Don't Tread On Me - America The Branded

Taken from The Daily Mail's website

I am on the District Line, traveling west, sitting across from a stocky young man who's just boarded at Whitechapel. This corn-fed meal with tanned skin, mirror sunglasses, loose fitting jeans and chunky sneakers wears a t-shirt with the words 'America, The Beautiful' in red, white, and blue on top of a vertical star spangled banner, behind which seems to float the diaphanous image of a woman's face that I can only assume is a feminine representation of 'America, The Beautiful.' I resist the urge to lean over to him and say, 'You know, people would have known without you announcing it on your t-shirt like that. And another thing: It's neither of the things you think it is - vaguely, subtly artistic or stylish.'

One is put in mind of the Irish poet Louis MacNiece: 'Why,/ Must a country, like a ship or a car, be always female,/ Mother or sweetheart?'

Why is it that as a nation we feel a desperate compulsion to label ourselves?

It's as though no one listened to Springsteen carefully enough to read irony into him.

Or as though we are still worried that someone might mistake us for being from somewhere else or belonging to some other cultural group.

No one will.

The minute we begin to speak, they know. Everybody knows. And it's no bad thing. What is a bad thing is trying desperately to label it and somehow make it chic or cool and pretend it's some artistic statement.

Here's what I like: on the same tube journey, an individual boards the train in jeans and plain, off-white t-shirt, sits down and starts tapping his feet to the rhythm of whatever tuneful track is playing away in on his MP3 player. It's then that I notice, his Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, faded, worn, ragged, but clearly patterned with Old Glory, stripes on each side, stars down the tongue. A cheeky treading with the flag, not on it, naturally, not flashing, not waving, but toe-tapping with a wonderfully tacit acknowledgement of nationality as a simple, softly spoken part of who you are.

On the tube back, a heaving, humid, flesh-wall-cramped train car. A short stocky man of some sort of East Asian heritage squeezes on (melting pot significance, not passively racist. Swear). He is wearing red Bermuda shorts, a plain blue top, red, white and blue star-shaped sunglasses, a soft, fuzzy looking Uncle Sam style top hat and a red and white striped draw-string bag slung over both shoulders with a little American flag poking chirpily out the back. This too strikes me as utterly and completely appropriate. It's too loud to be obnoxious. This man is America personified, wearing the country, proclaiming the preamble like a big flamboyant flamingo shouting to all and sundry, 'I am the U. S. A!' without saying a word.

Taken from the Scavenge Costumes website

I'm not given to wearing my national colo(u)rs very often, the 4th of July being an exception some years, but I think what bothered me about the first man's shirt, aside from the inherent and age-old sexism and the mixture of telltale labels, was the pretension that there was some conscious art in declaring your national heritage, as opposed to treating it as some part of you that is as natural as your shoe size, as innate as a sexual orientation. We are Americans and intensely proud of who we are, but I'd rather we all avoid standing in odious uncritical hand-on-heart reverence to the flag, not in front of the foreigners, most of whom have a bit of a sense of humo(u)r about their homelands.

So, bundle of contradictions that I am, that's what I think we all need: more pride, less reverence. 

Something on Being Starstruck for Olympic Opening Weekend

We are steeped in Olympic fever in London. Soon, the games will be nigh impossible to escape unless you are under a rock somewhere. The first thing I've noticed, being American myself, is the increase in the number of compatriots flooding this great metropolis. Even spotted Al Roker of The Today Show filming on the grounds of The Tower of London the other day when we were busy being tourists in our own city. I felt ambivalent about crowding in to get a few snaps and say hello to the man. He always seemed like such a big presence on the TV when I was growing up and yet, I never really spent a lot of time watching him, so was it  the American propensity towards being star-struck within spitting distance of celebrity that kept me circling like a distant satellite hoping to get a glimpse?

It certainly seemed to be this tendency for the crowds gathered outside the green in front of William The Conqueror's original White Tower, many of whom spoke with pronounced North Atlantic twangs. I've never had many brushes with personages of high public profile. I met Michael Stipe when I was 15; stalked him half a block down South Street in Philly just to interrupt him while he was ordering coffee to tell him that I was going to see him in Veteran's Stadium and that he really inspired me. Swoon.

Al Roker doesn't have the same sort of appeal, but then neither does approaching celebrities any more. English and Irish people tend to be a bit superior to the phenomena, but then I do too and I wonder if it's just because I can see the silliness in it. I suspect most Americans do, but that there's something about a TV crew that brings out delirium in people. I tend to think it's programmes like The Today Show that cement our great picket-fenced village and make us feel like we're all having coffee together with Al and the gang, which you can see the magic in. It's almost Rockwellian.

Here's the link to the interview they filmed with a Yeoman Warder that day. It did manage to make me slightly homesick, in a scoffing superior, I kind-of-wish I was in America sort of way.

We are going to try to get to see the Opening Ceremony on the big screen tonight in Victoria Park, which is a ticketed event, a fact which raises great ire in my soul. I get more and more apprehensive about big events that, with increasing frequency, fence off public spaces. I'd like to think it doesn't just stem from the fact that I don't have a ticket, but tickets, really? To go to Victoria Park and watch something on a big screen? I'm sure there will be plenty of Heineken and McDonald's tents, and as of this morning, with no more tickets being issued, it is possible to get in, but not guaranteed, another reason to check out the apparently much more open looking Haggerston Park events, or find something else spectacular to do with your weekend.

Should you be in East London -- and if you are over for the big you know whats then you will be -- There is a fantastic little place that you could check out at 51 Chatsworth Road, just up from Homerton High Street, called Creperie du Monde. I've reviewed here for the Hackney Hive. Well worth checking out.

However it is that you choose to spend your time, do make it magnificent.

The London Olympics: A Survival Guide For Visiting Americans

Photo taken by Paula Hughes

1) Avoid talking out loud. There's not enough space in the whole of England.

2) Sew a Canadian flag into your backpack.

Only kidding. We never pretend to be Canadian anymore.

And in point of fact, since 2008, our likeability capital has increased significantly enough so that we don't really have anything to fear in public anymore.  I've been overseas long enough to remember the dark days when Dubya's simian visage was the face of America to the world and we were seen internationally as a rampaging, war-mongering cowboy. Gone are the days when sympathizers and descendants of Churchill would secret us away under floorboards so that we could say the pledge of allegiance in dark corners. No longer do we find ourselves hiding in abandoned junkyards patriotically playing baseball and furtively eating Crackerjacks. Thankfully, since a cool, worldly dude became president, the foreign exchange rate in popularity and positive reactions is quite favourable.

Having said all that, we may be fans of Downton and Doctor Who, but we are not yet a nation of world travellers and try as McDonald's, Coke and Westfield Shopping Centre might to make the Olympic village into USA lite, there are probably still some Olympians, their families and other visitors who still might want to travel out into Londontown. It is in this intrepid exploratory spirit that I offer a few tips and pointers to help you get through the next couple weeks.


Beware of Sarcasm

You make friends with some Brits. You get along rather well with them. Splendidly. Famously, in fact. So much so that they invite you out for a night on 'the razz' and you're not quite sure what that means but it could  involve neon and fetishes or it could just be a few drinks and a few laughs. You meet your new mates and as you are about to step on the tube to head to the West End for your first stop on what promises to be a night of frolics and fun, you check with Gemma/Nigel to make sure your dress or shirt looks fab or sexy or 'all right' (in the case of Nigel) and your new Anglo-Saxon friend turns to you and says, 'yeah' and walks onto the waiting tube train. It could be a short, clipped yeah, or it could be a nano-syllable too long, but it's a noncommital yeah, a clearly ambiguous affirmation, the kind of 'yeah' delivered with a half-smile enough to convince you that you've got lipstick on your teeth or a major cliffhanger, but I couldn't be bothered to tell you. Just strike out all night and then wonder why at the end of it all; this noncommital 'yeah' is not delivered with exaggerated Chandler Bing emphasis. No one's said to you, I'm sooo  not liking that top or you should sooo  go back to the hotel and change right now. It's much more subtle and something so tiny that it leaves doubts in your head so niggling that they grow and grow until Oxford Circus when you are either ready to claw your friend's face or give the guy a good bite of a knuckle sandwich and set him straight.

Before you do, slow down. Cool your jets, tiger. Remember that you are in the United Kingdom. Sarcasm and Irony are the official languages of state. You don't get off the plane at Charles DeGaulle without so much as a 'Parlez-vouz Anglais?' and you shouldn't walk around merry old England of Madame George and roses without expecting the most deadpan sarcasm you've never heard. Chances are, your friend just wants to get on the tube quickly because he or she fears that if it begins moving it will not stop and will mercilessly rip part of his or her body as it passes into the next tunnel and chances are you look fabulous, but you will find yourself in a plethora of situations in which you have to be a bit more acutely aware of context than you might otherwise be on the other side of the pond.

Hearts, Minds and The Danger of Assumptions


Try to avoid remarking to locals about how much good the Olympics is doing for the area, for London and for Britain in general. It's a bit of a sore point. The Brits do love to complain, bless 'em, but this time you might forgive them for it. The official drink of the Olympics is produced by an American corporation; the official caterers to the Olympics are an American fast food chain and corporation; the official chocolate of the Olympics is British owned by American multinational, Kraft; the official beer of the Olympics is Dutch. It appears to the British public as though either the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), have gone out of their way to intentionally and perversely ignore British business interests. British businesses are finding their deliveries of stock are getting later and later, their customers are drained by Westfield and one local bookshop owner has stated that she has made more from the Anti-Olympics publishing boom than the games themselves. These events are not benefiting the British or local economy and British business owners will not thank you for it.

However, if you do want to win over the hearts and minds of the indigenous peoples of this island, there is something you can do. Hop the train to Hackney Wick, Homerton or Hackney Central (there isn't anything in Stratford unless you are from New Jersey and you like that gritty, industrial, Mad Max sort of thing, which I can say being from New Jersey and must clarify as 'humour'). Get off and walk down the street. Having trawled through the archives of my blog first, you will already know as you are walking that there is an array of fine eateries and coffee shops that will serve you a nicer soft drink than Coke (Victorian Lemonade or Elderflower Cordial?) a superior coffee and finer lunch than you will find in McDonald's (Apricot chilli jam and cream cheese on toast or crepe filled with goat's cheese and walnuts?) and a finer pint of British beer at a local pub than Heineken will serve any day (East London Brewery is particularly nice, found on tap at The Clapton Hart). You don't have to go to Hackney just because I live here and I like it, but be careful to avoid assumptions about the coziness of familiar brands.


Londoners Stand on The Right

When I first moved here, I was amazed by the fact that Londoners use escalators for the purpose for which they are built: to increase the speed of your ambulatory movement downwards or upwards, which is brilliant. I get the impression in recent years that people think the same does not apply to escalators in shopping centres, but it does. And I would have thought that with a nation of health-obsessed gym members like us, we'd take full advantage of a free public stairmaster, but I tried to start the trend in America of continuing to walk on an escalator without stopping or letting yourself laze like a human mannequin on display, but for whatever reason it never took. I kept getting the dirtiest stares when trying to pass others up mid-conversation. Like good drivers though, Londoners walk on the left and allow a slow lane for tourists, but use the slow lane and stand on the right and do not be surprised if you are trampled for not doing so.

Remember, London is Still Keeping Calm and Carrying On

School's out. It's true. There are no teachers attending work or students attending school. But bankers still carry briefcases dutifully into the City of London. Nurses still don their scrubs when they get into London Bridge or The Royal Free. And estate agents (someone has to do it) still do up their Eton Knots and don their pinstripes in the hopes that the economy will pick up. But Londoners like to get to work efficiently and they like for you not to obstruct the progress of their city as it forges on in daily toil.

So if you have not mastered the ticket machines at tube stations, step aside and ask an attendant. Don't try and be a hero. Do not try and figure it out at rush hour with the trader behind you seething because he is already 33 seconds late and on his second machiatto. If you do play at these heroics, do not be surprised when you turn round, triumphantly pleased with yourself at having figured out how to purchase a zone 1 single only to find a hulking green monster who's just ripped genuine Armani and is now ready, with the rest of the commuters, to rip into you.

I would say this applied during peak times, but in the next few weeks, peak times are twenty four hours a day. So, be mindful of others around you.

Get Off The Beaten Path For Once

There are some obvious things you are looking forward to doing on your London bucket list: seeing men in large funny hats swap shift, paying too much for a black cab, gawking at strangers from atop a double decker bus, that sort of thing. Think for a second though. This city wasn't planned out like most American cities, grid-like and structured, it evolved and sprawled and reached out and stayed where it was or kept moving or got bombed out of existence only to rise like the phoenix all new and mansion-block like.

London is a savage beauty. I love it for its raw, gruff, bracing multicultural sense of 'live and let live'. One thinks of the line from Yeats: 'A terrible beauty... Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.' That unapologetic, Londonness is also its charm. Bit like New York that way. Don't expect saccharine. Expect frowning and friendly.

There are so many hidden nooks and corners that if you allow a day or two just to get lost, the dividends are amazing. When they ask you if you saw poet's corner, you can say, 'No, but I walked around the Catholic Church in central London used by the KGB as a dead-letter box during the Cold War and wrote the opening chapter to my first spy thriller.' When they ask if you stood in front of Big Ben and took a picture of yourself smiling, which is something no one in London ever seems to do, you can say, 'Yeah, but I found walking around a recreated 17th Century Huguenot house, with a narrative that ascends with you through five floors, way more enthralling.' Again, it doesn't have to be The Brompton Oratory or The Denis Severs House, but find some corner of this city that few others have bothered with and find some memory to cherish and take back with you. You're traveling over a thousand miles, some of you for the first time, perhaps some for the last. Make sure you do something that will stay with you, not something you could have done if you stayed at home.

A couple good places to look for the unusual and out of the way in London are:

@UnusualLondon

Insider London

and

Secret London

Enjoy your stay.

The Clapton Hart: Heralding an era of Restoration

I'll admit, I was sceptical. I, along with many other local community members (that's what I'll call the rumour mill) had heard that the old Clapton Hart building, that crumbling boarded up edifice standing up until recently undecorously at the mouth of the Lea Bridge Roundabout, was going to be taken over by a pub franchise. And when you say pub franchise, I think 'Wetherspoons' and there is no quicker way to restore the rock-solid reputation of Murder Mile circa 2002 than to plop a chain pub like Wetherspoons right at the roundabout. I lived across the street from the Wetherspoons on Roman Road Market in Bow when I first moved to London. Looking out the window was better entertainment than any reality TV show any night. And on Saturday nights, it was like that old American fly-in-the-wall, or corner of the squad car as it were proto-reality TV show, Cops, complete with drunken brawling, police vans with vested officers spilling out, pinning down drunken disorderly offenders on their stomachs, knees pressed to their backs, pressing a promise to be good out of each of the inebriated, cider-filled customers to frequent the establishment. Sans guns of course. This was the East End of London. The local gendarme are nothing if not a little civilized.

I digress.

It is this term 'franchise' and my wife's lukewarm review of the place on its opening night what made me apprehensive before my own visit with a couple of friends last Tuesday. Luckily, the new Clapton Hart could not be further from that cookie cutter chain pub that we have become accustomed to seeing on British high streets. Antic Ltd, who also run the Stokey favourite The White Hart, have taken over the decrepit building that used to house the pub of the same name with a notoriously dodgy past. They seem to have set out to restore the interior of the pub as sensitively as possible, bringing it right back to as close to vintage as possible, having taken the retro looking block capital sign from the outside of the building and brought it in. 

The Hart has created a spacious and inviting atmosphere that manages to feel welcoming and contemporary while at the same time kindling a sense of old Hackney circa 1891. 

And that's to say nothing of it's choice of beers. I was suitably impressed that they carried Tottenham-based Redemption Fellowship Porter, a fruity and smooth, but not overly sweet brew that I last had at the Pig's Ear Beer and Cider Festival when it was in The Round Chapel. 

Somerset-based Blindman's Buff was a lighter, more seasonal beverage, 'a proper bitter' remarked my friend Dom upon tasting, but I was most impressed by the Jamboree ale, with hints of citrus and summer washing all the way down the palate. I was as impressed by its provenance as by its taste though. It seems very easy nowadays for a pub to put Meantime or St. Peter's on tap and call themselves local and organic. I very much like Meantime and St. Peter's, but the beer buyer at The Clapton Hart has clearly worked hard to find beers that we haven't seen in all the other organic gastropubs popping up in Stokey or Islington or Hackney-Wick-Upon-The-Marsh. Jamboree Ale comes from the East London Brewery in Leyton just down a shot on the dastardly, daren't-traverse-it-on-a-dark night, Lea Bridge Road and they're producing sensational beer. Fair play to them and to the Clapton Hart on a great sourcing job. I am a bit surprised and frankly a bit disappointed in The Hackney Citizen with finding fault for just this aspect of our new watering hole. 

Clapton is a very different place even from what it was in 2008, when last this place shut its doors for business. We're seeing more and more signs that we are closer and closer to that affluent and civilised merchants' village of the 18th Century here where we can trust our neighbours and our neighbourhoods for our children to grow up in. May The Clapton Hart be a further sign of that restoration.  

The Clapton Hart is just at the top of Lower Clapton Road and can be reached via the 48, 55, 38, 254 or 106 and is well worth making time for.

Gentrified Hackney Revelry: The Clapton Festival 15-17 June

My Jewish colleagues, a number of them from Hackney old East End Jewish families born and bred in Clapton only to later drift north to Boreham Wood, expressed no small amount of shock at my plans to enjoy The Clapton Festival this weekend. And it is funny how much Hackney has changed.

From a village adjacent to London where wealthy merchants came to buy big houses and retire (so, the Essex or New Jersey of the 16th Century then?) to a run down borough best known for its high incidence of knife crime; rough, cheap, 'bohemian', 'ethnic' area with 'a lot of character' to gentrified destination for the hip and famous. Now the cool seems to be spreading and with it the decent coffee shops and some of the fun too. Some people have complaints, but I have to say, the effects, on balance, seem good for Hackney, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to The Second Annual Clapton Festival. The other is, there really will be something on for everyone, so if you're passing East or not, but in London this weekend, make time. There may be scoffing and a bit of 'far from that I was rared' from those who know Hackney of old, but you won't regret it.

Not Your Typical Rainy Day Out in London Town: St. Paul's Cathedral

The wonderfully imposing structure of St. Paul's, standing since 1710 when it arose from Christopher Wren's imagination, still glowering austerely down over The City of London

After eight years of living in this ever impressive metropolis, I finally climbed up to the top of St. Paul's on Thursday. 

We arrived at the cathedral rather late and it's a bit of steep climb into your pocket just to afford admission at £15 a pop, which struck me as rather strange given that it's part of a Christian institution and given that there was such a public outcry when the Occupy Londonmovement 'prevented' worshipers and tourists from enjoying the grandeur of the great edifice. A cynical person might think the loudest outcriers were cityites attempting to rid themselves of any guilt pangs they felt about the act of trudging to and from the freemarketeering that brought one of the world's mightiest economies to its knees, endeavouring as it were, to sweep any reminders of unpleasant truths out of the bastion of beauty added to the world that sits amid the tax collectors. I digress. 

We arrived rather late and were debating about the worthiness of the price and the idea of walking across The Millennium Bridge to The Tate Modern when we decided, well how many St. Paul's Cathedrals are there in the world? As it happens, the price turned out to be worth it because here's your cheap living in London tip of the day: Gift Aid the money you pay for your ticket, and it turns into a reusable ticket for a year. Is there enough grandeur, enough humbling enormity in the heights of the dome, stunningly forward thinking imagination in the design and famous people buried in the crypt to make you want to go back for a second, third and fourth visit? Certainly, and I am glad I paid the price for it. 

But I am not great with heights. Fortunately, I decided to bite the bullet and not let my jittery sense of vertigo stop me form one of the most breathtaking sights in all of London. As with the CN tower in Toronto nine years ago, the nearest children to hand were braver than I was when we reached the top and there was a small glass in the floor from which you could see all the way down to the Cathedral floor. Of course, the nearest child this time around was my own, but at least I haven't passed this particular anxiety on to him. 

The vertigo-inducing view from the top.

And the view at the top was awe-inspiring. And humbling. Say what you like about old London town. There is a fierce and terrible beauty in those rows of slate grey emanating stories told and untold, generations upon generations of that wonderfully gruff mixture of peoples that make up this city. 

 I feel civically and globally obliged to mention that there was  protest the day we went. It was led by a group called Jews forJustice for Palestinians. I felt fully in support of the protest as they were protesting against an insidious Anglo-Danish company called G4S, a company that is contracted by the government to deport asylum seekers. 

The protest was also supported by The Boycott Israel network, about which I feel deeply ambivalent. I get the fact that the state of Israel has some deeply unsavoury policies, especially amongst hardcore Zionists, but I also know from having worked with Jews now for six years that, oddly, not all of them are Palestinian-hating hardcore Zionists and the Israelis who are most likely to be the exceptions, the liberals, the intellectuals, the open-minded Palestinian sympathizers are also the ones who are likely to be the actresses, actors, and academics who come over here to speaking engagements or to bring over productions of The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew and who are going to suffer because of boycotts. It just seems like a classic example of organisations making enemies out of exactly the kind of people to whom they should be reaching out. 

Diamond Jubilee Weekend: Republican Three Ways

We're just coming to the tail end of the long weekend commemorating HM the Q's diamond anniversary as head of state for The UK and it feels timely and appropriate to mention my friend texting me on Sunday to say, 'Watching the royal flotilla on TV. Really makes me feel proud to be British.' You cannot really do indignant in a text message and I suppose with some people's upbringings, you can't help the particularly unsavoury shape your patriotism takes, but it was difficult to imagine feeling some sense of pride welling up in your chest for a symbolic gesture of what has brought millions of pesky subalterns, colonials and orientals to heel as an empire on which the sun sets is acquired. One does not feel amused. 

Of course, in America, we tend to hold ourselves sceptically, righteously and disdainfully above unquestioning royalism and the notion of the monarchy in general, for a number of reasons, including among them that it seems a tad unjust to siphon off tax money into supporting an anachronistic institution leading a charmed existence within which individuals have had to do nothing of any merit in order to earn the privilege that is bestowed upon them every day of their lives. Poke or prod a bit into recent American political history, say around 1 May, 2003, the presidential election of 2000, The Watergate scandal etc... and you start to scrape away very quickly at the crumbling integrity of the moral high ground on which we Yanks like to stand. 

Neither here nor there. What I found funny was that my naval proud friend was the exception amongst our set this weekend. Probably because of the nature of my own political leanings or the general tendency of expatriates, perhaps because of the inevitable direction in which the zietgeisty wind is blowing, most of the friends I spoke to were keen to assert their antipathy for the royal family as an institution. Of course, the British say it much more concisely, but not more simply. If they are anti-royalist, which many are at pains to point out, they say, 'Oh well, I'm republican.' This claim still induces a double-take because the British can't be simple. They can't be like Cromwell's Puritans during the English Civil War and call themselves Parliamentarians. And I do get it. They support the abolition of a costly and useless sham of a national tradition in favour of a completely representative 

democracy. But why use one of the most confusingly connotative words in history? 

When I think of Republican, I think of people who are likely to subscribe to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the economic theory of Frederik Hayek and the rock-solid belief that if you are unemployed and living on food stamps then you are simply as lazy as sin; and you are likely to misquote Patrick Henry.

Then again, when Gerry Adams thinks of a Republican, he thinks of a freedom fighter who would like an ideal Irish-speaking paradise in which the Irish live in a Catholic Socialist society. But generally, there are quite a few who wouldn't assert themselves as Republican in many parts of Ireland any more, which is in stark contrast to many Irish Americans, who swear loyalty to the IRA, without a thought to what it might mean or who it might offend.

Don't even get me started on what the term Republican might mean to an ancient Roman or a Frenchman circa 1789.

So, I support my liberal British friends in their Republicanism, but wouldn't be easier and less confusing to declare anarchy in the UK? 

Blurring Boundaries in The Dennis Severs House: 'You Either See It Or You Don't'

'It may feel a bit strange at first,' warns our host, Mick Pedroli, 'because you have to be completely silent, but as you make your way around, you'll find yourself immersed in the magic of the house.' And indeed, it is hard not to feel strange at first, as you enter a candle-lit front room, full of opulent smells and curious sounds as though you are eavesdropping on a lively conversation taking place through the wall in the next room; or indeed as you descend the stone staircase to the basement and the invitingly warm hearth of the Jervis family's kitchen.

By the time you ascend back up the stairs in order to make your first foray upstairs, it is hard not to become immersed in the magic of The Dennis Severs House, and enveloped in the narrative of this family of silk weavers who rose to wealth and prominence  around the year of our lord, 1724. The family itself is fictional, as you will no doubt find out if you visit. You will also forget this fact as you wander through hallway and drawing room following in the footsteps of their mercurial fortunes.

My particular favourite was 'The Hogarth Room', in which hangs a print of the painter's above the mantelpiece depicting seventeenth century ribaldry of the most raucous sort, with men in expensive wigs and breeches debating, halfway towards fornicating, and falling over themselves with upturned chairs, pipes and glasses of brandy and port wreaking all sorts of havoc. The image itself is mirrored in the room, with furniture arranged meticulously, ash arranged in half-strewn perfection spilling jauntily out of the floor. But clearly, the room would not enchant if it did not fill your nostrils with the rich earthy mixture of fermented fruits and scented tobacco which appears to be wafting up from lazily left punchbowl and pipe hither and thither. The chamber is an olfactory sea of scents, with the faint echo of debauchery and rising tempers echoing in the walls.




Elusively, the experience defies categorization. Clearly, some of the rooms in which you sense the fictional family members' fates are quite morbid, such as the room on the third floor in which Mr. Jervis' son hanged himself, and the Dickensian rooms upstairs, sparse and empty, indicative of the decline of the Jervis family and their exodus to the country as they rented out the rooms of the house, but to call it spooky would be to trivialise, since this house builds no expectation of unseen ghosts, except for the unseen phantom of history, appearing to surround us for the passing moments we spend inside the four walls of this Huguenot residence.

In exploring this place, I follow in the footsteps of eccentric compatriot Dennis Severs, who bought the house in the 1970s, and promptly decided it needed a narrative. Thus the Jervis' came into being. He called his medium 'still-life drama' and as many note cards dotted around the house tell us, his mantra was 'You either see it or you don't.' It feels like, 'You either sense it or you don't' would be more accurate, but less catchy.

The Dennis Severs House has slightly odd hours, so it is worth calling ahead. Open Mondays from 6-9, so long as you book ahead and every Sunday afternoon from 12-4.