Truth and Woolf

This morning I was taken on a walking tour of Bloomsbury, our neighborhood, where I learned the history of the area and some interesting literary connections with the Bloomsbury part of London. Some of the most famous literary figures to live in Bloomsbury were the appropriately named Bloomsbury group, which was famously comprised of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster. At the time, these writers were considered “bohemian”, and the aristocrats who also lived in the neighborhood thought that they were lowering the social standards of the neighborhood. I visited a park where Virginia Woolf got the inspiration to write To the Lighthouse. The park now has a (creepy) statue of Virginia Woolf and a book bench dedicated to Mrs. Dalloway- more on book benches later.

The Bloomsbury area was also home to Eric Arthur Blair, who is known by most as George Orwell. I passed the building that was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was just as creepy and imposing as I would have imagined. The building is was once the Ministry of Information for the British Government and is now the administrative center of London University.

At the end of the day I drank an awesome craft lager on the banks of the River Thames. I felt compelled to visit the pub because it was called The Anchor, which is also the name of my favorite dive bar at home. Coincidence? I think now.

After that I dabbled with our photography focus of the day- water.