Podcasts about Trafalgar Square

In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, Jonathan Thomas discusses the new goal for the Friends of Anglotopia membership club and shares insights on how to explore London on a budget of $100 a day. He covers various aspects of budget travel, including accommodation, free attractions, transportation, and dining options, providing practical tips for travelers looking to experience London without breaking the bank. Links Join the Friends of Anglotopia Club to Remove Ads from Londontopia Budget London New York Times Article How To Do London on a Budget of $100 a Day 101 Free Things to do in London Free London Museums London's Cabmen's Shelters History South Shore Public Relations Takeaways The Friends of Anglotopia membership club aims to reach 300 members to remove ads from Londontopia.net. Budget travel to London can be achieved with careful planning and smart choices. Staying in budget hotels like Easy Hotel can save money on accommodation. Many of London's top museums and attractions are free to visit. Using public transportation like the Tube and buses is cost-effective for getting around London. Eating at fast food chains or local takeaways can help maintain a budget for meals. Look for set menu options at restaurants for affordable dining experiences. Discount tickets for West End shows can be found at the TKTS desk in Leicester Square. Exploring local grocery stores for breakfast and snacks can save money. Independent used bookstores offer affordable options for book lovers in London. Sound Bites "The next goal is 300 members. And if we reach the target of 300 members, we will remove the Google ads from Londontopia.net our sister website dedicated to all things London, which has been around almost as long as Anglotopia has." "You can do so for the cost of two cups of tea. It's six dollars a month and you get billed every month on the first or you can save 10% by subscribing for the year. It's $64 for the year." "$200 a day is a lot and I think that's not that's more of mid-range than budget. So I set out in my mind to to lay out a trip to see if you could do it on $100 a day." "Just because you want to do it on a budget or do it on the cheap doesn't mean you're going to have a bad time. Does it mean that you can't enjoy London, London at its best? London is such a great city that there's so much to see and do that's completely free." "My recommendation is to stay in one of the cheapest possible chain hotels that is on the market. And it's called the Easy Hotel." "You know, even as a 41 year old man who is used to staying in nicer hotels at this age, I'd still consider the easy hotel, especially if I was on a tight budget." "This is actually a really easy way to save money because a lot of London's big museums are actually completely free." "There is plenty to see and do without doing the special exhibitions. There's, you know, at least I want to say I haven't done an exact count recently, but there's at least 100 museums in London that are completely free." "It doesn't cost anything to sit in Trafalgar Square and people watch and watch the fountains and the let the world go by or to stand in Parliament Square and wait for Big Ben to chime, or to walk along the Thames South Bank and watch London go by." "As long as you have an Oyster card or you do contact lists, you're never going to pay more than the max daily tube fare, which is eight pounds 90, which is about ten dollars." "In addition to the tube, a much cheaper option is the London's bus network. That's what people use every day to commute because the max pay as you go fare for the buses is only £1.75, which is about $2." "Since there's no tipping in Britain, the price you pay for the set course dinner is the price you pay for the meal." "My travel hack is to go to the TKTS desk in Leicester Square and that's for same day ticket discounts. Most of the London theaters kind of participate in this." Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Anglotopia Podcast and Membership Goals 06:22 Budget Travel: Exploring London on $100 a Day 07:47 Finding Affordable Lodging in London 14:24 Free Attractions and Museums in London 22:16 Navigating London: Transportation on a Budget 29:03 Dining on a Budget: Eating Cheap in London 32:54 Conclusion and Call to Action 34:11 anglotopia-podcast-outro.mp4 Video Version

242. Would you have carried Jesus' cross? On Good Friday 20,000 people gathered to watch the Easter story in central London. In this episode, Cris talks about his experience of playing a part in the Trafalgar Square passion by Wintershall.org.uk. Here is a live recording from the day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1mjlTj0hso     Support the podcast with a coffee.... https://www.buymeacoffee.com/crisrogers  
 
   To get a copy of The Bible Book By Book head here... https://www.eden.co.uk/christian-books/bible-study/bible-study-reference-books/bible-background/the-bible-book-by-book/    Rev Dr Cris Rogers is a church leader at allhallowsbow.org.uk and Director of Making Disciples. Chair of the Spring Harvest Planning Group. For more information check out wearemakingdisciples.com #Heart #Hands #Heart

If you love theater, art, or music, your eyes will surely have been delighted by the work of Es Devlin.She has created public sculptures and installations at the V&A, Serpentine, and Imperial War Museum, and outside at Tate Modern, Trafalgar Square, and the Lincoln Centre, as well as kinetic stage designs at La Scala and the Royal Opera House in London and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for the Super Bowl halftime show, Olympic Ceremonies, and large-scale stadium concerts, including Beyoncé, Kanye West, Take That, Billie Eilish, and many more.A major retrospective of Devlin's work was shown at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York in 2023, along with an award-winning book called An Atlas of Es Devlin— which Thames & Hudson have described as their most sculptural and intricate book to date.For this year's Salone del Mobile, she paid homage to the spaces of the Accademia di Brera with “Library of Light,” an installation that dialogues with the space, the visitors, and the incredible books of the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.The links of this episode:- Es Devlin's official website https://esdevlin.com- Maria Gaetana Agnesi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Gaetana_Agnesi- "Library of Light" for Salone del Mobile.Milano (2025) https://www.salonemilano.it/en/session/es-devlin-library-light- Beyoncé, "The formation Word Tour" (2016) https://esdevlin.com/work/beyonce- Gucci Cosmos https://esdevlin.com/work/gucci-cosmos- U2 at The Spere Las Vegas (2024) https://esdevlin.com/work/the-sphere- Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square (2018) https://londondesignfestival.com/activities/please-feed-the-lions-by-es-devlin- "Five Echoes" in Miami (2021) https://www.dezeen.com/2021/12/16/es-devlin-five-echoes-labyrinth-chanel-miami/- The book "Becoming Animal. An Earthly Cosmology" by David Abram https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318/becoming-animal-by-david-abram/

Sitting proudly above Trafalgar Square is Lord Nelson, but why is he here and how did the statue come to be? Join us as we share this and more with you....

What makes a great leader? Dan Green looks at the differences between what people often expect and what Jesus showed through his service and self-sacrifice. Why was it controversial to put a life-size, captive Jesus (Mark Wallinger's “Ecce Homo”) onto a giant plinth in Trafalgar Square, and would we find this comforting, inspiring or disturbing to see? Could it help to remind ourselves of how people were so surprised to see Jesus lead the way he did, and even more surprised to see the power of his kingdom?Creative Commons image by Dave Pearce, flickr.com

What if a single moment could redefine your purpose? For Angel Jones, it was standing in Trafalgar Square, hearing Nelson Mandela's powerful words: “I want to put you in my pocket and take you home.” That spark ignited a revolution—The Homecoming Revolution—a movement dedicated to bringing talented Africans back to their roots. In this episode, Angel shares her incredible journey from a thriving advertising career in London to leading a bold mission of change and connection across Africa. She opens up about facing a midlife crisis that led to founding an executive search firm, helping top African talent return home to drive impact. You'll hear her insights on navigating identity, the power of empathy in leadership, and why she believes listening is the most vital skill for leaders today. Plus, Angel reflects on the challenges of misinformation, the role of technology, and how African values of Ubuntu offer hope in a divided world. Get ready for a powerful conversation on bold leadership, resilience, and the future of Africa.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review & share! https://anne-pratt.com

It's Red Nose Day! The 40th anniversary of Comic Relief, no less, so Rob and Guy took time from their busy schedule prepping series 4 of Britcom Goes to the Movies to release a Red Nose Day special in which they run down their top five Comic Relief comedy moments. There have been so many great sketches and live comedy moments over the course of the last 40 years since Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry set up the charity. Who can forget Dawn French snogging Hugh Grant, Billy Connolly dancing around Trafalgar Square in the buff, and of course, Hale and Pace putting a red nose on their conks and performing The Stonk? Unfortunately, none of those moments made our top five, but you can find out what did by listening to the show! You can find all the sketches mentioned below, but if you don't want to spoil the experience, look away now! —————————————————— Call the Midwife - One Born Every Minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSOGQmidkyc Kurupt FM with Ed Sheeran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIQFHcChNfw Only Fools & Horses with David Beckham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7YBuMhKhXE&t=25s Ricky Gervais Africa Appeal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRMdnJOKZe4&t=137s Alan Partridge and Tony Maloney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izLQGnAvvac&t=26s Tony Ferrino and Bjork perform Short term Affair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnAn0oxvVY Brent and Johnson - Equality Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmTV62mE1PA Alan Partridge Comic Relief Mid Morning Matters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmywrDBW3Us Men Behaving Badly and Kylie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZtkzeNb5H0 Comic Relief Balnkety Blank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUC4un_G5AA&t=32s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Picture it: London. December 2024. A trip 30-some-odd-years in the making. And one that will never be forgotten. Join CH this week as she reflects on her first-time visit to London, and the soul-stirring connection she felt within the city despite never having set foot in it prior. From iconic moments in Piccadilly Circus and Notting Hill (yep, THAT Notting Hill); to taking in the holiday splendor of Regent Street and Trafalgar Square; to the unexpected gift of connecting with jazz singer Emma Smith; to heartfelt visits with friends out in Worcester and up in Holmfirth. If you love London, or want to visit one day, or just appreciate sharing of a life story with a unique connection to a place and time, CH paints a vivid picture of her journey in this episode - one that truly captured her heart, and now has her affectionately referring to London as her soulmate city.   Show Notes Some of the locations, services and establishments CH mentions and of which were a key part of her trip: Regent Street || Piccadilly Circus || Trafalgar Square || Trafalgar Theatre || St. James's Square || Harrods || Camden Town || Dr. Martens Flagship Store  - Camden Market || Primose Hill || Hampstead Heath || Notting Hill / Portabello Road || Big Ben || Covent Garden || Abbey Road / Abbey Road Studios || Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter || King's Cross Railway Station || Paddington Railway Station || London Underground Lock & Co. Hatters was the favorite hat shop CH mentioned. It is the oldest hat shop in both the world and Britain, having been founded in 1676. (And yes, CH really does wear a hat every day.) The two cities outside of London CH traveled to during her stay were: Worcester (West Midlands) Holmfirth (Yorkshire) The jazz singer CH had an opportunity to see perform twice during her visit is Emma Smith. For those interested in learning more about her, you can visit her official Web site: EmmaSmithMusic.co.uk. The two venues in which Emma performed were: Brown's Hotel The Crazy Coqs Some of the British TV shows CH grew up watching were: 'Keeping Up Appearances'; 'As Time Goes By'; 'The Thin Blue Line'; 'Prime Suspect'; 'Absolutely Fabulous'. Previous episode mentions Episode 39: Spirit of Place Episode 58: Life at the Midpoint

Narrator: Thomas Jones

On Tuesday 7th January, Jan joined many others in Trafalgar Square to stand in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and honour the victims from ten years ago. The commemoration took on an added poignancy when a group of French students, visiting the square by chance, spontaneously joined the gathering. Together, they reaffirmed the enduring importance of protecting free expression from those who would seek to destroy it. You can watch a clip of Jan's speech here. As you may have seen in the Telegraph, FSU member Saba Poursaeedi is fighting back after being penalised by his employer for his involvement in Reform UK. Saba was working for the Hightown Housing Association and had applied for – and been offered – a promotion to a more senior role. However, Hightown withdrew the job offer, despite his exemplary work record, when it discovered he was a regional organiser for Reform UK and hoped to stand as a candidate. His employer claimed Reform UK's policies on immigration, net zero, and green belt development were incompatible with Hightown's ‘values'. You can find out more about Saba's case and donate here. Toby also interviewed Saba about his ordeal, and you can watch that video here. The Mail reported this week that the boss of a speech and language therapy group has been forced to issue a grovelling apology following a five-month investigation – because he followed Tommy Robinson on X. Steve Jamieson did not ‘like' or repost any views of the far-right agitator but still faced calls to resign from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT). The RCSLT appointed a sub-committee which instructed a barrister to investigate the ‘incident', which likely cost tens of thousands of pounds. In what can only be described as a ‘Mea Culpa' statement, he wrote: ‘I am deeply sorry for the hurt, upset, distress, fear and anger that this caused members, colleagues and staff.' We end today's episode with an update on forthcoming FSU events. ‘That's Debatable!'  is edited by Jason Clift.

Chaque décembre, un majestueux sapin de Noël trône à Trafalgar Square, au cœur de Londres. Ce n'est pas un simple arbre : il provient de Norvège, une tradition annuelle chargée d'histoire qui remonte à la Seconde Guerre mondiale.Un geste de gratitude historiqueEn 1940, la Norvège fut envahie par les troupes nazies. Face à cette occupation, le roi Haakon VII et le gouvernement norvégien s'exilèrent à Londres. Depuis la capitale britannique, ils dirigèrent la résistance norvégienne et maintinrent le lien avec leur peuple. L'Angleterre joua un rôle crucial en offrant un refuge et en soutenant la lutte norvégienne contre l'occupant.Pour exprimer leur gratitude, la ville d'Oslo envoya en 1947 un premier sapin à Londres. Ce geste symbolisait la reconnaissance norvégienne pour l'aide précieuse et le partenariat forgé durant ces années sombres. Depuis, chaque année, un sapin est offert comme un témoignage d'amitié durable entre les deux nations.Un symbole fort, mais non sans péripétiesLe sapin, un épicéa sélectionné avec soin, provient des forêts norvégiennes. Il est généralement âgé de 50 à 60 ans et mesure une vingtaine de mètres. Son voyage de Norvège jusqu'à Trafalgar Square est long et parfois semé d'embûches. Entre les défis logistiques, les conditions météorologiques et les moqueries occasionnelles, son arrivée est parfois perçue comme un feuilleton.En effet, certains Britanniques trouvent l'apparence du sapin décevante, soulignant ses branches clairsemées ou son allure modeste. Les commentaires ironiques sur les réseaux sociaux et dans les médias britanniques ajoutent une touche d'humour à cette tradition. Pourtant, ces critiques légères n'entachent pas la valeur symbolique de l'arbre.Un message d'unité et d'espoirChaque année, l'illumination du sapin est accompagnée d'une cérémonie, rassemblant Londoniens, Norvégiens et touristes. Au-delà de son rôle de décoration festive, l'arbre incarne un message d'unité, de gratitude et d'espoir, rappelant l'importance des alliances même dans les temps les plus sombres.Ainsi, le sapin de Trafalgar Square n'est pas qu'un simple cadeau : il est le reflet d'une amitié durable entre deux nations, née dans les épreuves, et célébrée chaque année dans l'esprit de Noël. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Eine Oase am Piccadilly Mayfair, weltberühmt für seine historische Eleganz, den tadellosen Service, die beeindruckenden Zimmer und Suiten und seinen legendären Nachmittagstee: Willkommen im The Ritz London. -- Unsere England-Fans Claus Beling und Alexander-Klaus Stecher lassen das Podcast-Jahr mit einem 6-Gänge-Menü im Restaurant des Ritz ausklingen. Gemeinsam mit Enzo Buonocore, dem Restaurantchef des Ritz, begeben sie sich auf eine kulinarische Reise und erfahren mehr über die faszinierende Geschichte dieses ikonischen Hauses, dessen Wurzeln bis ins 19. Jahrhundert zurückreichen: Als das Ritz 1906 zum ersten Mal seine Türen öffnet, gilt es als eines der besten Hotels der Welt. Der berühmte Hotelier César Ritz hatte es mit dem Ziel entworfen, der ultimative Ort für Gäste zu werden, die im luxuriösesten Hotel des Landes übernachten möchten. Gelegen im Herzen von London ist das Ritz der perfekte Ausgangspunkt, um die pulsierendste Stadt zu erkunden: Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, West End Theatres, Bond Street - alles nur einen Steinwurf entfernt. Außerdem gibt Enzo Buonocore einen Einblick in seinen persönlichen Karriereweg, der ihn bereits in jungen Jahren an die Spitze eines der berühmtesten Restaurants der Welt geführt hat. Er teilt bewegende Anekdoten aus dem Hotelalltag, spricht über die extrem hohen Erwartungen der internationalen Gäste und erzählt von unvergesslichen Momenten, wie dem Besuch Queen. The Ritz London - ein Treffpunkt für alle, die britische Eleganz in ihrer höchsten Form erleben möchten. BRITPOD – England at its best! -- WhatsApp: Du kannst Alexander und Claus direkt auf ihre Handys Nachrichten schicken! Welche Ecke Englands sollten die beiden mal besuchen? Zu welchen Themen wünschst Du Dir mehr Folgen? Warst Du schon mal in Great Britain und magst ein paar Fotos mit Claus und Alexander teilen? Probiere es gleich aus: +49 8152 989770 - einfach diese Nummer einspeichern und schon kannst Du BRITPOD per WhatsApp erreichen. -- Ein ALL EARS ON YOU Original Podcast.

In this Christmas Special, which Julia refers to her ‘Christmas Gift' she talks to Prue Leith, celebrated restaurateur, author, and television personality. Prue offers a candid and deeply reflective look into her leadership journey, shaped by honesty, optimism, and persistence. From transforming toxic kitchen cultures to championing better school food systems, she shares the lessons learned from a career defined by creativity and determination. Prue also explores the balance of being both flexible and dogged in leadership, highlighting her relentless five-year campaign to bring sculptures to Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. On her approach to leading, she reflects on the responsibility of channeling Energy “You must have Energy as a leader. You can't just sit still and expect things to happen. You need to galvanize others, inspire them with enthusiasm, and make them believe that the goal is not just possible, but exciting.” This episode dives into Prue's evolving leadership style, the power of persistence, and the nuanced art of fostering talent while respecting individuality. Listen to this episode to gain fresh insights into leadership, creativity, and optimism from a life lived with purpose. About the Guest: Dame Prudence Leith is a renowned South African-born restaurateur, cookery writer, and broadcaster. Best known as a judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2017, she has had a long and influential career in the food industry, from founding the Michelin-starred Leith's restaurant to establishing Leith's School of Food and Wine. An advocate for food education, she has written 12 cookbooks and seven novels, while also chairing initiatives like the School Food Trust. Leith has been involved in various educational and charitable endeavors and is Chancellor of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. In 2024, she launched Prue Leith's Cotswold Kitchen, further cementing her legacy as a culinary icon.

Wir sind am größten Platz Londons: Dem Trafalgar Square. Jedes Jahr zieht der Platz 15 Millionen Touristen an. Besonders jetzt in der Weihnachtszeit, denn hier steht der größte Weihnachtsbaum Londons. Es ist viel los, auf den Straßen und Geschäften herrscht buntes Treiben. Und direkt an diesem pulsierenden Platz befindet sich ein Ort der Spiritualität, Ruhe und klassischer Musik: St. Martin-in-the-Fields. -- Schon beim Betreten des imposanten Bauwerks spürt man die Geschichte, die in den Mauern steckt: Von den beeindruckenden Säulen bis zu den schneeweisen Wänden – die außergewöhnliche Architektur von St. Martin-in-the-Fields strahlt einen besonderen Charme aus. Unsere Abenteurer Alexander-Klaus Stecher und Claus Beling lassen sich dieses gigantische Bauwerk von einem echten Experten erklären: Der Architekt Eric Parry, der das Gebäude ab 2004 restauriert hat, führt die beiden persönlich durch die Kirche. Spannend: Die royale Familie gehört zur Kirchengemeinde von St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Und auch kulturell spielt das Haus in der ersten Liga: Dank Violinist und Dirigent Sir Neville Marriner und der legendären Academy of St. Martin in the Fields ist die Kirche weltweit für ihre klassischen Konzerte bekannt. Ein Highlight sind z.B. die populären Lunchtime-Concerts, bei denen Besucher am Mittag klassische Konzerte genießen können. Außerdem trifft Claus einen lieben Freund, den Komponisten Sir Richard Blackford. Er kennt und verfolgt die musikalische Geschichte der Kirche bereits seit Schulzeiten und gibt hier im BRITPOD einen sehr persönlichen Einblick in diesen einzigartigen Ort im Herzen Londons. -- WhatsApp: Du kannst Alexander und Claus direkt auf ihre Handys Nachrichten schicken! Welche Ecke Englands sollten die beiden mal besuchen? Zu welchen Themen wünschst Du Dir mehr Folgen? Warst Du schon mal in Great Britain und magst ein paar Fotos mit Claus und Alexander teilen? Probiere es gleich aus: +49 8152 989770 - einfach diese Nummer einspeichern und schon kannst Du BRITPOD per WhatsApp erreichen. -- Ein ALL EARS ON YOU Original Podcast.

Each Christmas, a giant tree lights up London's Trafalgar Square. Behind the custom: 007 author Ian Fleming and a secret mission to Norway. This is the story of how wartime espionage gave Britain its most spectacular festive tradition.Have you got a spy story you'd like us to tell? Email your ideas to thespywho@wondery.com.Check all episodes have the marketing written CTAs. For the UK, they look like the below:Listen to The Spy Who on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/the-spy-who/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's Creep Dive, we dive into the bizarre world of Peter Thiel—tech overlord, libertarian enigma, and all-around shady character. From his seasteading ocean cities to creepy transhumanist projects and shady government contracts, it's a tale that spirals into mysterious drone swarms and dystopian tech conspiracies.But wait, there's more! We also explore Greg Wallace's vegetable-obsessed legacy, his questionable behavior, and why he'll definitely never get a statue in Trafalgar Square. Buckle up for billionaires, drones, and the weirdest veg talk yet.If you're craving more strange stories and ad-free listening, head over to Patreon. Support us to access over 500 exclusive episodes and videos and keep the creeps coming! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode 127 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast, host Tracy Collins is joined by Melissa Jones, a first-time international traveller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who shares her exciting London trip report. Melissa recounts her solo adventures in London, from iconic landmarks like Trafalgar Square, Kensington Palace, and the Tower of London, to cultural gems such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Discover her tips for planning an itinerary, navigating public transport, and the importance of pre-booking attractions to avoid long queues.Melissa also shares her experiences of indulging in traditional British cuisine, including sticky toffee pudding, fish and chips, and a memorable afternoon tea at Claridge's. She offers insights into her shopping adventures, highlighting unique finds from Covent Garden's antique market and London's renowned department stores. Whether you're curious about solo travel in London or eager to hear about Melissa's favourite spots and tips, this episode is packed with inspiration for your own UK adventure.⭐️ Guest - Melissa Jones

Our guest on the final episode of “Notes on a Native Son” is British writer Ekow Eshun. He has been described as a cultural polymath. At a startlingly young age, 29, he became the first Black editor of Arena, a mainstream magazine in the UK. He continued to break new ground when he became the first Black director of a major cultural institution, London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace. These days, as chair of the Commissioning Group for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he leads one of the world's most famous and sometimes controversial public art projects, always worth a visit if you're in London.Eshun's choice of Baldwin's work for our conversation is informed by a book he's recently written called “The Strangers,” about five prominent Black figures and their sense of isolation and exile. Host Razia Iqbal meets with Eshun at Princeton University where he was lecturing about art, curation, and happily for us, James Baldwin.You can find the entire "Notes on a Native Son" series here. Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at notes@wnyc.org. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

On Thursday 21st November 2024, we attended the Skeleton Crew media event in Trafalgar Square, London and had the opportunity to interview Jude Law (Jod Na Nawood), Ravi Cabot-Conyers (Wim), Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Fern), Kyriana Kratter (KB), Robert Timothy Smith (Neel), and showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford! We also look back at the event and day's activities, and more...For all your Sessions needs, head to starwarssessions.co.uk // Find and support us on PATREON at patreon.com/starwarssessions // Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and share! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and all the socials so talk the Wars with us! We post polls, questions, and thoughts on both socials, and the results/comments are featured on the episodes as well // Send your voice messages to hellothere@starwarssessions.co.uk and we'll get them on the show // Catch the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, and all good podcast platforms // Thanks again for listening – we so appreciate your continued support.MTFBWY. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back like a herd of foraging Runyips as we delve into this week's news. We head to a very chilly Trafalgar Square to meet the young cast of Skeleton Crew, series star Jude Law and producers Jon Watts and Chris Ford, consider Jude Laws thoughts on fan expectations and look at Tony Gilroy's comments on Andor Season 2. Grab your coat because you just pulled the 210th episode of Making Tracks. Remember to tune in to Good Morning Tatooine, LIVE Sunday evenings at 9.00pm UK, 4.00pm Eastern and 1.00pm Pacific on Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram and Twitch and check out our Fantha Tracks Radio Friday Night Rotation every Friday at 7.00pm UK for new episodes of The Fantha From Down Under, Planet Leia, Desert Planet Discs, Start Your Engines, Collecting Tracks, Canon Fodder and special episodes of Making Tracks, and every Tuesday at 7.00pm UK time for your weekly episode of Making Tracks. Thanks to James Semple for the Fantha Tracks intro, Blues Harvest for our Making Tracks opening music and Mark Daniel and Vanessa Marshall for our voiceovers. You can contact any of our shows and send in your listeners questions by emailing radio@fanthatracks.com or comment on our social media feeds: https://www.youtube.com/@FanthaTracksTV/ https://links.fanthatracks.com/ https://link.chtbl.com/fanthatracksradio www.instagram.com/fanthatracks www.facebook.com/FanthaTracks www.twitter.com/FanthaTracks www.pinterest.co.uk/fanthatracks/ www.fanthatracks.tumblr.com/ www.tiktok.com/@fanthatracks www.twitch.tv/fanthatracks www.threads.net/@FanthaTracks

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-80-mary-wearEpisode #80 features copywriter extraordinaire Mary Wear.Mary wrote possibly the most important endline in the history of advertising: ‘Make Poverty History' for Comic Relief in 2004 … a line and movement that involved Richard Curtis, World Leaders and saving lives. The line was everywhere - posters, bus sides, advans, on underpants, on Bono's arm, on the side of St Paul's Cathedral and the coup de grâce, on a lectern in front of Nelson Mandela, who was chanting the words ‘Make Poverty History' to thousands gathered in Trafalgar Square.That is more than most people's entire careers and would easily have been enough to fill the episode. The way Mary tells the story of how the line came about is wonderfully humble, involving a planner and a rather talented chap called Peter Souter.But Mary is no one-trick pony. Her locker is full of great work.Starving a parking meter for TfL was a lesson in never giving up, even when the model maker had ruined the idea. What could have been a catastrophe turned into a seminal award-winning piece of work.Then there was seemingly endless more award winning work for The Economist, the Famous Grouse (a double, a small one, a quick one, a large one - they all went down well) plus an Anti-Smoking like never before. Her partnership with Damon Collins at GGT, Saatchi's and AMV was brilliant and prolific.We even had time for some Russian Vodka and flapjacks ;-)Thank you Mary for coming on and sharing some of the industry's greatest OOH work. It was a real privilege. 

Arthur Ferguson est souvent présenté comme l'un des plus grands arnaqueurs de l'histoire en raison d'une série de légendes selon lesquelles il aurait vendu des monuments emblématiques tels que la colonne Nelson de Trafalgar Square, le Big Ben, et même la Maison Blanche à des touristes naïfs. Cependant, la réalité de son existence et de ses exploits est entourée d'incertitudes et d'exagérations. Les exploits d'Arthur Ferguson D'après les récits, Ferguson, décrit comme un gentleman bien habillé et éloquent, aurait prétendu être un fonctionnaire britannique chargé de vendre des monuments publics dans les années 1920. Ses arnaques auraient consisté à convaincre des touristes, surtout américains, de lui verser des sommes importantes en échange de la "vente" de ces structures célèbres. Il aurait ainsi "vendu" :- La colonne Nelson à un Américain pour 6 000 £ ;- Big Ben pour une somme encore plus importante ;- La Maison Blanche pour environ 100 000 $. Après ces prétendus exploits au Royaume-Uni, Ferguson aurait émigré aux États-Unis pour poursuivre ses escroqueries. Là, il aurait tenté de vendre d'autres monuments tels que la Statue de la Liberté. Réalité ou mythe ? Cependant, la plupart des historiens et experts s'accordent à dire que ces histoires sont probablement plus proches de la légende que de la réalité. Aucune preuve documentaire fiable n'atteste de l'existence d'Arthur Ferguson ou de ses prétendus crimes. Les détails de ces escroqueries semblent largement basés sur des anecdotes populaires, souvent exagérées ou déformées au fil du temps. Il est également possible que ces histoires aient émergé à partir d'une confusion avec d'autres escrocs célèbres de l'époque, comme Victor Lustig, un autre arnaqueur notoire qui, en 1925, avait vraiment tenté de vendre la Tour Eiffel à des ferrailleurs, se faisant passer pour un fonctionnaire français. Lustig est un personnage bien documenté et reconnu pour ses exploits, contrairement à Ferguson. Un symbole de l'escroquerie Bien que la véracité des exploits d'Arthur Ferguson soit sujette à caution, il reste dans la culture populaire comme un symbole de l'arnaqueur sophistiqué. Les récits qui lui sont attribués illustrent le pouvoir de la persuasion et de la manipulation psychologique, caractéristiques essentielles des grands escrocs. En conclusion, il est peu probable qu'Arthur Ferguson ait réellement existé ou qu'il ait accompli ces arnaques monumentales, mais les histoires autour de lui continuent d'alimenter l'imaginaire collectif sur les grands escrocs de l'histoire. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

1924 galt als der verkehrsreichte Platz Europas nicht etwa der Place de l'Étoile in Paris oder der Trafalgar Square in London, sondern der Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. 26 Straßenbahnlinien, 5 Buslinien, ca. 20.000 Autos und immer noch zahlreiche Pferdefuhrwerke wollten den Platz überqueren. Kein Wunder, dass die zentrale den Straßenverkehr regelnde Innovation aus den USA zunächst hier erprobt wurde: die Ampelanlage. Im Dezember 1924 wurde der 8,5 Meter hohe und fünfseitige Turm, der eine reibungslose Lenkung der Verkehrsströme garantieren sollte, in Betrieb genommen. Grund genug für den Wandsbeker Boten in die Hauptstadt zu blicken und am 31. Oktober einen Zwischenstand vom Bau der Anlage zu liefern. Rosa Leu hat sich für uns an die Baustelle gewagt.

Welcome to episode 3 of our brand new MINI-SERIES: CAREER CATALYST.Networking is an essential, yet intimidating aspect of creating your future path - it's time to become a networking genius.Episode 3 in this special Career Catalyst Mini-Series focuses on the number one skill that isn't taught in schools, yet unlocks a whole host of career opportunities.From curiosity (which did not, in this case, kill the cat) and infinite loops to throwing a loaf of bread at pigeons in Trafalgar Square, this episode is full of bizarre-yet-apt analogies which will unlock the secrets to perfecting your networking skills.Links & references: https://www.thecompanydoctor.com/Gary Gamp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garygampGeorge Clode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgeclodeGary's new book, Career Catalyst - available online now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Career-Catalyst-Secret-Skills-School-ebook/dp/B0DFYVG6XY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

In the heart of the crumbling remains of London, three friends huddled around a flickering monitor, their faces illuminated by the eerie glow of the post-apocalyptic world that stretched out before them. Slade, Joey, and Alex had been eagerly anticipating Fallout: London for months, and now, as they finally played together, their excitement was palpable.Slade, always the strategist, was meticulously planning their next move. “Alright, we need to head to the British Museum. I've heard there's a cache of rare artifacts there, and we could use the supplies. Plus, we'll get a ton of XP if we clear out the raiders.”Joey, the group's enthusiastic role-player, was busy customizing his character's attire, adjusting his Union Jack-themed power armor. “I love how the game blends British history with the Fallout universe. It's like walking through a twisted version of a history book.”Alex, who was more of an explorer at heart, was already roaming the wasteland, scanning the derelict streets of London. “I'm checking out this old tube station. There might be some hidden loot or side quests. You never know what you'll find in these ruins.”As they navigated through the desolate landscape, the London Eye's skeletal structure loomed in the distance, a haunting reminder of a world that once was. Their characters weaved through abandoned vehicles and crumbling buildings, their footsteps echoing in the silence of the wasteland.Their journey was interrupted when they stumbled upon a small enclave of survivors. The survivors, desperate and wary, pleaded for help against a band of hostile raiders that had taken over the nearby Trafalgar Square. The trio exchanged glances, weighing their options.“Helping them could lead to valuable allies and more quests,” Slade suggested, eyes focused on the quest log.Joey nodded, leaning into the role-playing. “Plus, it's the right thing to do. Imagine the stories we'll have if we save Trafalgar Square.”Alex, always ready for a challenge, grinned. “Let's do it. I'm itching for some action.”With a plan in place, they approached the raider stronghold. Slade's tactical mind guided them through a series of well-coordinated moves, Joey's charisma negotiated with the survivors to keep them safe, and Alex's keen sense of exploration led them to a hidden entrance that bypassed most of the raider defenses.The battle that followed was intense. The air crackled with energy weapons and the clang of melee combat. Joey's character, wielding a makeshift battering ram, charged into the fray with fierce determination, while Alex expertly navigated the chaos, picking off enemies from the shadows. Slade's strategic commands kept them all in line, ensuring their victory.After the dust settled, the survivors expressed their gratitude, offering rare items and information about other hidden treasures in London. The trio collected their rewards and looked out over the reclaimed Trafalgar Square, a small beacon of hope in the desolate city.As they sat back, catching their breath, Slade smiled. “That was epic. We make a pretty good team.”Joey nodded, adjusting his character's gear. “And we've only scratched the surface of what this game has to offer.”Alex, eyes still bright from the adventure, added, “Can't wait to see what's next. London's full of surprises.”And with that, they delved back into the ruins of a city reborn through their imagination, ready for whatever the wasteland had in store for them next. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Ekow Eshun, leading curator, writer and broadcaster to discuss his new book The Strangers.In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask?In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future.Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger.Described as a ‘cultural polymath', Ekow Eshun has been at the heart of international creative culture for several decades, curating exhibitions, authoring books, presenting documentaries and chairing high-profile lectures. His work stretches the span of identity, style, masculinity, art and culture. Ekow rose to prominence as a trailblazer in British culture. He was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK (Arena Magazine in 1997) and continued to break ground as the first Black director of a major arts organisation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2005-2010).As Chairman of the commissioning group for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he leads one of the world's most famous public art projects.In July 2022, Ekow curated In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery in London a landmark exhibition of visionary Black artists exploring myth, science fiction and Afrofuturism. His most recent exhibition, The Time Is Always Now, is a landmark study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art. The show opened at the National Portrait Gallery, London and is travelling to multiple venues in the USA, including The Philadelphia Museum of Art.Eshun's writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Esquire and Wired. His latest book is a work of creative non fiction called The Strangers, published by Penguin in September 2024.Follow @EkowEshun or www.ekoweshun.co.uk/Buy The Strangers, his new book from Waterstone's. Learn more:https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/319734/the-strangers-by-eshun-ekow/9780241472026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy Scott and John Dennen discuss all the talking points from the weigh-in including Daniel Dubois hitting the scales at his heaviest and Joshua Buatsi being booed by the crowd at Trafalgar Square.

This week: the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, has invited the US artist Glenn Ligon to explore its history and collections, and his interventions are revealed this week. Ben Luke goes to Cambridge to talk to Ligon about the project. Few artists' lives prompt as much discussion as that of Paul Gauguin, and a new biography of the French artist by Sue Prideaux has just been published. We talk to Sue about the book. And this episode's Work of the Week is the piece that has just been unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Mil Veces un Instante or (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles is made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Ekow Eshun, the chair of the group that commissions the projects for the Fourth Plinth, speaks to our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the work.Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, until 2 March 2025. Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews by Glenn Ligon, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £32 or $38. Untitled (America/Me), High Line, New York, until November 2024. Listen to our in-depth interview, A brush with… Glenn Ligon from 18 August 2021.Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux, Faber, £30; published in the US next year, by WW Norton, $39.99.Teresa Margolles: Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, until 2026.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that's £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is a privilege to welcome Branden + James' Branden James and James Clark back and welcome Effie Passero to The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast.  Branden James began his career singing in residence at New York City's Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He appeared in concert at the Hollywood Bowl, the Lincoln Center, and London's Trafalgar Square and gave personal performances for Pope Benedict XVI and Nelson Mandela's family in South Africa.  He also kicked off games for the Chicago Bulls, Clubs, White Sox, and the Los Angeles Lakers with his cover of “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Branden became a household name in 2013 when he auditioned for America's Got Talent (AGT): Season Eight, where he made it to the Top 12.  His performances received high praise from judges Howie Mandel and Heidi Klum and former judges Howard Stern and Mel B. Post-AGT, Branden became a co-host for the wildly popular AfterBuzz TV, and in 2020, Branden released his memoir, Lyrics of My Life, through Simon and Schuster.  Australian cellist James Clark is an accomplished musician, concert pianist, and arranger. He performed with some of the biggest stars from around the world, including Idina Menzel, Lea Salonga, Van Dyke Parks, and the late Olivia Newton-John. The Adelaide, Australia native holds a master's degree in music performance from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at the California State University in Long Beach. Before his music performance career, James was tenured as a full time music teacher at Immanuel College. In this Lutheran coeducational high school, he was the Director of Strings from 2007 until the end of 2012.  In 2016, Branden + James released their first single, “You Belong,” and began performing worldwide. In 2020, the duo released their full-length studio album: Chasing Dreams, followed it up with their 2021 holiday album, A Christmas Gift. The duo released their 2023 album, Everything Was Beautiful, which featured their takes on classic songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Roxanne,” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”   Throughout the 2020s, frequent collaborator Effie Passero joined them at their live concerts. Effie became a household name when she auditioned for ABC's first season of American Idol. She received three “Yes” from judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and former judge Katy Perry and made it to the Top 24, where she performed a duet with Cam.  Since her time on American Idol, Effie has sung with Postmodern Jukebox.   On October 17, 2024, the trio will make their Carnegie Hall debut at the Weill Recital Hall. In this episode of The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast, Branden + James, and Effie Passero previewed the upcoming show and shared an exclusive announcement about their latest venture: CelloVoci.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jake-s-take-with-jacob-elyachar--4112003/support.

Alison Lapper was pregnant with her son Parys when she famously – and controversially – posed naked for a statue that was displayed on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth in 2005. Alison was born with phocomelia, meaning she has no arms and shortened legs, and uses her mouth to create her artwork. Her career was tragically interrupted in 2019 when her son, Parys, died aged 19. He had developed severe mental health issues and died of an accidental overdose. In this moving interview, Alison tells Emma Tracey why it's taken her five years to start to process her grief and the exhibition she has put together about her son, called Lost in Parys. She also talks about the making of Alison Lapper: In My Own Words - a new BBC documentary about her life which you can watch on BBC iPlayer. Presenter Emma Tracey Producer Daniel Gordon Mixed by Dave O'Neill Editors: Beth Rose and Ben Mundy If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in this episodes you can visit BBC Actionline for more support. The Access All team love to hear from you. You can email accessall@bbc.co.uk or find @bbcaccessall on X and Instagram.

"then I beheld a sight I shall never forget”

In episode 114 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast, Tracy Collins chats with Krista Beck about her family's unforgettable 12-night journey through the UK. Krista dives into their experiences in Bath, the Cotswolds, and London, sharing the joys of visiting the UK with her husband and children. Highlights include a stay in the picturesque Broadway Village, historical visits to Highclere Castle and the Tower of London, and engaging activities like air rifle lessons and miniature golf at Putt Shack. Krista also offers practical travel tips, such as using contactless credit cards for transportation and staying in hotels with breakfast included. Hear about their memorable meals and adventures through Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, and beyond. Tracy and Krista emphasize the importance of prioritising experiences, living in the moment, and the benefits of planning yet being flexible. Don't miss this episode filled with valuable insights, delightful anecdotes, and heartfelt recommendations for a perfect UK family trip! Tune in now to enrich your travel planning and get inspired for your next UK adventure.⭐️ Guest -Krista Beck

词汇提示1.concrete 混凝土2.stumps 树桩3.municipal 市政的4.siren 汽笛5.demolished 拆除6.layout 布局7.monstrous 巨大的8.carbuncle 痈肿9.Renaissance 文艺复兴10.curves 曲线11.vertical 垂直的原文Prince Charles: 'Ugly Buildings'(2)It would be a tragedy if the character and skyline of our capital city were to be further ruined and St Paul's dwarfed by yet another giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London.It is hard to imagine that London before the last war must have had one of the most beautiful skylines of any great city, if those who recall it are to be believed.Those who do, say that the affinity between buildings and the earth, in spite of the city's immense size, was so close and organic that the houses looked almost as though they had grown out of the earth and had not been imposed upon it - grown, moreover, in such a way that as few trees as possible were thrust out of the way.Those who knew it then and loved it, as so many British love Venice without concrete stumps and glass towers, and those who can imagine what it was like, must associate with the sentiments in one of Aldous Huxley's earliest and most successful novels.Antic Hay, where the main character, an unsuccessful architect, reveals a model of London as Christopher Wren wanted to rebuild it after the Great Fire and describes how Wren was so obsessed with the opportunity the fire gave the city to rebuild itself into a greater and more glorious vision.What have we done to it since the bombing during the war?What are we shortly going to do to one of its most famous areas - Trafalgar Square?Instead of designing an extension to the elegant facade of the National Gallery which complements it and continues the concept of columns and domes, it looks as if we may be presented with a kind of vast municipal fire station, complete with the sort of tower that contains the siren.I would understand better this type of High Tech approach if you demolished the whole of Trafalgar Square and started again with a single architect responsible for the entire layout, but what is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend.Apart from anything else, it defeats me why anyone wishing to display the early Renaissance pictures belonging to the gallery should do so in a new gallery so manifestly at odds with the whole spirit of that age of astonishing proportion.Why can't we have those curves and arches that express feeling in design?What is wrong with them?Why has everything got to be vertical, straight, unbending, only at right angles -and functional?翻译查尔斯王子:“丑陋的建筑”(二)如果我们首都的特色和天际线进一步被毁，圣保罗大教堂被另一个更适合芝加哥市中心而不是伦敦金融城的巨型玻璃桩所衬托，那将是一场悲剧。如果那些回忆起来的人是可信的，那么很难想象，在上一次大战之前，伦敦一定拥有所有大城市中最美丽的天际线之一。持这种观点的人说，尽管城市规模巨大，但建筑物与土地之间的联系是如此紧密和有机，以至于这些房屋看起来几乎像是从土地中生长出来的，而不是强加给它的——而且，生长的方式尽可能少地阻碍了树木。那些当时了解并热爱它的人，就像许多英国人热爱没有混凝土树桩和玻璃塔的威尼斯一样，那些能想象出它是什么样子的人，一定会联想到奥尔德斯·赫胥黎(Aldous Huxley)最早也是最成功的小说之一中的情感。在《安蒂克海》中，主人公是一位不成功的建筑师，他展示了一个伦敦的模型，因为克里斯托弗·雷恩想在大火后重建伦敦，并描述了雷恩是如何痴迷于大火给这座城市带来的重建机会，使其成为一个更伟大、更辉煌的城市。自从战争期间的轰炸以来，我们对它做了什么?我们马上要去它最著名的地区之一——特拉法加广场做些什么呢?而不是设计一个扩展到国家美术馆的优雅的外观，补充它，并继续柱和圆顶的概念，它看起来好像我们可能会看到一种巨大的市政消防站，完成了那种包含警笛的塔。如果你拆除整个特拉法加广场，让一个建筑师负责整个布局，我会更好地理解这种高科技的方法，但提议的东西就像一个可爱而优雅的朋友脸上的巨大红宝石。除此之外，让我感到困惑的是，为什么有人想要展示属于画廊的早期文艺复兴时期的画作，却要在一个与那个时代的整体精神如此明显地格格不入的新画廊里展出。为什么我们不能在设计中使用那些表达情感的曲线和拱门呢?他们怎么了?为什么所有的东西都必须是垂直的，直的，不弯曲的，只有在直角上——而且是功能性的?

Rev Dr Sam Wells has been described as one of the most influential public theologians in the world today. He's also the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, which is situated opposite Trafalgar Square in central London. The church is well known for hosting many musical and cultural events, but it is also bucking the trend of decline in the Church of England. For Sam, the Bible is "all about poverty", and that belief has influenced the church's pioneering work among the homeless in London. In this interview with Premier Christianity's Sam Hailes, Rev Dr Wells opens up about his early life, and his disappointment that while his Christian friends seemed to be enjoying a "personal relationship" with Jesus, this seemed missing from his own life. This, along with his interest in poverty and apologetics, sent him on a lifelong journey of going deeper with God. Sam is visiting professor of Christian Ethics at King's College and the author of over 40 books, including Humbler Faith, Bigger God (Canterbury Press), which explores the key tenets of Christian faith while also engaging with common objections. The Profile is brought to you by Premier Christianity magazine. For a half price subscription offer visit premierchristianity.com/podcast

Taken from videos posted to @TRobinsonNewEra on X between July 30 and July 31.https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818328857587413359https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818375381466202226https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818551806240157846https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818567155660562902https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818598873306132907Please support Tommy's work: Urban Scoop Support(00:00) Introduction and Overview(00:03) The Horrific Incident in Southport(01:03) Impact on Children and Families(01:21) Mental Health and Terrorism(02:18) Media and Government Lies(04:44) Government's Long-Term Plan(06:11) Counterterrorism and Immigration(07:05) Public Anger and Police Response(10:10) Morning Thoughts and Community Impact(13:18) Call for Calm and Peaceful Protests(16:15) Post-Demo Reflections(17:00) Legal Battles and Media Manipulation(20:23) Documentary and Public Support(22:07) Personal Sacrifices and Future Plans

Catherine joins the no.15 routemaster bus at Trafalgar Square, London.Catherine Carr stops strangers to ask them “Where Are You Going?” and uncovers unexpected stories about people's lives.---Named 'Podcast of the Year' by Radio Times and picked as 'Best Podcasts of the Year 2023' by the Financial Times, Observer, Pod Bible and The Week. ---The conversations that follow are always unpredictable: sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking, silly, romantic or occasionally downright ‘stop-you-in-your-tracks' surprising. Catherine's been travelling and recording since 2014. Be transported to places around the world and into the lives of others: You just never know what story is coming next…We're actively seeking brand partners and sponsors and would love to talk to you. Please email us at whereareyougoing@loftusmedia.co.uk---Presented by Catherine CarrProduced by the team at Loftus MediaMusic by Edwin PearsonFollow whereareyougoing on InstagramCheck out our site: whereareyougoing.co.ukSend us an email: whereareyougoing@loftusmedia.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the next in our series of profiles of fascinating folk with Parkinson's, Paul introduces the gang to Kevin Cahill. For decades, Kevin was the Chief Executive of Comic Relief, a role that entitled him dubious honours, like employing Paul to write University Challenge sketches, and convincing Billy Connolly to run round Trafalgar Square in nothing but his God-given fatigues. Kevin joins the Movers and Shakers in the Notting Hill pub to discuss his life, career, and journey with Parkinson's.Presented by Rory Cellan-Jones, Gillian Lacey-Solymar, Mark Mardell, Paul Mayhew-Archer, Sir Nicholas Mostyn and Jeremy Paxman.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.Additional production by Ewan Cameron.Music by Alex Stobbs.Artwork by Till Lukat.PR by Sally Jones.For more additional information about the show, as well as extra resources and exclusive content, please visit MOVERSANDSHAKERSPODCAST.COM Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a Text Message.We're diving into our shared love for minor league baseball and the quirky hats that represent our favorite teams. From the Hillsboro Hops to the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, we bond over amusing anecdotes and nostalgic moments, like the shift from "God Save the Queen" to "God Save the King." Major League Baseball's efforts to engage international fans come to life as we reminisce about past events at Trafalgar Square and the camaraderie of meeting fellow baseball enthusiasts from around the world. Val's stories about unique stadium foods, like two-foot-long hot dogs and fruit loops-topped creations, are sure to leave you hungry for more. We'll also discuss our travel escapades, the joy of valuing experiences over possessions, and the excitement of upcoming baseball events, including the AAA Championship in Las Vegas. Tune in for a blend of humor, passion, and unforgettable moments with fellow baseball fans.Support the Show.Make sure to follow the Dad Hat Chronicles: https://linktr.ee/TheDadHatChronicles

Welcome to the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast! In this episode, we'll explore a unique and empowering journey that combines art and menopause. Andrea Clare is a 59 year old Mum - 3 humans and 3 dogs - living just outside Glasgow in Scotland, UK. Andrea is a self-taught artist who has ‘doodled and sketched' all her life. After 20 years of IT training and development in the corporate world, her artistic career took off in 2014 when she took part in her first public art trail, painting a full-size Clydesdale horse. Since then she's painted a lion, giraffe and baby hippo, as well as a globe for The World Reimagined project, which was displayed in Trafalgar Square! Andrea is inspired by the patterns of nature, colour, clouds, and the dot work of Aborginal art. Andrea launched her Pet Portrait business - Sacha & Friends - in March 2022 and has undertaken many other art commissions. After a horrendous perimenopause experience, Andrea became an expert in all things menopause and, in 2024, she launched her MENO-PAUSE-ART programme, helping women understand and navigate their menopause journey through the healing power of art. Connect with Andrea  here: https://www.facebook.com/andreaclareart.uk https://www.facebook.com/andreaclareart/ https://www.instagram.com/andreaclareart.uk Grab the freebie here:https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/743181/123844936052246160/share =================================== If you enjoyed this episode, remember to hit the like button and subscribe. Then share this episode with your friends. Thanks for watching the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast. This podcast is part of the Digital Trailblazer family of podcasts. To learn more about Digital Trailblazer and what we do to help entrepreneurs, go to DigitalTrailblazer.com. Are you a coach, consultant, expert, or online course creator? Then we'd love to invite you to our FREE Facebook Group where you can learn the best strategies to land more high-ticket clients and customers.  Request to join here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitablecoursecreators QUICK LINKS:  APPLY TO BE FEATURED: https://app.digitaltrailblazer.com/podcast-guest-application GET MORE CLIENTS: https://app.digitaltrailblazer.com/client-acquisition-accelerator-pdf DIGITAL TRAILBLAZER: https://digitaltrailblazer.com/ JOIN OUR FREE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitablecoursecreators

Owen Blackhurst, Seb White, James Bird and Tommy Stewart are joined by a VERY special guest: England and Chelsea legend Joe Cole LIVE from Trafalgar Square for Expedia Live. They discuss football trips, Gdańsk, Marseille, Dortmund, Manchester, Valencia, pizza, Jude Bellingham, Birmingham City F.C, non-league legends, local newspapers, Wayne Rooney, the number 22, dream careers, Joe Cole, Ruud Gullit, Real Madrid CF, Zinedine Zidane, London, Camden, Upton Park, Stamford Bridge, the UEFA Champions League, Camp Nou, Romário, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Johan Cruyff, cream trousers and linen shirts, yachts in Monaco, Paolo Di Canio, Michael Carrick, coffee, West Ham United, L'Équipe, Venice, mountain biking, hiking, safari, giraffes, stargazing, Luka Modrić, Celtic F.C v FC Internazionale Milano in 1967, the Lisbon Lions, Manchester United v FC Bayern Munich in 1999, La Rambla, the Madrid derby in Milan 2016, and somehow so much more.Get the latest issue of MUNDIAL Mag hereFollow MUNDIAL on Twitter - @mundialmagFollow MUNDIAL on Instagram - @mundialmag Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.Fill in the Rubber Cheese 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 3rd July 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references:Lego House in BillundSutton Hoo (National Trust)Sutton Hoo at the British MuseumThe Dig on NetflixSutton Hoo mask on Lego IdeasThe Dig: Lego version of Sutton Hoo treasure 'amazing' (BBC News)Events at The Hold IpswitchAndrew Webb is a LEGO enthusiast who uses bricks in outreach programmes for teams and organisations as diverse at Arm, Pinset Mason, The National Trust, English Heritage, and the Scouts. During the UK's second Lockdown in early 2021, He made the 1500 year old Sutton Hoo Helmet out of LEGO bricks and submitted it to LEGO Ideas. The build achieved international media coverage, and has since been donated to the National Trust. Andrew continues to help attractions and institutions with LEGO programmes. By day, he works as a global head of content marketing for a B2B tech company. Find out more at http://teambuildingwithbricks.com Transcription:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with Mister attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. Today I'm talking to Andrew Webb. By day, Andrew is a content marketer for a tech firm, but in his spare time helps attractions to use Lego as a tool to attract and engage diverse audiences and enable them to interpret history and culture. We're going to talk about what it means to be an building, a model of anglo saxon helmet, and the 24 skills that are used when building with Lego. Paul Marden: So welcome to the podcast. Andrew Webb: Thank you. Paul Marden: On Skip the Queue, we always start with some icebreaker questions that you know nothing about. So let's launch into a couple of those. Book and a pool or museums and galleries for your city break. Andrew Webb: Museum and galleries.Paul Marden: Yeah. I'd expect nothing less given what we're about to talk about. This is one from one of my colleagues, actually, who is really good at icebreakers whenever we do a team building eventually. So he said, “Would you rather have it and lose it or never have it at all?”Andrew Webb: Oh, gosh, I'll have it and lose it for sure. Paul Marden: Yeah, gotta be. That one's from miles. Say thank you, Myles. That was a cracker. Andrew Webb: Do you remember the word there was a great one. Would you rather eat ten donuts or raw onion? Paul Marden: Oh, ten donuts, hand down. I could easily do that. Andrew Webb: I'd get onion. I'd get onion. Every time I would take an onion over ten donuts. I'd be sick after ten donuts. Paul Marden: Oh, no, I reckon I could take that. No problem. Andrew Webb: Okay. Paul Marden: Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about your adventures in Lego over the last few years. So why don't we kick off and talk a little bit about your original interest in Lego? Because I know it goes back not a long way, because that would be rude. But it goes back to a few years ago, doesn't it? Andrew Webb: It does. I mean, like most people growing up in what we might loosely term the west, I had like, I was a kid, you know, I think most of us grew up with it like that. And then like, you know, growing up in that first age of plastics with Heman, Transformers, Lego, Star wars, all of that sort of stuff. Paul Marden: You're just describing my childhood. Andrew Webb: It's funny because that was. It was all sort of ephemeral, right? I mean, the idea was that the reason why that boom happened, just to dwell on why they're going plastic things. Before that, toys were made out of either tin or wood. So, you know, they were very labour intensive produce there's certainly injection moulding comes along and we could just have anything coupled with the tv shows and the films and all this sort of stuff. So we all grew up in this sort of first age of disposable plastic, and then it all just gets passed down as kids grow up. It gets given away, gets put in the loft and forgotten about. There's a moment when a return of the Jedi bedspread doesn't look cool anymore, right? You hit about 13, 14 and you're like, “Mom, I really want some regular stuff there.”Andrew Webb: So like everybody, you know, I gave it all away, sold it and whatever, but I kept onto my lego and then fast forward, you know, I become a parent and Lego starts to come back into my life. So I'm sort of at a stage where I'm working for a travel startup and I get a press release to go to the Lego House, which if no one has heard about it, where have you been? But also it is a fantastic home of the brick, which Lego built in, opened in 2016. And it is a phenomenal temple to Lego. Not in terms of like a Legoland style approach with rides and things like that, but it's all about the brick and activities that you can do in a brick. Andrew Webb: There is great pools and huge pits of Lego to play with there, as well as displays and all this sort of stuff. They've actually got a Lego duplo waterfall.Paul Marden: Really? Andrew Webb:  Oh, I mean, it's a fantastic attraction. And the way they've done it is just incredible. So they blend a lot of digital things. So if you make a small fish and insert it into this thing, it appears in the tank and swims around and this sort of stuff and the way you can imprint your designs on things. I should just quickly tell you about the cafeteria there as well, just really quickly. So the cafeteria at the Lego House, everyone gets a little bag of Lego and then whatever you build and insert into this sort of iPad sort of slots type thing, and that's what you're. Andrew Webb: So a pink brick might be salmon, a yellow brick might be chicken, whatever, and you put it all in and it recognises it all and then it comes down a giant conveyor belt in a Lego. Giant Lego box and is handed to you by robots. I mean, mind blowing stuff. This is not like with a tray at the National Trust place or somewhere like that for us to come. It is a technological marvel. Absolutely fascinating. So, of course, on the day went, it was a press preview, so there was no canteen workers, so there was no food in the box when me and my daughter, so went without that data, was a bit disappointed. Andrew Webb: But that started that whole reappreciation of Lego, both as a toy to play with my daughter, but also as a way of using Lego in different ways. And that manifests itself in lots of different things. So currently, now, you know, fast forward a little bit. I use Lego for team building exercises, for workshops, for problem solving with organisations, and also just for having fun with adult groups as well as kids. And I think one of the biggest things we've seen since this kind of started around 2000s with the sort of adults reading Harry Potter, do you remember that was like, why are you reading this children's book type of thing? Paul Marden: Yeah. Andrew Webb: And then all the prequel Star wars films came out and Lego made sets about both those two things. And it kind of. I mean, Bionicle saved the company, as only AFOL will know, but it started that whole merchandising thing and adding Lego into that firmament of IP. Right. And we fast forward now, and it's Marvel and Star wars and everything. Paul Marden: You just said AFOL. I know what an AFOL is, but many of our listeners may not know what AFOL is.Andrew Webb: Just to go for acronyms here. So an AFOL is an Adult Fan of Lego. And we've seen actually Lego in the past five years, even earlier. I mean, Lego always had an adult element to it. And one of the original founders used to use it for designing his own house. And there was a whole architectural system called Molodux. So it's always had that element to it. But just recently we've seen, you know, almost retro sets. So we see the Lego Atari 2600 video game system from 1976, which, yeah. Paul Marden: An original NES wasn't there. Andrew Webb: Exactly. NES that's come out. I've got a Lego Optimus prime back here for transformers, you know, all that kind of stuff. So with what's been really interesting is this kidault or whatever, however, call it. And I think that's really fascinating, because if we think about Lego as a toy, we are rapidly approaching the age where we might have three generations of people that have grown up with Lego. Lego first came around in the very late ‘60s, early '70s. And so it's not inconceivable that you might have three generations that had Lego as a child, especially if you grew up in Denmark. A little bit different when it would come to the rest of Europe as they expanded out. So I get to this point, and I'm getting into Lego and doing all this sort of stuff. Andrew Webb: And then, of course, COVID happens and then lockdown happens and we all think the world's going to end and no one knows. Everyone's looking for hobbies, aren't they? They say you were either hunk, drunk or chunk after lockdown. You either got fit, got fat or got alcoholic. So try to avoid those three things. And, you know, everyone's looking for stuff to do, so you have so much banana bread you can bake. And so I stupidly, with my daughter's help, decided to make the Lego Sutton Hoo helmet, the 1500 year old Sutton Hoo helmet found at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, now in the British Museum. Out of Lego, as you do. Paul Marden: I mean, just exactly. Just as you do. So just a slight segue. I was at the National Attractions Marketing Conference yesterday and there were two people presenting who both talked about their experiences of wacky things that they did during lockdown. There was one person that opened a theatre in her back garden and had various different stars just randomly turn up in her backyard up in North Yorkshire. And you choose to build a Lego Sutton Hoo helmet.Andrew Webb: Lockdown, there will be a time, I think, as we look back, tragic though it was, and, you know, a lot of people died, but it was that moment when society sort of shuffled around a bit and people sort of thought, “Well, if I don't do it now, why not?” People were launching bakeries in their kitchens and serving their community and like. And that element of it. And so people have that. The good side of that, I suppose, is that people did find new outlets of creativity. And Joe Wick's yoga class is in their front row walking groups, you know, all this sort of stuff and beating beaten horsemans and learning to play the violin and dust and stuff. Suddenly we all had to find hobbies because we're all just in. Andrew Webb: No one was going to restaurants, no one's going to bars, no one's going to gigs, nightclubs, theatres. We like to make entertainment at home. It was like the middle ages. So I decided to build the Lego Sutton Hoo helmet, as you do. And so I start this in lockdown, and then, like, I get wind that Netflix is making a film called The Dig. And The Dig is all about, I think it's Lily James and Ray Fiennes in it, and it's all those other people. And it's all about when they found theSutton Hoo helmet. And the guy who found it was called Basil Brown, and he was asked by Edith Pretty, who owned the land, to excavate these humps in the ground that were on her estate. Paul Marden: Okay, so she owns this big estate, in Suffolk, right? And, so she can clearly see there's burial mounds in the back garden, but doesn't know what's in them. Doesn't have any clue that there's treasure locked up inside this. Andrew Webb: I'm not even sure she knew there were anglo saxon burial maps since it was. Paul Marden: They were just lumps of ground in the garden. Andrew Webb: Yeah. I mean, she may have had inkling and other stuff I've turned up over the years and whatever. And some of them were robbed sort of georgian times around then. So some people knew what they were and they were somewhere excavated and gold was taken to fund the polynomial wars and whatnot. But she asked Basil Branson, he was like an amateur archaeologist, right? And so he was just like this local guy would cycle over and do. And the film goes into all that, and the film kind of portrays it as working class. Basil Brown should know his place against the sort of British Museum who are sort of the baddies in this film who think they know what. And of course, this is all set against the backdrop of war. So they escalated it all, then they had to rebury it. Andrew Webb: And then it was used as a tank training ground, so lots of tanks rolled over it. So it's a miracle anything was ever found. But when he did find the Sutton Hoo, who told me and a bunch of other things, clasp brooches, shields, weapons and whatever, when he did find it, so people think it kind of popped out the ground as a helmet, but it didn't. And if you look at the photos, it came out the ground in hundreds of pieces. Paul Marden: Oh, really? So you look at this reconstructed mask that's now in the British Museum, and you think, “Oh, so they just found that in one piece,” lifted out as if it was a Lego hat, you know, for a minifig. In one piece? No, not at all. Andrew Webb: It was actually more like a big parlour Lego in the fact that it was just in hundreds of thousands of pieces. And so there was the first guy to have a go at it was an elderly architect at the British Museum who was, I think, blind in one eye. And he had a go at putting it all together. And he used an armature and clay and pins and whatever, put it all together and said, “Yes, I think it was this.” And then actually it wasn't. He got it all wrong. Lots of different pieces after some more research, and then it falls to this. Nigel Williams is another sub architect, and he was famous for. Andrew Webb: There was a famous Portland vase that was broken in a museum by someone pushing it over as a sort of what you might call, like a just stop oil type of protest now, I can't remember what the call was, but someone smashed an exhibit. And he had painstakingly pieced all this together. He was a total dapper dude. Three piece suit, Chelsea boots, proper swinging sixties, and he had to go and put it all together. His version is the one that's in the British Museum, but he was a massive jigsaw fan. And if you think about Lego, what it is a 3d jigsaw. You get a bunch of pieces and you have to make. Make it into a 3d sculpture. So that was one reason, the dig was the other reason. Andrew Webb: The third reason was that the relationship between East Anglia and essentially Denmark and Billand and Anglo Saxon and Jutland and all that area, I'm talking like Vikings and Anglo Saxons and invasions and all this kind of stuff against the native British, there is essentially a relationship between East Anglia, a trade relationship and a conquest relationship between them. So I built this thing and I frantically put it together and I'm late nights and just losing my marbles trying to get this thing to work. Because Lego is not designed to make, like, spherical shapes, necessarily. It's quite blocky. Right. Everyone knows this. It's the square. Paul Marden: Really easy to make a car, really easy to make a house. A spaceship. Andrew Webb: Houses. Brilliant. Yeah. Square stuff is fantastic. But baking, not only a sort of a semicircle, but a hemisphere, which is what essentially a helmet is. Is even harder because you have to get the Lego to bend in two directions. And so a lot of work went into that just to get the actual face piece came together quite easy. And there was once I had the scale of the pieces under the eyes that formed that sort of thing, and then I could build the nose and face. Ideally, it was going to be so that I could put it on my head. I've actually got a massive head. So in the end, I had to realign that and sort of make it into this sort of child sized head. Paul Marden: But it's a wearable thing, right? Andrew Webb: It is. It is wearable. I mean, at one point, it was probably more fragile than the one in the British Museum because it just kept dropping to pieces. So there's a lot of sub plates that are holding together the outer plate. So it's actually sort of. So just quick Lego terminology here. So bricks, obviously are bricks. The flat things with bubbles on are called plates and then the smoother ones are called tiles. Okay. And used a combination of these to create. There's also a technique called SNOT, which stands for Studs Not On Top. We love acronyms in the Lego community. Right? Paul Marden: Completely.Andrew Webb:  So if you say, “Oh, man, I'm an AFOL covered in SNOT,” people know what you want to know what you mean. So after a night in the tiles, I got covered. Yeah. Andrew Webb: Anyway, so I make the helmet, I make the thing, and then, you know, I get a lot of support from the National Trust, specifically East of England National Trust and Sutton, who site itself because it's there. It's their crown jewels. The British Museum, not so much, because they was like, we've got a billion exhibits here. No, it's just one of them. When you've got the Tippecar moon and the Rosetta stone, it kind of pales into significant. But actually, they were helpful. And one of the curators there, who was on Twitter, who sent me a link to some 3d photos, because if you. If you google it's all pictures at the front. That's fantastic. But what does the back look like? Paul Marden: Oh, right, okay. Andrew Webb: So actually, buried deep in the British Museum's website, in their research department, under a filing cabinet, in the back of a server somewhere, are some quite technical photographic images of it, turning every sort of 30 degrees so that. That it's documented as to what it looks. Because you got to remember that everything on the helmet is symbolic of various different things. There is symbols that mean there's a guy on a horse who's sort of fighting and all this sort of stuff. And it all has quite a lot of meaning. I can occur from different parts of history as well. So there's some sort of roman influencing things there and symbols. And so this whole thing is designed to be not only a battle helmet, but it is also because, remember, crowns haven't been invented yet. Crowns are a later mediaeval sort of invention. Andrew Webb: So this is both a symbol of authority, headwear, like a crown, but also a weapon or a piece of defensive armour and equipment. So it has several functions in its life. So it's quite a complex piece of equipment, that this symbol of authority. So I make all this and then I also submit it to a thing called Lego Ideas. So Lego Ideas is a fantastic programme where anybody in the world, members of the public, can submit Lego Ideas, right? And they go onto a website. There's certain criteria, they have to meet a certain checklist, but then the rest of the public can vote for them. So, I mean, if Taylor Swift just stuck together a load of blocks and said, “Vote for this,” she probably hit the 10,000 threshold instantly. Andrew Webb: But I'm not sure Lego would necessarily take that forward as a build. So there is a judging panel that. But actually, some of the most recent really fantastic sets have come out of Lego Ideas. Members of the public, and they're designing things that the Lego designers wouldn't have thought of themselves. So I think that's been kind of interesting. Sadly, Paul, we didn't make the 10,000 threshold. We did a lot of media coverage. By then, lockdown was over and were sort of getting back to our lives and all this sort of stuff. And my daughter was entering her dark ages. And so it sat in my studio for another sort of year and a half and I thought, “What am I going to do with this?” And so in the end, I thought, “Well, you know what? It's gathering dust here. I'm fed up with it, dustin it.”Andrew Webb: And so I actually approached Josh Ward at the National Trust at Sutton Hoo, who has been a fantastic advocate for Lego and for this particular project, and I have to thank him immensely for that. And they got some money and some funding to build a cabinet and also to house it. So I donated it to National Trust and it is now on display there as part of their firmament of interpretational trail. Paul Marden: That must feel pretty good fow you. Andrew Webb: Yeah, it is quite good looking in there and watching kids go, “Wow.” Because Lego is one of those things instantly recognisable for kids. But certain hill as a site is quite complex for children to contextualise because essentially it's several mounds in the ground. And the helmet itself is at the British Museum. Right. They've got a replica built by the royal armouries. There were several of those. They've got those. They have loads of dress up, they have great explainers and videos and they do a lot of work to show the size and shape and things as a cast iron sculpture, to represent the boat, to show just how big it was when it was pulled up from the sea, because he's buried in a boat. So do a lot of that work, sort of that sort of work as well. Andrew Webb: But having this extra funding in the. They opened up Edith's pretty's house now, and having this room where we've got some other things as well, like crayons and paper and other tools and drawings and colouring in and Lego and big chest of Lego just helps, particularly smaller children who, by the time they've walked from the car park around the site, and it has probably flagged it a little bit. And so just providing that little support for them, it's been a fantastic way to contextualise and another way to interpret that. And I think more and more venues could look into that. When you think, well, how else can we add stuff, particularly for children to help tell the story of this place? Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We went to. It was half term last week and went to the City Museum in Winchester. So they've got some mediaeval, they've got some Roman finds there, and there was lots of fun, but they had. It was full of lots of ways for kids to engage, so there was trails to go around, there was colouring in, make your own mediaeval shield. And all of these things are ways that, you know, my ten year old could engage with it because there's only so many glass cabinets of stuff dug up from the ground that she actually wants to look at. Andrew Webb: I mean, I love. I love pit rivers, right, in Oxford, my favourite museum. Paul Marden: It's crazy, isn't it? I love it. Andrew Webb: But basically, he just went around the world nicking stuff. Right, but as a collection of objects, It's fantastic. Paul Marden: It's deeply unnerving. Andrew Webb: Sorry, sorry if any pit rivers curators are listening there, nick, and stuff about it, but, it is my favourite museum because it's just for kids. It's probably really kind of like, how do you tell that story? I also think there was an article in the garden recently that, you know, the cost of living crisis as well. Parents are looking for value solutions now and so I think it wasn't Peppa Pig World, it was Paddington World. And a family ticket is 170 pounds. That is a huge dent in the family finances for a 70 minutes experience. If you are watching the pennies, if you can afford that and save up for it, whatever. And I know these things are, you know, memory making and all that sort of stuff, and I've been to Harry Potter with my daughter. Andrew Webb: That is not cheap, but it's a fantastic day out because once you're in, you spend the whole day there. If you take a packed lunch, you can save a lot of money on that, on the thing. But I suppose what I'm saying is that, you know, our museums and galleries, particularly traditionally, the what you might call free spaces, public spaces, are facing unprecedented demand in terms of parents looking for cost effective value days out, as well as funding being cut from central government and that sort of. So they have to do a huge amount with less and less for a bigger audience. And that is a strain on any institution and things like that. Other examples of places that get this. Andrew Webb: So obviously with the Sutton Hoo helmet, the hold in Ipswich, which is Suffolk Council's kind of flagship museum in the county town of Ipswich, but instead of calling it, you know, the Museum of Suffolk, they've called it The Hold, which is a reference to the fact it's on, I think it's either because it's on the shore or it's doing sheep, I'm not sure anyway. But a fantastic space, contemporary modern space  had a Lego exhibition a few years ago, borrowed my helmet, had some Lego exhibition stuff to do. And the good thing about that is when these teams have to do quite a lot of comms marketing and, you know, that has a cost as well, but often you see different demographics than perhaps would normally go to a stones and bones museum, if you know what I mean. Right. Andrew Webb: You'll see that it makes it more accessible to the community and to different people who don't like going and looking at the Magna Carta or whatever. For some kids, a day at the British Library is fantastic. Look at all these old books for more, maybe more boisterous children. That's probably not a really great idea. So I think galleries can take a leaf out of this and think, or museums or any institution really can take a leap out of this and think, “How can we do more for less? And what tools can we have that perhaps we haven't considered before, like Lego, as a way to open up our interpretation and our offering?” So this could work in Museum of Docklands, for example. This could work in the royal armouries. Andrew Webb: There's lots of places where if you looking to improve your children's offering that some form of lego, I mean, it ends up all over the floor, it ends up being taken away. Sometimes you've got to watch out for things like that. But that's why I always recommend, like, just the basic blocks and plates, not minifigures and stuff like that, because, you know, they just end up in kids' pockets and trousers. But I do think it is a fantastic tool for developing that interpretation piece. Paul Marden: So I run a coding club using Lego. Okay. So I work with years four, five and six, typically. And we normally start off by the end of two terms, we will be building robotics, programming things, doing amazing things. But we start at the very beginning with just open up a box, and it is amazing what a bunch of seven, eight and nine year olds can do with a two by four red brick just given bricks. Yeah. And they will build amazing things. Yeah. And they will tell you amazing stories. And you also see real diversity in the behaviours of children, because some children, in that free play context, they do not have the skills to do that. And I had one girl recently who hasn't played with Lego, and free play just blew her mind, and she was in tears because she couldn't embrace the creativity of it.Paul Marden: But then the following week, when we were following instructions, she was great at building from a set of instructions, You can do that from a limited palette and give them a mission. Sutton Hoo, build a, I don't know, a sword, build a shield, build something to interpret what you have seen. You're in the transport museum. Build, build. How did you get to the museum this morning? Give them something to do and then let them go. And half an hour later, you will be amazed by what they will have built. Andrew Webb: I actually did something this at the National Archives down in Kew, where they had a kids exhibition. Well, an exhibition in the summer about wacky inventions, because obviously the National Archives holds the patents for all these things, and they've got things like Victorian top hats with umbrellas in, and, you know, all this kind of crazy Heath Robinson style stuff that, you know, forks with four sets of tines, so you can eat four times as much. It just bonkers. Really interesting things. The curators had gone through and found this wacky world, sort of. What's his name? The guy that illustrates Roald Dahl. They got illustrations and all that. Paul Marden: Quentin Blake. Andrew Webb: Yeah, Quentin Blake, yeah. So they had this Quentin Blake sort of stuff, and, like, there was activities. And I came down for some special stuff because they had the first Lego brick patent in the UK. When it was first launched in the UK, 1963, I think it was. That's when they filed the patent. Paul Marden: And I bet. So that patent would be exactly the same as a two by four brick, now, won't it? Andrew Webb: The patent was for a one by four brick. Isometrically dawn. Just three diets. Just three views with what? It was a construction toy. And then the page. Sorry. And the address was just Railway Station Billund.  There wasn't like, just all the mail just went to the railway station in Billund just addressed for attention of Lego. And it's only like. I mean, it's not even a sheet of A4, It's a piece like this. And after it is something like a lamp that won't blow out on a thing, and before it's like some special kind of horse comb, but it's kind of this bonkers catalogue of just these things. But again, it was about, “Right. We did some work. The curators and interpreters looked, you know, had kids analyse the painting to think, what could it be? And look at the dates and structure. Look at that.” Andrew Webb: And then I came out and, like, did some Lego. So we did things like, who can build the longest bridge? Who can build the tallest tower out of a single colour? Those sorts of exercises. But then also the free play was build your own wacky invention. And kids are building automatically dog washers, where the dog ran on a thing and it scrubbed its back. And one kid built something that was like a thing for removing getting pips out of apples. It was just like this sort of like this crazy little tool. They like some sort of problem that he had. Andrew Webb: And I think what this also speaks to is developing those stem skills in children and adults and building that engineering, because I've also ran Lego workshops with explorers who I used to, I thought were between Cubs and scouts, but are actually after scouts. So I did this in my local town, here in Saffron Walden, and was like, “Oh, my God, these kids are like, 15, 16. They're not going to want to play Lego. Some of them are in my daughter's year at school, so. Hello, Amy.” And it was really interesting because we did a series of challenges with them. So the egg drop challenge, can you protect an egg and drop it from the floor? And can you build this and work together? Another good one is looker, runner, builder. Andrew Webb: So you give everybody two sets of the same bricks, and one person is the looker, one person is the runner, one person is the builder. So the looker can't touch, but he can tell the runner. The runner can't look at the model, he can only tell the builder, and the builder can't speak back. And so this is a really useful exercise. And I've done this with teams where, because this is exactly what businesses see, engineering will build a product. Sales or their marketing are like, what the hell is, you know, or whatever it might be. Paul Marden: It's that. It's that classic cartoon of a Swing, yeah. Andrew Webb: Yeah. So it's that, you know, this is what the brief said. Engineering interpreter does this. Marketing saw it. So it's a great tool for things like that. Especially when you put people like the C Suite or CEO's or leaders at the end, because all they're getting is the information and it. It's there and it's how to build communications. Because in life, the fluctuations reverse. A CEO says, “Let's do this.” And by the time it's cascaded down to engineering, who don't get a say, it's not at all what he imagined so, or they imagined so, it's. It's an interesting case of using tools like that. So I did that with these kids and it was fascinating because they're 14, 15, 16.Andrew Webb: A group of three girls won two out of the three challenges and probably could have won a third one if I felt that I couldn't award it to them again because it would just look weird. And they were smashing the looker runner builder thing. They were working together as a team, they were concentrating, they were solving problems, they were being creative, they took some time to prototype, they refined and iterated their design. They were doing all this sort of work. And it's brilliant because 15 year old girls don't often take engineering related STEM subjects at GCSE. Certainly, probably don't take them at a level and more than enough. And I think that I once interviewed Eben Upton, who invented Raspberry Pi, and he said, “We think about the eighties as this sort of like golden age of computing, but actually it was terrible. It was terrible for diversity, it was terrible for inclusion.“Andrew Webb: And he said, “Like growing up, there was one other kid in his town that had a computer, you know, so there was no sort of way to sort of getting other people involved and make this accessible.” And part of the reason now computers have got smaller. Some of the work I did at Pytop was like trying to make technology more accessible and seeing it not just video games and things like that, but actually I can use this in a fashion show, or I can make music, or I can use this to power some lights to do a theatre production, and trying to bring the, I guess, the creative arts into technology. And that's when we start to see the interest application of technology. Andrew Webb: And Lego plays a part in that, in the fact that it is a tool, a rapid prototyping tool that everybody is familiar with. And it is also, you know, clean, safe. There's no, you don't need blow torches and saws and those sorts of things to kind of prototype anything. You don't even need a pair of scissors, you know, it's completely tool free, unless you're using that little mini separator to get your bricks apart. And so I think that just circle back on, like, how the Science Museum or what's the one down there? Isabel Kingdom Brunel Museum and things like that. I can see those guys could be and should be thinking about, “How could we have a Lego programme?“Andrew Webb: You don't have to have a permanent deployment like they've got at Sutton Hoo although that is great because they've got the mast there as the head piece of it. But certainly a programme of events or summer camps or summer events, because I did this with English Heritage at Kenilworth Castle as well. They were having, like, a big Lego build and the public were invited in 15-minute shifts into a big marquee and everyone got given a tile. And the idea was to build the gardens because the gardens at Kenilworth Castle were laid out to impress Elizabeth the first. And so everybody got there was like bunches of stuff and regular bricks, also flowers and this sort of stuff. And it was like, “Come on, we've got to build something to impress a queen.” Andrew Webb: He said to kids, like, “Yeah, you've got to impress. Bling it up, like, dial it to ten.” And were just getting these enormous, like, avatar sized trees with just incredible bits hanging off it. And like, “There she has a teapot because she might want a cup of tea.” And you're like, “Brilliant, excellent. Of course she does.”  And so I think that. And then they moved through. Some of the Legos were selected to be displayed and things like that. So there's different ways you can do it. You can either do it as like. And I'm a big fan of the drop in sessions because kids and parents can just naturally build it into their day rather than the pre built. My child was. We were rubbish at, like, organising things. Andrew Webb: People like, “Oh, great. Half term, it's a chocolate thing, sold out ". And you're like, yeah, because there's 30 spaces for three and a half thousand kids who want to do it. Whereas if it's like a walkthrough or a. In groups phase through and then the activity, small kids kind of conk out after about 20 minutes, half an hour anyway. You get much more people through and much more people get to enjoy the experience rather than the 30 organised people who got up early and booked. So that's my other top tip to any institution, because it's heavily weather dependent as well. Sun comes out, everyone piles pass into the nearest sort of stately home, national attraction. All of those places can definitely benefit English Heritage. Did a really big push this half term, just gone on Lego at several events. Andrew Webb: We had one here at Audley End, there was one at Kenilworth that I was at. There's been pairs of the ones all around the country, because again, you just need a marquee, which most venues have access to because they use them for other things or some sort of space in case it rains. And you just see someone like me and a whole massive tub of Lego and you're off to the races. Paul Marden: Exactly. So we were talking about this at the conference yesterday about ways in which. So for many attractions, people turning up is a literal flip of a coin. Is the weather good or is the weather bad? What can you do to adapt your attraction to be able to deal with when it's bad? And then what can you do to bring people when you have made that adaptation? So, you know, you've now got a marquee and you have a Lego exhibit that you can put into there. So it's just dumping a pile of Lego and a bunch of well trained volunteers or visitor experienced people who can facilitate that, police it, little Johnny sticking minifigs in his pocket. Paul Marden: And then you turn on your Google Adwords and show that you've got this, you know, bad weather reason to go to a stately home that my daughter would turn her nose up to all of a sudden, “Okay, we're going to go and do that. We're going to go and have afternoon tea and you're going to go and play with some Lego and see some animals, maybe.” Yeah, what can you do to attract that extra audience and adapt to the bad weather and service different sorts of people? Andrew Webb: I think that comes down to a bear in mind. I convert some of my Lego lens rather than a venue lens. But I think speaking as a parent and someone who does this is you need a reason to go back to somewhere that you already know. Okay, so you go to Stonehenge, you go and look at the stones, you go, “Wow.” You look at the visitor centre and then it's ticked off. I mean, you see busloads of tourists. Stonehenge is at Cambridge, maybe, or Oxford people, when people do England, Lambeth, Heathrow, London Crown Jewels, Tower Bridge, West End, day trip out on a coach to Stonehenge, maybe to Cambridge, and that's it, off to Paris. Right? So parents like British people like that too. Like why go to Stonehenge four times a year? Or why go to any venue when you're familiar with it? Andrew Webb: It's always about offering something new and something different. Audley End up near where I live, I think, is English Heritage. All through July, every Sunday, they're just doing music. So there's a string quartet or someone with a harp or maybe someone with a guitar or whatever. And you've got a book, but it's. It's not like there's 30 places and it's a bonfight. It's just like, “Oh, wow, they've done something different.” They do a really great thing. Like, they do victorian falconry, for example. So they get someone in who talks about how Victorians use falconry for hunting as a sport, but also for the kitchen table, and they're flying falcons around and doing the whole bit of meat on a string and all this sort of stuff. And everyone, like, “They do a world war two one.”Andrew Webb: I mean, the editorial calendar for any venue's got to look like, “Go and make Christmas food. January, we're closed to kind of dust and clean everything. Valentine's Day, chocolate make you put. It's daffodils”, it's whatever it might be. And then you just build that. Build that programme in and you need. This is why I think that venues now, again, I'll just come back to that. You talk about AdWords, but that, again, is more spend. It's like, how'd you build that mail list? How do you drop into the local Facebook groups and Mumsnet and all that kind of stuff? You know, that's where you can do it organically rather than. Because people don't sit in front of Google necessarily, or think, like, what should we do? Paul Marden: You sit on the sofa on a Thursday night trying to figure out what on earth are we going to do this weekend? Yeah, so you're completely right. The mum's net, the content marketing, is hugely important, isn't it? Andrew Webb: Which is my job. But also it's kind of like how can institutions become part of that? When I say community, if you think about most people travel a thin hour to go somewhere. I mean, people go further afield, you know, but. But basically it's like, what? My mom turns, like, a tea and a pee. So you've got to go somewhere. You've got to have a cup of tea, visit the loos. It's all about tea. It's all about canteens and loos, basically. You could have a World Heritage Site, UNESCO World Heritage site. And it's like, how good's the caf? And are the toilets clean? Yeah, that's what people remember. Gar went hens at dawn. I was awed by the majestic. But that Looney D cleaning, you know, it's not good. It's all that people come home with. Andrew Webb: So, you know, institutions go into place that they are trying to offer different things. Like late nights. We've talked about that. How can we use this space after hours? Because if you think about it, if your institution's open 10 till 6, most people are at work five days a week, you're gonna have students and pensioners who are gonna be not great spenders, either of those two groups. So, late nights, I went to a great one in the National Gallery when the James Bond film. I was kind of sitting royale or whatever. He's still on the top of the National Gallery overlooking Trafalgar Square, and they've got the national dining rooms there and they had Vesper Martini, everyone got a cocktail. Andrew Webb: And then went to look at the fighting Temeraire, which is the bit where he's standing with Q, the new Q, who voices Paddington, whose name escapes me and gives him, like, a gun and a radio, but they're like the fighting Temeraire by Turner is this little thing. And so, you know, you've got to make hay out of that, right? You've got to sort of, like, do a late night, various ones. And so all it was a few cocktails in the cafe next door and are taught by the curator and stuff like that. But 30 people just looking for an experience. And so if venues are clever, of course, the dark side of this is when you get Willy Wonka world up in Scotland. Andrew Webb: Or interestingly, some of the Lego events that have been happening at NEC have caused a massive online backslash in the community for just being exceptionally bad value for money. And so you read about these things that people have said, “Come and visit Santa's grotto, and it's just a muddy field with a tree in it,” so you've got to be careful. But I think those events, those sort of fly by night kind of institutions, don't really work. But how galleries can leverage the creativity of what they're doing? Whether they are come and paint in our, you know, our local gallery, come and have an art class, come and do that. People are looking for stuff to do that is value for money. That isn't always drink lead, you know, it's not always cocktail making or things like that. Andrew Webb: And that comes with a whole heap of other things and dietary requirements for cookery courses and just clean up and the mess and all that kind of stuff. So I think that, yeah, canning organisations, the ones that can really think about that, and I'm happy to help organisations who want to think about this, especially through the life of Lego. They will be the ones that will start to add and build out and develop their. What you might term this whole sector needs a name. The kind of extracurricular offering, we might say, above and beyond their collection and then their traditional interpretation and if they're. Paul Marden: Thinking of doing this. So there's a good why. Yeah, the why is you can reach diverse audiences, helps people with interpretation. Andrew Webb: Quite cheap. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. It's a cheap way of extending your offering and diversifying what you do. You can bring in event elements to this, but how do they do it? Apart from engaging with somebody like you? And I'm going to guess there's not many people like you. So that's going to be a tricky thing for some people to do. But if they were starting from scratch, how would they go about doing this? You said earlier, “Don't go mad with buying the bricks and spending a fortune on.”Andrew Webb: There are people like me that can do all this as well as myself. I think that the first thing is plan it. Plan what you need to do. You can't throw this stuff together. You might be looking at. Already the hold have been contacting me for a late night they're doing in September. They contacted me April. Paul Marden: Okay. Andrew Webb: Because if you're a creator, you're planning exhibitions, you are thinking on that long term cycle. Paul Marden: Yeah, completely. Andrew Webb: And so what you need to do is bake this in as part of that curational process or part of the interpretation of things at the start, rather than like, “Right, we're doing exhibit on Peter Rabbit, let's chuck in a load of fluffy bunnies or whatever.” You know, it's got to be. You've got to think about it and have it contextualised. I think the best things are. What success looks like is, first of all, you need a space. Now you can hire a marquee that comes with a cost. If you're a venue and you've got your own or you've got a hall or a stables or interpretational room or something like that, often spaces, specifically bigger ones, will have classroom spaces for school groups anyway. So that's often that can be where you can host these sorts of events. Kids are very familiar. Andrew Webb: The chairs are all small wall colour, you know, etc. Industrial strength carpet in case stuff gets built. So locations like where you're going to stage this? Paul Marden: Yeah. Andrew Webb: Secondly, I think you need to think about, what do we want people to do? What is the experience? What is the narrative piece? Because you can't just say, here's a big part of Lego. Kids will just build cars and houses, right? You know, they need context. You know, if you give a kid a sheet of paper, you could draw anything. They're like, well, what? And so you need to give them a mission almost. They need a task, I think. Also think about, as I said before, keeping the tasks around 20 minutes, because actually adding the time running out jeopardy element is quite fun for kids because they'll go, “Well, I've only got five minutes left.” And often that's when it all falls apart and then they have to iterate the design. Andrew Webb: So think about that kind of moving people through in 15 to 20 minutes cycles. We had kids at Kenilworth, that would go out the exit and just walk back around and come in the front like that. Like four or five times. One boy came in, he was loving it. So think about that. Think about how you're going to move people through the space. Think about what you need to envisage it. So the Kenilworth, for example, there was me hosting it from dawn toward dusk. We had another builder there who was helping take break it all down and put them against the model that we built. There were two members of staff who were letting people through, so just monitoring it from an entry exit point of view, walkie talkies, in case people had issues and things like that. Andrew Webb: And think about when you're going to do it. Okay, so half term is a good one. It's a good thing to do. We saw a lot of this at Kenilworth, but I've seen other places as well, particularly half terms and things like that. You often see grandparents caring for grandchildren, right? Because parents are at work and grandparents can only walk around the site so much before they want to sit down. So sometimes have it, like, think about where they can. And when I was at Kenilworth, grandparents came in with their two grandkids, and the kids started playing and I was like, you could join in, too. Oh, no, I don't want it. You know, they were almost like, “I can't do this. It's like, come on, get in, get in. Come on, grandma. Come on. I'll show you how it works. “Andrew Webb: By the end of that session, they were memory making. I then took their photo with their phones, they'd have this sort of grandparent. But, you know, you always say it like, my grandfather taught me to fish. Like Sean Connery says in the hunt for red October. This sort of moment where sort of, it's a Hollywood trope that grandfather knowledge is sort of passed on type of thing. Right. And so you can see that where you could have this, almost either the reverse of that, of kids showing grandparents, but also they're all having this event outside of the parental unit. So it's a new type of experience. It adds value, it gets people to play with their grandkids. Paul Marden: Priceless. Andrew Webb: So I think that's kind of an interesting way. So think about when, think about where and think about what will be my three sort of tips for any institution looking to put this together. Paul Marden: You gave one the other day which I thought was priceless, which was, don't give them wheels. Andrew Webb: Oh, yes. Paul Marden: Don't include the wheels. Andrew Webb: Take the wheels out of any sets, unless you are the Transport Museum or the, you know, a car based museum, because kids will do wings as well. I'd probably suggest taking those out because kids have just built cars. Some kids have just built cars, you know, even if you give them a mission. Unless that is the mission. The other thing that I would think that venues could do as well as sort of all day events, because it's quite a time drain, you know, on staff and this sort of stuff, but it is a value. The other thing you can think about is one off evening events for adults. Yes, I've done this. I did this at my local add them shops. Bricks, beers and bubbles challenges supercompass teams. Think of it like a pub quiz with brick is the answer. Andrew Webb: So build me a thing that does that kind of thing. Teams all get together, you can race them, you can see who goes the furthest. You can do all this stuff. And the hold is what I'm doing at the hold in September. I did it at the hold a couple of years ago. And what was interesting was that we had quite diverse groups of adults. We had just couples who were clearly AFOLs and were like, “Yeah, I'm going to go to that.” We had a group of friends. One of them had just come back from years travelling and they didn't want to go sort of straight to the pub and just interrogate him about his travelling, whatever. Andrew Webb: They kind of like, “Well, we wanted something to do where we could have a beer and have a chat, but were doing something else whilst we're doing that.” And that's the joy of Lego. Your hands are doing the work and you're almost like the back of your brain is doing the work and you're like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Before you kick them.” And the concentration levels are there and then you can kind of get into that state of flow. And so they were just having this lovely chat, had a beer, talking about stuff, but also memory making in terms of when he came back from his travelling. So I think that's really important. Andrew Webb: Did you know that this is your brain, right? And then your brain on Lego, there are 24 discrete skills that are happening in your brain. So Lego research this, things like fine motor skills, cognitive sort of thinking about things, future planning, my favourite emotional regulation that is not going, “Oh, my God, it's not working. And smashing all to pieces.” So I've seen this as well with children, is that when you give them a Lego, if you gave them jelly and a football, they'll all just. They're a high energy kind of things, right? And that's fine, great outdoors, kids want to burn off energy. Here's a load of balls. Go crazy, right? Or ball pits, trampolines, bouncy castles, those sorts of things. When you get on Lego, what actually happens is it's very hard to be anarchic, to use a wrong word, but a word. It's very hard to be anarchic with Lego because you can't really do it. Andrew Webb: And so you can get a group of kids together and they'll almost self invigilate. And at one point, I ran it at a local toy shop and the parents are all hanging about and like, “I've never seen them so quiet.” They were just in the state of flow. And so, I think, you know, again, back to the. Back to the explorers and the scouts, that was one of the best sessions that those kids had done as teenagers because the reason was they were given permission to play with Lego. They still had the muscle memory from when they were smaller children. They were solving. They weren't just being told to play with Lego, they were actually solving engineering challenges. How can you design a bridge that will take this weight? How can you protect an egg? How can you think about this? Andrew Webb: And so you need to think about the challenge and the what. You need to think about that, the where and you think about the when, as I said, and get those right. You can have a very exceptional visitor experience for not a huge amount of effort. It's not highly costly, it's not highly technical, it's just a bit of elbow grease and a bit of forward thinking in terms of what we might need. And I think that parents appreciate just that minute away where they can. It's almost like a 20 minute babysitter, right, where they can just go, “Don't touch that.” You know, you're walking around a stately home, “Don't sit there, don't touch. Mind the lady.” All that kind of no data that parents give out institutions, they can just take a breather and check their phones and whatever. Paul Marden: And the kids are just having an amazing time. Andrew Webb: Yeah. And the kids are happy. And at the end of the day, as a parent, we all do our best and you just want, you know, them to be playing with something screen free, getting along and learning something. And, you know, that is the win. That is the ultimate takeout. You can layer on your own institution in context and rev up the visitor experience, bring in new visitors, attract a more diverse group of people that perhaps wouldn't normally come to a Regency Rococo style villa or whatever it might be, then that's all to the better, because, you know, you can start to use this in your planning and you can do what Suntton Hoo did? And go, right, well, we've done this and it's really worked. Andrew Webb: And then I can apply for funding for it and I can expand and I can make it permanent and then I can sort of say, well, this now becomes a tool and a string and arbo for our educational. It doesn't have to be split between visitor attractions and development. It can, you know, you can split it between several parts of the institution and use it in different ways, use it for educational purposes as well as visitor experience. So the world's your oyster with a bit of thinking. Paul Marden: With a bit of Lego and a bit of thinking. Andrew Webb: Bit of Lego, yeah. A few bricks and a couple of tricks and you're off to the races. Paul Marden: Andrew, this has been brilliant. Thank you ever so much. Andrew Webb: You're welcome. Paul Marden: I've got one more question for you before we finish. Now, you bottled this earlier on when I said we always have a book recommendation from our guests. And in spite of having the fullest bookshelf I've seen in quite a long time, you've bottled it on a book. But you did offer me a favourite movie. And so what would be your movie recommendation of choice? Andrew Webb: My go to movie would probably be Withnail and I, Richard E. Grant's first film. Every line has came down from God on a tablet. I mean, it is just. Yeah. Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty, Paul McGann. It's just one of my favourite films and, you know, cult classic that no one's really. Well, people have heard of it now, but again, they even make stuff out with Alan Eyright. So you can go and watch a screening of it at the farm at Crow Crag up in Penrith, you know, and everyone dresses up and everyone comes with Mister blathering sets tea and I come on holiday by mistake and Jessie says, Danny. Andrew Webb: And, you know, fortunately, for better or for worse, I know these are tough times, but people try and find the fun in things. They try and at the end of the day, everyone's looking for a good time, whether we're children or an adult. You want something to just have a laugh and take you away for a moment. And if films and culture but also experiences can do that, then that's all for the good. Paul Marden: Well, look, this is going to be a challenge, but listeners, if you would like a copy of Andrew's film recommendation, then when we release the show message on X, if you can retweet that and say, “Give me Andrew's movie”, then the first person that does that, somehow I will get the movie to you. It might be on VHS, it might be on DVD, but somehow we will get you a movie. Andrew Webb: I found a CD the other day from a bar I used to go to in Clapham in the noughties and late ‘90s. I said to my mate, look, I'm great, put it on. And I went, “I can't.” I haven't got a CD player anymore. I had to go dig through a box somewhere in the study to find a portable CD player that plugged into my computer that could. By the end of it, we're just laugh. Forget it. Paul Marden: Andrew, this has been wonderful. Thank you ever so much. Andrew Webb: You're welcome. Cheers. Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm. The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 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In this episode, we delve into one of the most turbulent periods in recent British history: the introduction of the poll tax and the subsequent riots that shook the nation. The poll tax, officially known as the Community Charge, was introduced by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government in the late 1980s. Intended as a reform of local government finance, it quickly became one of the most controversial and unpopular policies of the era. Join us as we explore the origins, implementation, and widespread backlash against the poll tax. We begin by examining the rationale behind the poll tax. Designed to replace the old system of rates based on property values, the poll tax was meant to be a fairer way of funding local governments by charging every adult a fixed amount. However, this approach sparked outrage as it disproportionately affected low-income individuals and led to accusations of unfairness and regressive taxation. We'll discuss the government's motivations and the economic and political climate that led to this policy. Our episode then moves to the public's reaction and the rise of resistance. Across the UK, citizens from all walks of life organised protests, formed anti-poll tax unions, and engaged in acts of civil disobedience. The widespread refusal to pay the tax highlighted the deep-seated anger and frustration among the populace. We'll highlight key figures and groups that spearheaded the opposition, showcasing the grassroots movement that gained momentum and captured the public's imagination. The climax of this opposition was the poll tax riots, particularly the infamous riot in Trafalgar Square on March 31, 1990. We will provide a detailed account of the events leading up to this day, the scale of the demonstration, and how a peaceful protest escalated into violent clashes with the police. The chaos and destruction of that day shocked the nation and marked a significant turning point in public opinion and government policy. We'll analyse the immediate and long-term consequences of the riots on British society and politics. Finally, we reflect on the legacy of the poll tax and the riots. The immense pressure and public outrage ultimately forced the government to abolish the poll tax, leading to the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. We'll discuss how this episode reshaped the relationship between the government and the governed and its lasting impact on policy-making and protest in the UK. Tune in for an in-depth exploration of a pivotal moment in history that highlights the power of collective action and the enduring struggle for fairness and justice. Talk2TheHand is an independent throwback podcast run by husband and wife, Jimmy and Beth. Obsessed with 90s nostalgia and 90s celebrities, we'll rewind the years and take you back to the greatest era of our lives.   New episodes bursting with nostalgia of the 90s released on Tuesdays. Please subscribe to our podcast and we'll keep you gooey in 1990s love. Find us on Twitter @talk2thehandpod or email us at jimmy@talk2thehand.co.uk or beth@talk2thehand.co.uk

You can leave a note for a writer or cast member. Click here to text the show.MauHaus Productions presents A Blind Play. Episode 30. “Kadamati” Kadamati is Bengali for clay, the malleable matter capable of softness and hardness, of resilience and breakage. Kadamati is also the name of a dance devised by Akram Khan. A mass choreography open to the general public, it explores identity, connection, and belonging. It was performed in Trafalgar Square on the 24th of June 2016, the day after Britain broke, hardened and brittle, shattered by a referendum. Kadamati was adapted from the personal essay of the same name by Chiara Vascotto.This episode was directed and edited by Michael MauSTARRINGSamantha Jonczyk as ChiaraSandie Keene as JenMalya Muth as ChristinaToni Poe as Fellow DancerADDITIONAL VOICESDrew ValinsMichael MauAnastasia WilsonRyan GaiserCarter AllenAndressa DaSilvaOriginal music by Nitin Sawney and Trevor Tremaine.The podcast cover art was created by Geneva Hicks.Additional sound effects courtesy of Pixabay.You can become a monthly supporter of the show starting at just $3 a month. Go to ablindplaypodcast.buzzsprout.com/ to find out how.If you haven't already, please show us some love with a 5-star rating on your podcast app. It takes seconds and makes a huge difference to the podcast.I sat down with Chiara Vascotto and Jen Irons as well as members of the cast of “Kadamati” to talk about the story, its origin, and the effects of art on politics. It's a lively chat that will make you want to listen to the episode all over again. Enjoy.Rate, Review, and Follow, visit us at ablindplaypodcast.com, and spread the word.All episodes directed and edited by Michael MauOriginal Music by Trevor TremainePodcast cover art created by Geneva HicksSupport the Show.

Owen Blackhurst, Seb White, James Bird, and a returning Asad Raza chat Trafalgar Square triumph, climbing raves, Carlo Ancelotti, making Real Madrid likeable, Javier Mascherano, D-Day, Donald Duck, Francis Bourgeois, falling off trains, John Sitton, Saturday trains, metal zoos, Mick Hucknall, Prince, Chuck Norris at Yeovil, David Beckham, Predator Manias, Michael Scott, Matt Sellers, Liverpool, Luke Modrić, Liam Gallagher, Frank Rijkaard, Ronaldinho, Virgil van Dijk, EURO 2024, Roma, Radja Nainggolan, smoking footballers, mohawked footballers, Juventus, scorpion tackles, Tyson and John Fury, FIFA, short hardmen, Gennaro Gattuso, Gary Medel, Gordon Strachan, Daniele De Rossi, spitting blood and mud, Arda Güler, short corners, ten years of MUNDIAL, La Décima, offside, bad adverts, Manchester United's T20 kit, counselling, walks in the park, step count, Tommy's sweat, hay fever, pints, and somehow so much more.Get the latest issue of MUNDIAL Mag hereFollow MUNDIAL on Twitter - @mundialmagFollow MUNDIAL on Instagram - @mundialmag Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Owen Blackhurst, Seb White, James Bird and Tommy Stewart talk the UEFA Champions League final, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Glasgow, Star Wars, Seb's C-3PO energy, Noel Gallagher's Poznań rejection, match-day hangovers, Oasis, John Lennon on GB News and the red meat diet, Olivia Rodrigo, ‘A Day in the Life' by Sir Matt Busby in the style of George Formby, Give Meat a Chance, Eric Cantona at Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, the Square Ball Fanzine, Howard Wilkinson, Trevor Francis, Gordon Strachan, pre-Premier League title races, Denis Irwin, Chris Whyte on a stag do, Owen getting chased by bouncers and bosses, Teletext transfer news, Tommy's “Tintin” tattoo, tearful goodbyes, shin pads, sock tape, Tetley's sponsor boards, Ken Loach, XG, XP, Zidane's kick-ups, playing instead of watching, weaklings, dead legs, broken fingers, Battleships Monthly, being “papped”, Knight of the Round Heads, pink noise, falling asleep to podcasts, Ghostface Killah, James' dad's cricket team, fielding in a deckchair, Jimmy Anderson, Welsh Chapel Dream, the Paris Olympics Committee, Strictly Come Dancing, and somehow so much more.Get the latest issue of MUNDIAL Mag hereFollow MUNDIAL on Twitter - @mundialmagFollow MUNDIAL on Instagram - @mundialmag Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're in the garage talking Storms, Morocco and Vaisakhi! I was hosting the big Sikh celebrations in Trafalgar Square for the Mayor while Kej was running half marathons! He's annoyed that brown people didn't sponsor him - We debated why that is! Plus Sach is worried about the superstitions around the Lunar Eclipse! What does it all mean?

It's been long requested and finally, this week on CheapShow, you are getting what you asked for. It's time to go Nightbussin! London has a large number of bus routes that start after midnight and run until the early morning. These routes help people get about the capital city at all hours, whether they are coming home from a late shift at work, or desperate to get home after a wild night out and the tubes are all closed. Night Busses are an important part of London and Paul and Eli are going to take one of these routes and invite you along. For their first adventure, for some reason, they have chosen the N18. It starts in Harrow and winds its way south towards Trafalgar Square. What will they witness, what will they remember and will it just be ANOTHER excuse for Eli to talk about himself and his younger days again? Either way, you'll be on the journey with them in “real time”. “Ding, Ding!”, the cheap chaps are off on another rambling adventure! See pics/videos for this episode on our website: https://www.thecheapshow.co.uk/ep-376-nightbussin And if you like us, why not support us: www.patreon.com/cheapshow If you want to get involved, email us at thecheapshow@gmail.com And if you want to, follow us on Twitter/X @thecheapshowpod or @paulgannonshow & @elisnoid www.thecheapshow.co.uk Now on Threads: @cheapshowpod Like, Review, Share, Comment... LOVE US! MERCH Official CheapShow Merch Shop: www.redbubble.com/people/cheapshow/shop www.cheapmag.shop Thanks also to @vorratony for the wonderful, exclusive art: www.tinyurl.com/rbcheapshow Send Us Stuff: CheapShow PO BOX 1309 Harrow HA1 9QJ

A long time ago, CheapShow was sent an unusual 7” vinyl record called The Sounds of London. The record contained an audio snapshot of the sounds of Britain's capital in 1967. It's a fascinating collage of iconic sounds and environmental background noises, offering a unique peek into the past. Rather than talk it about it on a Silverman's Platter segment, Paul & Eli decided to go out into the centre of London to try and recreate it instead! This week, they'll race around with their portable recording kit and try and collect as many modern takes of the original vinyl as possible. The Cheap Chaps will zip from Trafalgar Square, to Waterloo, back to Piccadilly Circus and on towards Fleet Street grabbing all the sounds they can! Will they be magnificently successful or will they completely cock it up? It's a walkabout adventure that takes in bird dirt, arguments with elevators, a lucky break with the bells of St. Clements and a grotty plan to abuse a street performer! It's the Sounds of London 2024 in the only way CheapShow knows how. Thanks to @vorratony for the special art this week! See pics/videos for this episode on our website: https://www.thecheapshow.co.uk/ep-369-the-sounds-of-london-2024 And if you like us, why not support us: www.patreon.com/cheapshow If you want to get involved, email us at thecheapshow@gmail.com And if you want to, follow us on Twitter/X @thecheapshowpod or @paulgannonshow & @elisnoid www.thecheapshow.co.uk Now on Threads: @cheapshowpod Like, Review, Share, Comment... LOVE US! MERCH Official CheapShow Merch Shop: www.redbubble.com/people/cheapshow/shop www.cheapmag.shop Thanks also to @vorratony for the wonderful, exclusive art: www.tinyurl.com/rbcheapshow Send Us Stuff: CheapShow PO BOX 1309 Harrow HA1 9QJ

The Military Service Act made all single men and childless widowers between the ages of 18 and 41 liable to be called up. It received royal assent on 27 January but was met with a protest demonstration of approximately 200,000 people in London's Trafalgar Square, while by July almost 30% of those called up to fight had failed to ...

Last time we spoke about the end of the land campaign for the Russo-Japanese War, the battle of Mukden. Kuropatkin had been served defeat after defeat after defeat and found himself against the wall at Mukden. Meanwhile Oyama received reinforcements in the form of General Nogi's 3rd IJA and created a 5th IJA under Kawamura. Pretending the 5th IJA was a full strength army, Oyama unleashed a devilish deception against Kuropatkin's eastern flank. Kuropatkin took a defensive stance, handing the initiative completely to Oyama who performed a full crescent pincer attack against his army. Using Nogi's 3rd IJA as the surprise left pincer, Oyama attempted defeating the Russians once and for all, but yet again Kuropatkin's army was able to flee intact. Despite taking the majority of his army further north into Manchuria, the Russians were in no position to launch a counter offensive and now all hope for their cause lay upon the arrival of the baltic fleet.   #83 The Russo-Japanese War part 10: The battle of Tsushima   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. As Kuropatkin was withdrawing to a new line of defense at Siping, the Tsar would write in his diary “it is painful and distressing”, but the pain and distress had only just begun. All the way back in October of 1904, Rear Admiral Zinovi Petrovich Rozhdestvenski, the commander in chief of the Baltic Fleet was given command of the new second Pacific Squadron. His new fleet departed Kronstadt on October 15th and would be facing an incredible and very difficult journey. The logistics of the fleets deployment were colossal. It was estimated the fleet would require 3000 tons of coal a day at economic speed, 10,000 tons at full speed. Most great powers with large navy's had coaling stations within their spheres of influence, Russia did not. Of the great powers she had no significant oversea colonies. Under international law, neutral ports were forbidden from providing support to warships. Britain held numerous coaling stations, but was allied to Japan, thus Russia sought aid from France and Germany. France agreed to allow their coaling stations to be used, and Germany supplied a fleet of 60 colliers to perform coal ups.  Rozhdestvenski took the battleship Kniaz Suvarov for his flagship, along with her was Orel, Alexander III and Borodino comprising the first battleship division. The second battleship division led by Rear Admiral Felkerzam had older battleships Osylabya the flag, Sissoy, Veliky and Navarin. The first cruiser division was led by Rear admiral Enquist had Dmitri Donskoi the flag, Svetlana, Oleg, Izumrud, Zhemchug, Aurora and Admiral Nakhimov.  The movement of the 2nd Pacific Squadron through the Baltic was very painful, there were endless delays because of ships requiring repairs, to coal up and mine clearing operations. Rozhestvensky ordered "no vessel of any sort must be allowed to get in among the fleet" fueled by rumors the IJN sought to ambush them using torpedo boats. When the fleet reached Dogger Bank on the night of October 21st, jittery Russian crewmates aboard the repair ship Kamchatka, last in the Russian line, saw something. The Kamchatka had lost touch with the fleet and saw a Swedish merchantman of the Gamecock fishing fleet operating out of Hull. Kamchatka sent a contact report to the fleet stating “chased by torpedo boats”. Hearts leapt throughout the fleet, thousands of sailors peered over the rails into the sea. Suvarov signaled “how many! From which direction!?” Kamchatka responded “about eight from all directions”. Sailor Politovski recalled when all hell broke loose “a small steam was rolling helpless on the sea. One funnel, a bridge, and the red and black paint on her side were clearly visible. First one, then another projectile from our ship struck this unfortunate steamer. They were, no doubt, fishermen. Now there will be a universal scandal.'' Facing the Russians was a 100 ton trawler Crane, with fishermen aboard holding up fish to the searchlights trying to indicate what they were. They were boats of the Gamecock fleet operating out of hull in the traditional fishing grounds of Dogger Bank. A young Joseph Alfred Smith was awoken by gunfire. He ran up the deck to find his father and third hand both headless in a pool of blood. Most of the rest of the crew were wounded. The first hand frantically waved a red lantern as the little boat began to sink. Three other trawlers, rushed over to pick up Crane's men as Rozhdestvenski realized his fleet was firing upon British fishing boats. Rozhdestvenski signaled to cease fire, but then other ships of the Baltic fleet came into the area prompting those firing on the fisherman to fire upon them! A fire fight broke out between battleships and cruisers, with some receiving hits. Orel fired 500 rounds, hitting Dimitri Donskoi and Aurora a few times. Two Russians were killed from friendly fire and the battleship Aurora took a hit below her waterline. The chaos went on for 25 minutes and several Russian ships signaled torpedoes were being fired upon them. The Borodino even sent a report saying they believed they were being boarded by the Japanese. Finally the Suvarov put up a blue light signaling to cease fire before sailing off without providing any lifeboats to the fishermen. The battered fisherman returned to Hull with their dead and news of the incident spread like wildfire. The infamous incident became known as the “Dogger Bank Incident”. The attack on the British fishing ships was seen as an act of war. The British admiralty put the Home, Channel and Mediterranean fleets on a war footing as masses of protestors hit Trafalgar Square demanding justice. Meanwhile Rozhdestvenski was completely unaware of everything until he hit their first port of call at Vigo. Spains immediately passed on the message from Britain. Rozhdestvenski sent off a signal claiming that the attack on the Gamecock fleet had been an accident. He argued his officer believed two torpedo boats were in the vicinity and every effort had been made to avoid the imprudent fishing boats. Rozhdestvenski apologized and asked ‘to express our sincere regret for the unfortunate victims of circumstances in which no warship could, even in times of profound peace have acted otherwise'.  So yeah the great journey had quite a rough start. After averting war with Britain, Rozhdestvesnki fleet continued on and at Tangier he decided to split up in two. He believed the older ships would not survive the long journey around the Cape, so he sent them through the Suez Canal route led by Admiral Felkerzam. Rozhdestvenski fleet hit port after port, coaling up and carrying on. Coaling up in the southern hemisphere where temperatures could hit 120 degree F, saw men die of sunstroke. Sir Winston Churchill wrote on the subject  ‘ordeal of coaling exhausted the whole ship's company. In wartime it robbed them of their brief period of rest; it subjected everyone to extreme discomfort'. Each port they came to coal out brought news of the war. At Diego Suarez in Madagascar, the Russians heard news 203 meter hill had fallen to the Japanese. Rozhdestvenski said “203 meter hill, and what is that?”. They departed west africa on december 17th and now Rozhdesvenski needed to link back up with Felkrzams squadron and make it post haste to rescue Port Arthur. However Felkerzam had a shorter route and should have reached Diego Suarez before Rozhdestvenski, but he had not. It would turn out St Petersburg redirected Felkermaz to Nossi Be 600 miles distant, causing great delays. Rozhdestvenski outraged raced towards Nossi Be, but along the way received the disastrous news, Port Arthur had fallen.   Without Witgeft's fleet, the second pacific squadron was in trouble. St Petersburg sought to assemble a 3rd pacific squadron from the Black Sea, but this was diplomatically impossible. Russia had an ongoing issue with Turkey, thus trapping their black sea fleet. Thus the third pacific squadron would consist of warships previously rejected by Rozhdestvenski, the older battleships Imperator Nikolai I flagship, General Admiral Graf Apraksin, Admiral Seniavin, Admiral Ushakov, cruiser Vladimir Monomakh and 7 other auxiliaries. The squadron was led by Rear admiral Nikolai Nebogatov and departed Libava on February 15th, passing through the Suez canal to meet up with the rest.   Meanwhile the IJN expected to see the Baltic fleet around the Formosan straits by early January 1905. The massive amount of delays prompted Rozhdestvenski to say to his staff  ‘Telegraph to St Petersburg that I wish to be relieved of my command,' Christmas brought Rozhdestvenski out of his depression and soon his squadron met up with Felkerzam at Nossi Be on January 10th. While coaling up, Rozhdestvenski met with the other commanders to issue the orders they had received from St Petersburg. They were to meet up with the incoming 3rd pacific squadron and combined, would regain command of the sea. To achieve this aim they would need to strike the IJN combined fleet as quickly as possible, because the Japanese had been at sea for nearly a year and perhaps would be worn out. Yet Rozhdestvenski had his own thought on the matter, and made them known to the Russian admiralty when he signaled “I have not the slightest prospect of recovering command of the sea with the force under my orders. The despatch of reinforcements composed of untested and in some cases badly built vessels would only render the fleet more vulnerable. In my view the only possible course is to use all force to break through to Vladivostok and from this base to threaten the enemy's communications. “   The German colliers declared they would not further support the Russian fleet east of Madagascar, prompting Rozhdestvenski into another depression. Meanwhile Captain Nicholas Klado who had departed after the Dogger Bank incident was back in St Petersburg writing about his views on the upcoming battle “The personnel of the expedition, after hearing of the fate of Port Arthur and the destruction of our fleet had no longer any faith in the success of our enterprise. We shall never in this war gain the command of the sea; that is we shall never accomplish the task imposed upon us. What ought to be done? It is shameful to acknowledge it, but I say, quite impartially, it is necessary to put an end to the naval operations.” Russian crew members read such words, demoralizing them greatly. Added to this word of Bloody Sunday and the unrest back home began to spread amongst the crews. There was a bread shortage, general discomfort of always coaling up under the extreme heat, men were exhausted and losing their minds. Many court martials began to occur, during some training exercises ships hit another by accident and narrowly ran into each other. Terrible news came from Mukden, that Kuropatkin had been served another defeat. Then on march 15th, news the 3rd pacific squadron was coaling at Crete came. Rozhdestvenskis fleet had traveled 4560 miles, pausing no fewer than 5 times to coal up, but now were stuck waiting for the incoming 3rd squadron.    On april 14th the Russian fleet entered Kam Ranh Bay, many crews began mutiny's, suicides were rampant and desertions occurred at ever port call. On May 9th, the 3rd pacific squadron finally arrived. Nebogatov met with Rozhdestvenskis for just 30 minutes, without any battle plans given before they set sail. The fleet was now 52 warships strong, Rozhdestvenski signaled the admiralty ‘I will not telegraph you again before the battle. If I am beaten, Togo will tell you. If I beat him I will let you know.'   Now its important to point out some differences between the two fleets. The Japanese would be enjoying some technological advantages. The IJN had electric firing mechanisms, superior ammunition and telescopic sights, the Russians did not. Basically the way gunnery worked up until this point had a local gunnery officer assigned to a gun. The man would specify elevation, deflection figures and give firing orders keeping his eyes on an inclinometer that helped indicate the roll and pitch angles of the ship. A spotter on the mast would calculate the new elevation and deflection when observing salvos for the next round. Basically quite a few guys are doing math during a heated battle to keep correcting salvo shots, very difficult stuff. Yet months before the battle we are going to talk about, Chief gunnery officer, Lt Commander Kato Hiroharu was advised by the Royal navy on how to utilize a new mechanism. The Dumaresq fire control “computer”. This was a system of centrally issuing gun laying and salvo firing orders. This saw a central system allowing the spotter to identify a salvo of distant shell splashes much more effectively than trying to identify a single splash among the countless going on in battle. Furthermore the spotter now only needed to track one at a time, as opposed to multiple shots on multiple stopwatches. He would report it to an officer on the bridge, who was just steps away from the ship commander so he could alter courses to help. This new fire control system was introduced to the entire fleet and they trained upon it for months before the Russians showed up. This would make the Japanese gunners incredibly more accurate than their foe.    The Japanese also had created their own radios based on the Royal Navy's “Marconi wireless system”. The Russians on the other hand were using Telefunken German radios. Thus the Japanese had their own equipment and were specialized in its use, but the Russians had a foreign produced technology they did not fully understand. The Japanese were also using a high explosive shell filled with “Shimose Powder”. Shimose powder was pure picric acid that Engineer Shimos Masachika had created for the IJN,. The powder had a stronger power in terms of detonation velocity and temperature than other high explosives at the time. The Japanese shells were also using Ijuin fuses that caused them to explode on contact and wreck upper structures of ships better.   Because of the rather insane journey across the globe, the Russian battleships were not maintained very well, and her crews were unable to train adequately.    To geek out a bit I'd like to run some numbers. The Russians had an overwhelming advantage in the number of battleships and large caliber guns. They had 41 guns of 10 and 12 inch caliber while Togo would have 17. However the IJN would have a lot more guns of medium caliber, 8 and 6 inchs for example, and a ton more torpedoes. The Japanese fleet overall was faster, going at least 15 knots vs the Russian 11.   The Russians had 8 battleships, 9 cruisers, 8 destroyers and 9 torpedo boats. The Japanese had 5 battleships, 8 armored cruisers and 16 cruisers of various degrees, 16 destroyers and 69 torpedo boats. By the way you will find dramatically differing numbers when you try to look up the battle order, its because of arguments for ship types for those geeks out there.    The total of Russian armoured ships of modern type was eleven against the Japanese fourteen .  The total broadside of the two armoured fleets, if concentrated, was: Russians, twenty 12-inch; eight 10-inch; ten 8-inch, sixty-five 6-inch; and Japanese, twenty-four 12-inch, one 10-inch, thirty 8-inch, ninety-two 6-inch.  The Japanese had thus an advantage in the number of armoured ships and a marked advantage in weight of broadside (with common shell about 37,600 pounds for the Japanese against 26,500 pounds for the Russians).   Rozhdestvenskis now had to choose whether he would go east or west of the Japanese home islands to get to Vladivostok. In the east he could go through either Tsugaru or La Perouse strait. Russian intelligence believed the Tsugaru strait was heavily mined and was prone to fog, favoring torpedo and destroyers who could hide and launch torpedoes. La Perouse was similar, but more difficult to navigate and further requiring more coal. In the west there were two channels through the Korean straits, the western one was full of Japanese bases, the eastern one was the Tsushima strait. Admiral Togo knew the Russians would not risk going east, it was simply too far and would be too risky. Both commanders came to the conclusion the most logical route was through Tsushima. It was going to be a game of cat and mouse. Rozhdestvenski would play the rose of mouse, trying to slip through to Vladivostok, Togo would play the role of cat. Togo took his entire fleet to Masan Bay on the southeast coast of Korea and awaited his prey.   Rozhdestvenski deployed his fleet in two columns. In the starboard column were 7 battleships with their flagship being Knyaz Suvorov. The port column consisted of the rest of the fleet led by Nebogatov aboard Nicholas I. On the night of May 26th, the Russians slipped into the Tsushima strait under radio silence. There was a thick fog blanketing the area, but the moon shone heavily through the overcast. The fog lifted momentarily around 2:45am and the armed merchant cruiser Shinano Maru saw the hospital ship Orel whose lights were on. The Japanese ship crept closer to investigate and relayed a message to Masan Bay ‘The enemy sighted in number 203 section. He seems to be steering for the eastern channel.' Togo was jolted with excitement at 5am the IJN combined fleet set sail to intercept the enemy. The Orel mistook the Shinano Maru for a Russian ship and made no signal of its presence. Meanwhile the Shinano Maru sighted the shapes of 10 other Russian ships.   The Japanese officers had a tot of rum and cigars, gifted from Emperor Meiji. They were passed out and Togo recalled when men found out they had figured out the Russians were in the Tsushima strait ‘the news was received with enthusiastic joy by the whole fleet' At 6:34am, Admiral Togo sent a signal to the naval minister in Tokyo “In response to the warning that enemy ships have been sighted, the Combined Fleet will immediately commence action and attempt to attack and destroy them. Weather today fine but high waves”.   The Japanese closed in on their enemy as men, Togo recalled “Though a heavy fog covered the sea, making it impossible to observe anything at a distance of over five miles, [through wireless messaging] all the conditions of the enemy were as clear to us, who were 30 or 40 miles distant, as though they had been under our very eyes”. At 1:40pm both fleets sighted each other and prepared themselves for battle. At 1:55pm Togo ordered the hoisting of the Z flag, and issued his predetermined announcement to the entire fleet “The Empire's fate depends on the result of this battle, let every man do his utmost duty”. As admiral Nelson had once signaled "England expects that every man will do his duty" at the Battle of Trafalgar, Togo was inspired to make this as legendary as that battle. The Russians were sailing southwest to northeast, while the Japanese steamed from northeast to southwest. Togo ordered his fleet to turn in sequence with the Russians. Both fleets were 7 miles from another. The Japanese were coming in line-ahead formation at 14 knots, 3 knots faster than the Russians. Flagship Mikasa led her sisters, Shikishima, Fuji and Asahi as Togo seized the initiative. Togo had his faster fleet outpace the Russians and crossed them starboard to port, northwest then west, thus effectively crossing the Russian T. It was a tremendously risky maneuver as the Russian gunnery teams went to work firing upon the Japanese. Mikasa took 15 hits within just 5 minutes, Shikishima likewise took hits. Togo's 12 large ships were performing in essence a giant U turn taking 20 minutes under heavy Russian fire. Each one of Togo's ships had to run the gauntlet suffering hits. The Russian 3rd division concentrated upon the Japanese cruisers at the extremity of their range with some success. The Yagumo, Asama and Nisshin were all hit, Asama was forced out of line. Then the battle passed out of range for Nebogatov's division who were hitting 11 knots, limiting the speed of the entire Russian fleet.   Once Fuji and Asahi completed their turn, Togo ordered his fleet to open fire targeting Suvarov and Osylabya who were leading the two Russian lines. The danger for the Japanese had passed, now Rozhestvsenki was in trouble. Rozhestvenski had only two options a charge direct, in line abreast, or to commence a formal pitched battle; he chose the latter. The Japanese unleashed their 500 guns upon the flagship of Rozhdestvenski. Aboard the Suvarov, the crews were shocked by the overwhelming and accurate fire laid upon them. Captain Vladimir Semenov recalled “‘I had not only never witnessed such a fire before, but I had never imagined anything like it. Shells seemed to be pouring upon us incessantly, one after another.It seemed impossible even to count the number of projectiles striking us.. The steel plates and superstructure on the upper decks were torn to pieces, and the splinters caused many casualties. Iron ladders were crumpled up into rings, guns were literally hurled from their mountings. In addition to this, there was the unusually high temperature and liquid flame of the explosion, which seemed to spread over everything. I actually watched a steel plate catch fire from a burst.” Meanwhile the Russians near misses outnumbered their hits and one third of their shells failed to explode. The Russian command center was in the armored conning tower above the ailing Suvarov, now alight from stem to stern from 12, 8 and 6 inch shells. Two shell struck the conning tower killing countless men. Rozhdestvenski struggled to lead his fleet closer to the enemy to achieve effective striking power, then at 2:35pm he was wounded for the first time.    The Japanese gunnery had a devastating effect on the Russian crews, so much so the returning fire became relatively indifferent and ineffective. The sailors were mesmerized by the sheer slaughter before them. Main armaments were shaken and snuffed out. Semenov recalled running past sailors seeing them in shell shock, trying to scream at the men to help put out fires. By 2:30 a funnel had gone, the main mast was destroyed. Signaling was made impossible, a shell hit the flagships steering mechanism and now she was veering off to starboard, completely ablaze. Aboard the Asahi, Captain Pakenham was in a deckchair taking notes of the spectacle. Togo had taken Pakenham as an attache from the Royal Navy. Pakenham was watching through binoculars while a nearby a officer was picking up the debris of mutilated feet, hands and bowels from crew members. Pakenham kept writing notes until a 6 inch shell killed the crew of a 12 inch gun nearby him. The crew were blown to pieces and a man's lower jaw hit Pakenham drenching him with blood. Pakenham wrote down . ‘In spite of the quantity scattered, the amount of blood left on deck looked sufficient to fill a big cask,' before putting down his notebook and going down below. He would return 5 minutes later and resume his notetaking.   Osylabya was fatally damaged with her medical surgeons busy with dying men. Water rushed through the ship on the lower decks and into the magazine. She was gradually listing as the medical teams continued their work. 6 IJN cruisers pulled up for the coup de grace, as told to us by Admiral Kamimura “The whole of the starboard side as far as the keel was laid bare, her bright plating looked like the wet scales of some sea monster; and suddenly, as if by command, all the men who had crowded to the starboard side jumped down upon those scales … Most of them were dashed against the bilge keel and fell crippled, into the sea. In the water they formed an imaginable mass … and the enemy's shell never ceased the whole time from bursting over them. A few more seconds and the Osylabya disappeared beneath the water”. Sailors abandoned the ship, some in such a hurry they failed to grab a life vest. The captain screamed to his men to swim away from the ship which was keel high by 2:45pm. She went bow first to the boot with nearly 2/3rds her crew. Osylabya was the first armored battleship to be sunk entirely by gunfire.   The speed difference between the two fleets had been a decisive factor. As one Japanese observer wrote: ‘After the first twenty minutes the Russians seemed suddenly to go all to pieces, and their shooting became wild and harmless.' At this point the situation in the conning tower of Suvarov was catastrophic. Rozhdestvenski was wounded again, took a shell fragment to the head and was knocked out. A fragment had also entered his left leg cutting the main nerve and paralyzed his limb. Rozhdestvenski was dragged into a gun turret where he groggily was coming to. His chief of staff asked ‘Sir, we must shorten the distance, they're all being killed, they're on fire.' Rozhdestvenski replied ‘Wait a bit aren't we all being killed also?” The flagship drifted east out of control, leaving the Alexander III to take the head of the line. Captain Bukhvostov aboard Alexander III took Togo by surprise and charged down the middle of his squadron. This action gained the Russians much needed respite. Yet before long the Alexander III was being absolutely battered and began to list from a hole in her bows. The lead then passed on to Borodino who soon became a ablaze joined by Orel. At this point Nebogatov should have assumed command of the fleet, but he was unaware of the status of Rozhdestvenski, or even Felkerzam who was dead for days, but Rozhdestvenski kept this a secret to thwart Nebogatov from becoming 2nd in command. Thus for 3 hours no one was in command of the Russian Fleet. Togo's attention was stolen by the now stationary and devastated Suvarov, as Pakenham wrote “‘Her condition seemed infinitely deplorable. Smoke curling round the stern was rolling horizontally away on the wind. If the absence of funnels contributed much to her air of distress, the now extensive conflagration raging amidships showed its reality,' Togo began firing into Suvarov from 1000 yards before sailing off to intercept the other battleships. This allowed Kamimura's cruisers and two divisions of destroyers to close in like sharks. Togo had been so transfixed on the enemy flagship he lost sight of the battle as a whole. According to him ‘The enemy apparently altered course and disappeared in the fog.' Togo toon a northward pursuit of the Russian fleet who were trying to escape the carnage. Mikasa had been hit over 29 times, showcasing the brutality of the fight.   The Russian destroyer Buiny raced through the Japanese armada coming beside Suvarov's side. Rozhdestvenski was carried by his chief of staff who said in distress ‘Come on, sir, we haven't much time. There are some cruisers coming up.' The barely conscious Rozhdestvenski, with his skull pierced by a shell splinter, protested and then said  ‘Command to Nebogatov – Vladivostok – course N.23°E.' The wounded Admiral was tossed aboard the destroyer as Kamimura cruisers charged from the east. Destroyer Buiny carried the Admiral and 200 of Osylabya's survivors, there was not much room for men of the Suvarov, only a dozen managed to jump aboard. Those remaining on Suvarov manned their workable guns and fought like lions against their executioners. Admiral Kataoka recalled the scene “She scarcely looked like a man-of-war at all. Her interior was ablaze, and the holes in her side and gunports shot out tongues of flame. Thick volumes of black smoke rolled low on her deck, and her whole appearance was indescribably pathetic. She turned to starboard and port, as if seeking to escape, while the two or three stern guns, which were all that remained to her, kept up an heroic ‘defence'. To finally put Suvarov out of her misery, Kataoka had his 11th torpedo division come up at 20 knots and fire a salvo of torpedoes. 3 out of 7 torpedo hits exploded, one finding her magazine that caused a tremendous blast turning her over. Kataoka recalled  ‘For a short time she floated upwards, and then at 7.30 lifted her bow high in the air and slid rapidly out of sight.' Suvarov took 40 officers and 888 men with her. Meanwhile Alexander III was sinking, taking 30 officers and 806 men with her.    Fuji was one of the last to fire her 12 inch guns at Borodino as the sun was setting. Her shells tore through the ship, detonating the magazines causing tremendous explosions and smoke going everywhere. Of her crew 30 officers and 823 men went down with the ship, she would have a single survivor. Admiral Enquist commanding the Russian cruisers used the cover of darkness to try and break contact and flee. The Aurora, Zhemchug and Oleg fled in the direction of Manila. The slower Dmitri Donskoi was left behind and would become a easy target for the IJN light cruisers and torpedo boats. Dmitri Donskoi was smashed with both shell and torpedo and would sink with every man killed or wounded aboard. To make matters worse, Dmitri Donskoi had taken on 270 survivors from Osylabya and Buiny before she was attacked. She put up a valiant fight managing to sink two IJN destroyers and damaging a third.    The Russians had lost battleships Suvarov, Oslyabya, Alexander III and Borodino, but the night was still young. At 8pm 21 destroyers and 45 torpedo boats ran circles around the Russian vessels who had not escaped in time. The IJN small warships hit them from the east and south for 3 hours without pause. During the night numerous collisions occurred between both sides. The Japanese shepherded the Russians into small pockets who kept trying to escape northwards. By 11pm, it seemed like the Russians had all escaped, then searchlights came on. The old battleship Navarin ran into a chained float mine and was hit consecutively by 4 torpedoes until she sank taking down her crew of 622 men, there would be only 3 survivors. Sissoi Veliky was hit by a torpedo in her stern, but remained afloat. Two older armored cruisers, Vladimir Monomakh and Admiral Nakhimov were badly damaged by shellfire and torpedoes.    The night had been a war of attrition. The morning showcased the remnants of Nebogatov's squadron, NICHOLAS I, OREL, APRAXIN and SENIAVIN and the cruiser IZUMRUD hightailing it for Vladivostok. Many of them were pulling 9 knots and if allowed to flee would have made a 32 hour journey to the cold water port. However they would not be allowed to leave, when the morning light shone brightly enough, the Japanese recommended their hunt. Nebogatov would find himself surrounded by nearly 27 IJN warships. Togo made sure to keep his larger warships out of the gun range of the Russians and allow his destroyers and torpedo boats to finish off the ailing enemy. The Japanese had surrounded Nebogatov's remaining warships at 5:23am just a bit south of Takeshima island. Nebogatov knew they were doomed, he address his fellow officers ‘Gentlemen, I propose to surrender as the only means of saving our crews from destruction. Please give orders to run up the white flag.'    Nebogatov had the XGE signal raised, this was an international signal of surrender, unfortunately the Japanese did not have this signal in their code books, or at least that's how they played it. The Japanese continued to fire upon the Russian ships as the Izumrud suddenly bolted northwards escaping at 24 knots. Nebogatov quickly got his men to find white table clothes and they were quickly hoisted up the mastheads. Unfortunately Togo had once been duped by a Qing warship who hoisted a white flag before fleeing in 1894, so he continued firing. Again this is as the Japanese alleged things. Japanese officers looked to Togo aboard Mikasa to order a ceasefire and kept reporting the sighting of white flags. But Togo replied ‘I will not cease fire until they stop their engines,' The Russians seemed to understand frantic hand gestures and cut their engines and in desperation Nebogatov had the rising sun flag hoisted up the mastheads. To this Togo ordered a cease of fire. Nebogatov looked at his men and said “You are young, and it is you who will one day retrieve the honour and glory of the Russian Navy. The lives of the two thousand four hundred men in these ships are more important than mine” Thus the battle of Tsushima was over.   The wounded Admiral Rozhdestvenski was taken to Saseo for medical treatment. Admiral Togo visited Rozhdestvenski while in hospital and consoled the man saying  ‘We fighting men suffer either way, win or lose. The only question is whether or not we do our duty. You performed your great task heroically until you were incapacitated. I pay you my highest respects.'   The Russian Navy suffered 216 officers and 4614 men killed, 278 officers and 5629 taken prisoner. 62 officers, 1165 men managed to escape to Vladivstok and Diago-Suarez and another 79 officers and 1783 men were interned at neutral ports. The IJN suffered 117 officers and men killed with 583 wounded, including one young Japanese officer aboard the armored cruiser Nisshin who lost his index and middle fingers on his left hand, his name was Isoroku Yamamoto. The Russians lost 11 battleships sunk, scuttled or captured, 5 out of 9 cruisers, 6 out of 9 destroyers and a bunch of auxiliary ships. The Japanese lost a whopping 3 torpedo boats, 34, 35 and 69. It was an insane victory.    News of the terrible defeat reached St Petersburg, absolutely stunning the Russian government. The Russian government quickly sought a scapegoat and targeted Admiral Rozhdestvenski, accusing him of defeatism and failing to properly employ his fleet. Rozhdestvenski was put on trial and said to the judges ‘We were just not strong enough and God gave us no luck.' Rozhdestvenski told everyone the blame was his and his alone to bear, but they sought further blood and came for Nebogatov and two other members of the commander-in-chief's staff. Death sentences were tossed, in response Nebogatov addressed the court “According to the judges who have sentenced me to a shameful punishment, I should have blown the ships up on the high seas and caused the death of two thousand men in a few seconds. For what reason? Perhaps in the name of Saint Andrew's flag, symbol of Holy Russia? A great country must preserve her dignity and life of her sons and not send them to death on ancient vessels in order to hide her errors, intellectual blindness and ignorance of the most elementary principals of naval matters”. The Tsar would commute the death sentences, but the damage done to the empire was fatal.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The baltic fleet of Rozhdestvenski made an incredible around the globe journey to bring the full might of the Russian navy to Japan's doorstep. Admiral Togo predicted where his foe would be and gave him one of the if not greatest naval battles in human history. Now the Russians remained defeated on land and sea, only peace could ensue.