 |
| Gandhi contemplates the joys of spring [Larger image] |
I try to get out everyday - preferably in the form of a rural walk in the wonderful countryside near Tring - and I sometimes post rural views of Hertfordshire on this newsletter. Today was different. I went to London to attend a reunion of the LEO Computer Society. This involved walking in an area close to University College London, where I was a student 1956-1959. I decided to take my camera to see if I could find a picture which represented the essence of London at its best in spring - and the above picture is the result.
Having posted this picture last night I decided for fun to see if I could find it on Google. On a text search it came second! - after another recent blog with a picture taken a month earlier (http://www.chrishorner.net/2012/03/19/statue-of-gandhi-tavistock-square-spring-2012/) - perhaps taken by someone else who wanted to glory in spring.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly when I switched to Google Images his was still top by mine hadn't yet appeared. However my experience of Google Images is that the way the images are selected produces some very strange results. I might monitor it to see if mine turns up later as I am posting this less than 8 hours after my original blog post.
More on Google. I originally search on "Gandhi Spring Tavistock" which came up with dozens of pictures of the statue. Having posted the above comment I decided to try the images again with the search "Gandhi Spring Tavistock contemplates" using a word from the comment line on my picture.
DeleteThe first picture was a close up of the statue (which failed to show anything relating to spring or Tavistock Square) and the next picture I recognised as showing Gandhi was on page 4 - which showed a different picture of the same statue, next to the banner from my blog (which of course doesn't include Gandhi. I didn't find another picture showing the statue or one II recognised as being of Mahatma Gandhi anywhere on the first 15 pages.
What I did find on page three was a picture of John Gibb's Will, three old postcards of Hertfordshire, and a map of Hertfordshire from my blog. I also found other pictures from the current page of my blog (all dated when the picture had first appeared on my blog - which was different to my picture of Gandhi), which - such a picture of a pint of beer. However there was no sign of my picture despite the fact that the words "Gandha, contemplates, spring" are attached to the picture on a Google blog - so there should be no technical difficulty in Google associating these three words with the picture.
Well before Gandhi this was, of course, the view enjoyed by Virginia Woolf who for 15 years lived at 52 Tavistock Square (1924-1939). The site is now occupied by the Tavistock Hotel so you can book a second floor room there and get her perspective. She wrote Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse at Tavistock Square and those iconic photographs were taken there. No doubt she was visited by other members of the Bloomsbury Group including Morgan Forster, which supplies a connection to Herts (Rook's Nest near Stevenage fictionalized as Howard's End). Anthony
ReplyDeleteI am sure Gandhi knew the Square well before Virginia Woolf lived there. He did his law degree at University College London (only a few hundred yards away) between 1888 and 1893 and may well have had digs in Bloomsbury - but I couldn't spot him in the 1891 census.
DeleteAnthony drew my attention to the entry for 22 year old Mohundas K Ghandhi, barrister, who is listed, with a fellow Indian barrister, Trimbuck J Mojamder, at 17 St Stephen's Square, Paddington. They were visiting a 34 year old retired army officer Arnauld J H Murray so this was presumably not his regular London accommodation.
DeleteI did a search for the blue plaques they put on buildings and when Gandhi was a student he lived at 20 Barons Court Road, not far from West Kensington tube station.
DeleteJust found that Leonard Woolf met Gandhi in London in 1930. This is described in one of his autobiographical works, Downhill All the Way, which is not in my collection (my source being Duncan Wilson, Leonard Woolf A Political Biography). Leonard and Virginia were living at Tavistock Square in 1930 although I think it unlikely the meeting was held there. Anthony
ReplyDelete