{"id":110317,"date":"2025-05-13T16:58:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T22:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=110317"},"modified":"2025-05-15T14:28:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:28:02","slug":"in-londinium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/05\/in-londinium.html","title":{"rendered":"In Londinium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The Prince of Wales,\" as I recall<\/a>
In London\u2019s West End theatre district a few years back (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph). \u00a0No, this is not a Latter-day Saint visitors center. \u00a0But the same play is still being performed there, in the same Prince of Wales Theatre.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the \u201cSometimes, You Can Only Laugh\u201d Department: \u00a0As usual on such occasions, I didn\u2019t sleep on the non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from Salt Lake City to London. \u00a0Instead, I read Agatha Christie\u2019s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles<\/em>, in which she first introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot \u2014 I can\u2019t recall having read it before \u2014 and then, to my shame, watched five episodes from the first season of the current television series Watson<\/em>, followed by listening to a mixed selection of country and classical music during our final approach to London Heathrow.<\/p>\n

We reached our hotel \u2014 the DoubleTree By Hilton (London \u2013 West End), in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum (so not altogether a roach motel) \u2014 just before noon. \u00a0The plan was to catch a few hours of sleep and then to take in an evening play.<\/p>\n

It was a good plan. \u00a0A sound one. \u00a0Except for the jackhammering that commenced about ninety minutes after we\u2019d shut out the lights and that then continued without much let-up until roughly 3:30 PM. \u00a0(We had set our alarm clock for 4:00 PM, so that we would have time to stroll over to the theater (or theatre), grabbing a bite to eat along our way.) \u00a0And \u2014 oh yes, I mustn\u2019t forget this! \u2014 except for the piercingly high-pitched fire alarm accompanied by a flashing strobe light that erupted in our room about an hour before the jackhammer ceased its ministrations.<\/p>\n

I know. \u00a0I know<\/em>. \u00a0Some of you will be thinking to yourselves \u201cOh, the poor dears. \u00a0Suffering so, in London! \u00a0Cue the violin music!\u201d \u00a0(In a sense, it\u2019s analogous to what some would call \u201ca very first-world problem.\u201d) \u00a0And at least a few over at the Peterson Obsession Board who monitor this blog with slavish devotion and who gave their lives over to Cthulhu at impressively young ages will be ecstatic at the thought of my receiving at least a tiny portion of my just desserts. \u00a0And their faith in the view of me that they have so assiduously cultivated over the past fifteen or twenty years will be confirmed by the fact that, at certain points between about 12:30 PM and 3:30 PM, London time, this song<\/a> was going through my mind over and over again and I was contemplating homicide. \u00a0\u201cWhen a man is tired of London,\u201d Samuel Johnson is reported to have said, \u201che\u2019s tired of life.\u201d \u00a0I can now confirm his sentiment: I was tired in London and I was certainly tired of somebody\u2019s<\/em> life.<\/p>\n

\"London's<\/a>
A view of the Phoenix Theatre in London, not very far from the Tottenham Court Road tube station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We did, in fact, attend the play, after grabbing some really good thin-crust pizza at a little street cafe en route to it. \u00a0My wife, a theater major, had already booked the tickets. \u00a0The play was Stranger Things: The First Shadow<\/em>, at the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road. \u00a0It\u2019s a theater with almost a century of history behind it, having opened on 24 September 1930 with the premiere of Private Lives<\/i> by No\u00ebl Coward, who also appeared in the play, along with, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier. No\u00ebl Coward had a long and repeated association with the theater, and the foyer bar was named for him on his seventieth birthday in 1969. \u00a0More recently, Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Into the Woods ran at the Phoenix, as did Michael Frayn\u2019s wildly funny Noises Off<\/em>\u00a0and a revival of Tennessee Williams\u2019s A Streetcar Named Desire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To my own considerable surprise, I didn\u2019t fall asleep \u2014 heck, I didn\u2019t even feel sleepy \u2014 during the play, which lasted slightly more than three hours. \u00a0Of course, my wakefulness probably wasn\u2019t hurt by the fact that, with all of its special effects (e.g., lightning, gunshots, crashing thunder, screams, growls, shouting, and the like), Stranger Things<\/em> was even more noisy than our hotel room had been.<\/p>\n

\"BBC<\/a>
Its high quality notwithstanding, and despite its enormous global popularity, the Interpreter Radio is not entirely without competition. Here, for example, is the BBC\u2019s \u201cBroadcast House\u201d in London. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is a trio of new items that have recently appeared on the never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n