A Princess is born on my birthday!

Princess Charlotte was born on my birthday – what a fabulous birthday present that was – AND on the weekend I happen to be visiting London! So from one East Anglian girl born under the sign of Taurus (I was born in Essex) to another (a Princess of Cambridge), I bid you welcome!

Here is a pic of the crowds outside the hospital – I missed William & George’s arrival by a few minutes.

 

And here is the message on the Post Office Tower announcing ‘It’s a Girl’!!

So – what else happened? Well, I visited the British Library. I specifically went because I had heard about a special exhibition to celebrate the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta. It was a great exhibition showing two copies of the Magna Carta along with countless other documents, treaties, petitions, letters from that period, and the US Bill of Rights and other documents. I was intrigued, though, to note that only three of the clauses are still valid today because 37 others have been revoked because they related to tolls in medieval times or are not relevant any more.

But best of all was their permanent exhibition which I didn’t know existed until a few days before, with letters, manuscripts, etc, from Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Wilde, Trollope (to name but a few), plus Shakespeare’s First Folio, Beowulf, royal documents, religious texts from around the world including a papyrus from the 3^rd/4^th centuries.

As a writer and historian I was in 7^th Heaven!!!! I did note one item written by Trollope advising aspiring writers not to rely on writing novels as their sole source of income!!

The next day I wandered around London, having a pleasant cup of tea at Covent Garden before a walk along the South Bank of the Thames (here is St Pauls in the background on the far side) to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre where I saw a terrific production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’.

It was a magical venue to watch it in – you truly felt like you were transported to the Medieval days. If anyone is going I would advise booking the back row of the lower gallery like I did because then you have the wall to lean against (and also hire a cushion to sit on as the wooden benches are hard after several hours!)

All in all, a fabulous birthday weekend.