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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YXbMcjyiSo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YXbMcjyiSo..." width="640" /></a></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A man walking down the street – sometimes it’s a woman, but more usually it’s a man – and as he walks he talks, and points at things, and it seems that he’s talking just to you, explaining those things that aren’t obvious, that don’t immediately meet the eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes this “talking” may be in book form – a text, a narrative, a guide book, and often it’s on video, whether a serious documentary or travelogue or just some wobbly fetish footage shot on somebody’s cellphone and destined for YouTube and an amazingly low number of views.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">         </span>And of course this person almost certainly doesn’t know you, may be addressing an imaginary you, a big audience of “yous.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And there may be a whole army of intermediaries between you and him – publishers, editors, a film crew, programmers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some of these intermediaries aim for a much higher degree of invisibility than others.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lBmXxRNqPa..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lBmXxRNqPa..." width="435" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve been thinking about this while reading two versions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Survey of London</i>, two very different versions of what are in some ways the same book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>John Stow’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Survay </i>(sic)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> of London </i>was first published in 1598, and he revised and expanded it for a second edition published in 1603, two years before his death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I did not, alas, read the version below: </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yaSheH1vlg..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="560" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yaSheH1vlg..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">         </span> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Posthumous editions continued to appear after Stow had departed, often containing maps and illustrations. Some of the editing was wayward, but there was a “perfected” or at least unlikely to be improved upon edition by John Strype, often referred to as "Strype’s Stowe," published in 1720.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It was several times longer than the original, incorporating all kinds of new material, much of it necessitated by changes and growth in London, some of it dictated by Strype’s own personal preferences. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FLCIxLhvCG..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FLCIxLhvCG..." width="522" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">John Stow 1525-1605 was a tailor by trade but more passionately he was a historian, antiquary, collector of books and manuscripts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And he was also a great walker, an urban explorer, a psychogeographer some centuries <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">avant la letter</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was therefore an ancestor of a whole tribe of writers and historians and TV presenters who use walking as a mean of investigating the geographic, historic and cultural landscape.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_1tN35G5xa..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="500" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_1tN35G5xa..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes this seems a bit old hat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I think Alan Whicker was the first on-screen walker and talker I ever saw – and he began presenting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whicker’s World</i> in 1958.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  And </span>I’m sure there were earlier ones too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But it’s a tribe that shows no sign of dying out: think Anthony Bourdain, think Mary Beard, think Simon Sharma, think Jonathan Meades.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qqtjmCelWa..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qqtjmCelWa..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zujur-vyx0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zujur-vyx0..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2GSAanujSK..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2GSAanujSK..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Edmond Howes, Stow’s literary executor wrote that Stow never rode, but always traveled on foot when he visited historic buildings or sought out historical documents. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William Drummond reports Ben Jonson as saying, “He (Stow) and I walking alone, he asked two criples (sic), what they would have to take him to their order.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think Stow protested too much about his poverty: he left his wife and daughters enough money that they could erect this elaborate monument to him in the Church of St John Undershaft in EC2.  Think you or I will get one like that?</span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P7xU1VQJld..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P7xU1VQJld..." width="428" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stow’s prose style is chatty and he writes as though you’re “there,” walking along with him. He’s your guide, pointing things out, telling you stories and anecdotes, but he’s not uncritical about what he sees and knows. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like many an observer he regrets some of the changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“In the East ende of Forestreete is More lane: then next is Grubstreete, of late yeares inhabited for the most part by Bowyers, Fletchers, Bowstring makers, and such like, now little occupied, Archerie giving place to a number of bowling Allies, and Dicing houses, which in all places are increased, and too much frequented.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s right, you know the neighborhood’s on the skids when the archers move out and the bowling alley moves in.</span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_W9jmWkG_X..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_W9jmWkG_X..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">         </span>John Strype’s</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> edition of Stowe is titled</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster</span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">, and he adheres to Stow’s notion of exploring the city as though on a walking tour, and he adds</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">a </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">few “perambulations” or circuit walks of his own.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s very hard for me to see that word “perambulation” without thinking of Nikolaus Pevsner and his Buildings of England series. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He perambulated all over the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Was he consciously echoing Stow and Strype?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He must surely have been aware of the Survey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In any case, Pevsner’s work, just like Stow’s, is now reedited and revised by subsequent diverse hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o7sEDyiXsQ..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o7sEDyiXsQ..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m one of that generation who finds it impossible to walk round an English church or churchyard without noting and mentally cataloging the features in a Pevsner-esque way<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>- rhenish helm, blind clerestory, nodding ogee arch – etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure that this is a necessarily good thing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">         </span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AcIakenPDu..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AcIakenPDu..." width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Perhaps Jonathan Meades is similarly conflicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In his documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pevsner Revisited </i>he says that while other disaffected youths were off demonstrating and smashing the state, he was exploring English architecture clutching a volume of Pevsner.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s plenty of footage of Pevsner himself walking around looking at buildings, and he was seen on TV once in a while, but he never had the popularity or that “posh but with a common touch” thing that John Betjeman had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There was a certain rivalry between them, but Pevsner just wasn’t cuddly, he wasn’t televisual, and he wasn’t loved - possibly his German origins had something to do with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Betjeman was a London lad, born in Gospel Oak, though that surname is Dutch, originally with two n’s – changed precisely because it sounded German.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mu9Q9-vFBQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mu9Q9-vFBQ..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I remember that at some point in my not especially misspent youth, I used to walk the streets of my hometown of Sheffield, fantasizing that an imaginary camera crew was following me as I wandered among the treasures of the Sheffield urbanscape – not that I knew much about the Sheffield urbanscape.</span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">         </span>Now, just occasionally, in my role as walker, writer, pontificator, and god knows I've been called a "cultural critic," I do get called upon to wander around, talk and point at things, usually not in Sheffield.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S1qNxL5ihb..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S1qNxL5ihb..." width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes there’s even a camera crew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It’s never as much fun as I once thought it would be, but I do always try very hard not to look or sound like Alan Whicker.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CrKswMzyPS..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="466" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CrKswMzyPS..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span id="goog_1301842332"></span><span id="goog_1301842333"></span><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>