Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo featuring Derbyshire’s six-sailed Heage Windmill and sundry sheep in 2018.
A few weeks ago, to break our journey home after visiting family down South, we called in at the house known as Shaw’s Corner. It is one of those National Trust properties that is remarkably unremarkable, with few if any architectural or design features that merit a second glance. I suspect it is part of the National Trust’s portfolio only because someone remarkable once lived on the premises. George Bernard Shaw definitely falls into that category, being one of only two* people ever to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.
George Bernard Shaw’s Oscar, awarded in 1939 for his screenplay of Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) was born in Dublin, but moved to London at the age of 20 to pursue a career as a writer. During his lifetime he wrote more than sixty plays, and as a committed socialist also passionately supported a range of progressive – and sometimes contentious – political and social causes. As the leading dramatist of his generation he was highly influential in the development of Western theatre, and as such was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
Shaw’s Corner, George Bernard Shaw’s primary residence between 1906 and 1950, is remarkably unremarkable
Shaw’s most famous work – written in 1913 – was Pygmalion, a comic exploration of the class distinctions that are so deep-rooted within British society. In 1938 he adapted Pygmalion into a screenplay for a movie of the same name. This was further transformed into My Fair Lady in 1956, that movie being the creation of Lerner and Loewe as Shaw had refused to re-work it as a musical. It is for his original film adaptation that Shaw was awarded an Oscar.
As a witty and observant writer, George Bernard Shaw left behind a wealth of quotes that remain relevant today. Here are just a few that resonate with me:
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”
“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
Shaw’s Corner was the playwright’s primary residence between 1906 and his death in 1950. It was built in 1902 as the rectory for the village of Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire. However the Church of England quickly decided the building was too large for the size of the parish. Shaw and wife took up residence instead, initially as tenants before buying the house and its land in 1920.
Spot the Oscar!
Today, the National Trust has laid out and furnished the rooms much as they were in Shaw’s time. His Academy Award statuette stands on the fireplace mantel, where visitors can admire it from afar. Meanwhile, the citation certificate for his Nobel Prize is securely displayed in an upstairs cabinet.
Citation certificate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded in 1925
In my view, visiting a house simply because a famous person once lived there is not necessarily a good use of one’s time. Shaw’s Corner is an uninspiring property, and at no point could I sense the great man’s presence. But the time we spent there was not entirely wasted. Even though this blog is getting a lot of views these days it’s never going to win me any prizes. So, without doubt, Shaw’s Corner is the closest I’ll ever get to an Oscar or the Nobel Prize for Literature!
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* In case you are wondering, the other person to be awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature was Bob Dylan.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a lonesome shack somewhere in Idaho, USA, in 2018.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo at St Pancras station in London in October 2025. It features a 90m long “art wall tunnel”, created using LED lights sitting behind toughened glass, that links the station with Pancras Square and Coal Drops Yard. Spooky!
During a recent trip to London our ambition to escape the familiar tourist treadmill led us to visit Leighton House, the former home of a prominent 19th century artist and lord of the realm. Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), the artist son of a Yorkshire doctor, was successful, well-travelled and wealthy, and in the mid-1860s he started work on a new house in the Holland Park area of the city. The result was spectacular.
The Arab Hall
Leighton’s intention was to build a house that would function as his artist’s studio, while also serving as a work of art in its own right. In so doing he was able to channel his creativity, to indulge his passions and to show off some of the more exotic items in his personal collection.
The Arab Hall
The undoubted star of the show at Leighton House is the Arab Hall, a space that was inspired by the architecture and gardens the artist had seen on his travels in North Africa, the Middle East and Sicily. The Arab Hall displays Leighton’s collection of tiles, most of which were made in Damascus between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, as well as works by contemporary artists he commissioned to help bring his vision to life.
The Arab Hall. In the bottom photo the Arab Hall is viewed from the Narcissus Hall. The statue is of Narcissus, who plainly fancies himself!
The Arab Hall was part of an extension added to the house in the 1870s. It was completed in 1882, and is said to have cost more than the whole of the original building. Money well spent, I think! Leighton is reported to have said of the Arab Hall that he wanted to create “something beautiful to look at”. Well, he succeeded, that’s for sure. It is simply stunning, all the more so for being so totally unlike anything you would ever expect to see in London.
Top Left: In the garden “A Moment of Peril”, a sculpture by Sir Thomas Brock created in 1881. Bottom Left: Rear view of Leighton House, from the garden. Right: View of Leighton House from the street; you would never guess what lurks within, would you?
Leighton was an eminent figure in the English arts scene in the latter half of the 19th century. He painted both portraits and landscapes, dabbled in sculpture and was a big player in the Aesthetic Movement, which championed “art for art’s sake,” prioritising beauty, sensuality, and visual pleasure over practical considerations.
The Silk Room was used to display paintings by artists who Leighton admired.
Frederic Leighton was highly respected in the artistic community, as demonstrated by the fact that in 1878 he became President of the Royal Academy of Arts, the prestigious, London-based institution that was founded in 1768 to promote visual arts through education and exhibitions.
Two paintings by Frederic Leighton.
Such was the esteem in which Leighton was held that on January 24th 1896 he was made a Lord, becoming Baron Leighton. It was a record-breaking elevation to the nobility as he was the first painter ever to have received a peerage. He probably felt pleased with himself, but sadly that did not last long. Just one day later, on 25 January 1896, Baron Leighton died, enabling Frederic to break another – and altogether more unwelcome record: nobody in the history of English nobility has ever held a peerage for less time than poor old Fred!
The Dining Room was mainly used for the display of pottery.
Baron Leighton therefore had no time in which build a reputation in the House of Lords as a formidable debater and champion of the arts. From that perspective he was – through no fault of his own, of course – a complete nonentity. But who really cares about that? The building of Leighton House, and particularly the creation of its Arab Hall, has secured Frederic, Baron Leighton’s legacy for all time.
When we visited London a few months ago we made a conscious decision to avoid the tourist hotspots and instead have a look at some of the lesser known attractions. London definitely has a lot to offer, but St. Sophia’s Cathedral – more properly known as the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom – was certainly not what I expected.
Surprisingly the first Greek Orthodox church in London opened way back in 1681, to serve a growing community of Greek origin. This influx was driven in part by the persecution of Christians under the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Greece at the time. In addition, some wealthy Greeks relocated to London to escape the political instability of their homeland, while others who worked in the shipping industry moved there to set up businesses moving goods between England and the eastern Mediterranean. The small Greek community thrived, and today the area of Soho in which they first settled is still known as Greek Street.
Although London’s Greek community prospered and grew, their original church did not. By the mid-19th century, demand amongst its members for an appropriate place of worship intensified, and it was this that ultimately led to the construction of a building large and grand enough to meet the spiritual needs of a community that was now numbered in the thousands. Work began on the construction of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Divine Wisdom in 1877, and it was formally consecrated in 1882. In 1922 it was designated as a Cathedral serving the needs of all Orthodox Christians in the British Isles and Malta.
Arriving at the Cathedral, the view from the street is unremarkable, and at first I wondered if our visit was worth the effort we’d made to get there. Crossing the threshold, however, I quickly learned that the ornate Byzantine interior boasts an impressive array of intricate mosaics and other beguiling features. This riot of gold leaf, multi-coloured marble and elaborately carved wood seemed strangely exotic, very un-British, not at all what I expected to see in London – nor, indeed, anywhere in the UK – and was all the more pleasing for that very reason.
The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom in Bayswater, London, most definitely possesses the “wow factor”, and is a clear illustration of why visitors to London should occasionally break away from the well trodden tourist trail and seek out some of the capital’s less known architectural gems. Well worth a visit!
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a fishing hut at Prospect Bay in Nova Scotia, Canada in 2015
Our recent trip to London to watch a sumo tournament also gave us the opportunity to act like regular tourists for a while, ticking off a few things that have been on Mrs P’s list for many years. One of these was to take a boat trip along the River Thames, downriver from Westminster and through the Thames Barrier. Although I’m a Londoner by birth, I don’t usually enjoy the experience of re-visiting a city that I find crazily crowded and annoyingly noisy. Travelling through it by boat, however, offered the opportunity of a different perspective, more scenic and less frenetic, so although on our chosen day the weather was relentlessly gloomy I was keen to give it a try.
The Houses of Parliament, including Big Ben (aka Elizabeth Tower) as viewed from the Thames. In front of it are several boats that take tourists on trips along the Thames.
Boarding our Thames Clipper boat at Westminster, we were immediately able to admire the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament), including its unmistakeable clock tower. More properly known as the Elizabeth Tower, the clock tower is popularly referred to as Big Ben (in fact, Big Ben is the great bell housed within the tower, rather than the tower itself). These iconic symbols of British democracy date from the mid-19th century, when they replaced earlier buildings that were destroyed by fire in 1834.
The London Eye, and to its right County Hall, which once was the home of London’s local government. Today it houses various attractions, venues, and hotels.
Opposite the Houses of Parliament, on the south bank of the Thames, is the more frivolous but no less recognisable London Eye. Originally known as the Millennium Wheel, the London Eye was opened by Prime Minister Tony Blair on 31 December 1999. It was originally conceived as a temporary project that was due to remain standing for just five years, but it proved so popular that it was soon given permanent status. The Eye is the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and the UK’s most popular tourist attraction with over 3 million paying visitors per year.
Tower Bridge. To the left is the Shard, and to the right of the bridge is the Walkie-Talkie Building, aka 20 Fenchurch Street.
Heading downriver it was not long before our boat reached another of London’s “must-see” tourist destinations, Tower Bridge. Built in the neo-Gothic style and constructed between 1886 and 1894, the central sections of the road bridge lift to allow tall ships to pass though safely.
The Shard, and on the river in front of it the museum ship HMS Belfast. This cruiser was commissioned in August 1939. In June 1944 she took part in Operation Overlord, supporting the Normandy landings.
Other buildings visible from this section of the river showcase modern architecture, demonstrating that for all its historic attractions London is not stuck in the past. Located on the south bank of the Thames and standing just over 1,000 feet (309.6m) high, the pyramid-shaped Shard is a 72-storey mixed-use development built between 2009 and 2012. This iconic landmark is the tallest building in Western Europe, and the 7th tallest in Europe as a whole behind one in Poland and five more in Russia.
The Walkie-Talkie Building
On the opposite side of the river, the Walkie-Talkie building is equally recognisable, although it comes up short when compared with the Shard as it stands a mere 528 feet (160m) tall! More properly known as 20 Fenchurch Street, the Walkie Talkie’s highly distinctive top-heavy form appears to burst upward and outward. There are 34 storeys of office space, above which can be found a further 3 floors of bars and restaurants.
Metropolitan Wharf, Wapping
Londinium was founded by Roman invaders around AD 47-50. The site was selected because it would make an ideal port and commercial hub, being narrow and shallow enough to put a bridge across, and yet deep enough to welcome seagoing ships. The Thames remained key to the growth and development of the city long after the departure of the Romans, with the wharves and docks that lined its banks handling ever-growing volumes of imports and exports. Countless wharves still remain, although most have been converted to residential or office use.
The piers of the Thames Barrier straddle the Thames
As we neared the end of our boat trip downriver we passed through the Thames Barrier, which is one of the world’s largest movable flood defence barriers. Spanning 520 metres across the Thames, its purpose is to protect central London from flooding caused by tidal surges in the North Sea. It is made up of 10 massive steel gates; the four main gates are 61 metres wide and, when raised, stand as high as a five-storey building. In normal conditions, only the piers that support the gates and the hydraulic mechanism are visible. The gates lie flat on the riverbed, allowing river traffic to pass freely. When a high tide and potential storm surge are forecast the hydraulic machinery is used to rotate the gates upward, forming a solid steel wall against the water.
Difficult to believe that massive steel plates lie on the river bed between these piers, steel plates that may one day save London from a catastrophic flood
The Thames Barrier was just one of several London landmarks that we were pleased to see during our boat trip. A boat trip along the Thames most definitely offers a new outlook on the UK’s capital. Maybe I’ll do it again one day, but hopefully when the sun is shining!
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of the Taftsville covered bridge in Vermont, USA, in 2007. Built in 1836, it is one of the oldest covered bridges in Vermont.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo at Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia in June 2015.
Now I'm 64 