laugh when you mentioned yesterday on Oprah how much you liked to talk, because you were talking so much (I didn't want to interupt you!) that I didn't get a chance to say hello!
You have made me so homesick for this city I've visited once. You are a wonder.
This year is Paris, but I'm going to go back to London again next year because of this post. I can't wait.
Well, the baby is sleeping now after a day of walks and playgrounding in the Heath. She was born two years ago in the Royal Free, the hospital you passed on your walk. And this Autumn she will go to the school next to it, the one where you saw the cut out animals.
If I tilt my head forward and look out of the study window I can see the kites of Parliament Hill.
Thank you, Roger, for renewing these pleasures for us.
Mr. Ebert,
You have me lamenting that I have never been a huge movie buff, because it has kept me from coming to know your thoughtful, sincere insight into the world and the human condition.
After stumbling upon the Esquire article, I came to know and respect your excellent written perambulations. In them I feel I've discovered a kindred spirit. This journal entry elevated my feeling of surprise kinship to astonishment after discovering your affection for the Grantchester path. I thought I recognized the photo of the path at first, and then read on to find that you were in fact referencing the same path I often follow on weekends.
At the moment, I'm a student at Cambridge and I'll be heading home to Winnipeg in June. But before I go, I'll be sure to follow the Grantchester path once just for you - in the same spirit as those who have taken up the job of eating - and have a cup of tea for you by the immortal river. Any requests? Scones? A particular type of tea?
I'll send you a note when I do. May it help you forget all the lies, truths, and pain you've had to endure of late.
Best wishes and sincere thanks for your continuing contributions.
J. Johnston
Cambridge, UK
Dear Roger;
I fully understand that you do have time to answer readers questions but I can't think of anyone more qualified to answer this one.
My daughter works for a company that arranges foreign study for college students. She has been called to London for a 2 week assignment. Although she has traveled a bit this is her first visit. In order to better understand her company's mission she will be boarding with a British family in lieu of a hotel. My question is: What would be an appropriate gift to bring?
I would be honored if any of your readers have suggestions to offer.
Ebert: Wow. Somebody will have suggestions. Depends so much on the family. Also--where are you from? Something local?
Wow!
This essay is extraordinary. After reading it, I understood why Florentine artist Verrocchio reacted as he did after examining an angel painted by his pupil Leonardo, on the Baptism of Christ.
I cannot decide. By the power of this work, have you inspired would-be essayists or severely diminished their numbers?
Thanks
a Webmaster
Hi Ebert,
Anticipation for me to read this. I'm moving to Bangladesh in May from Seattle. Scared. Anxious. Where will I go? Eat? Movie Theater? Now, I have a good idea for my first walk. Maybe I'll see you there one day.
Thanks
http://www.adnpost.com
Roger, I just wanted to let you know that I just visited London for the first time at the end of May. I absolutely loved it. I had stowed a print-out of this wonderful entry in my bags and made it a point to retrace some of your walks. I walked along Jermyn Street and saw Wiltons, saw the stirring Turner watercolors at the Tate (my hotel was right nearby in Victoria/Pimlico), walked around St. James Park, saw the Wren churches and St. Paul's Cathedral in The City, popped by the Gate movie theater, and strolled along the South Bank, stopping to look at Southwark Cathedral and the original Clink. As often as I thought to myself excitedly that I was treading the same lanes and courtyards Shakespeare or Dickens trod, I was also thinking I was walking in