Entertaining a visitor from the past

[Robin Orton]

Does anyone else sometimes play the game of imagining that someone from the past has travelled through time to present-day London and that you have been given the job of showing them round and explaining to them what has changed since their day and why?

I once read a piece by a literary journalist who said he did and that his imaginary guest was Shakespeare. Mine is Dr Johnson, because I think I would have more in common with him than with Shakespeare. I think that he and I would be able to understand each other's English better than Shakespeare and I would. Also I think that Johnson died at a particularly interesting time (1784) - when industrialisation was just beginning to gather speed, just after the American Revolution and just before the French one. I think it would be easier to make him understand how these events had been in some sense harbingers of the modern age than to explain to Shakespeare that his pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment world had largely disappeared.

What would Dr Johnson find most interesting and surprising when he touched down in twenty-first century London? Obviously cars, buses, bicycles, aeroplanes, electric lighting, central heating, radio, TV and smartphones. Clean streets, clean air and clean buildings, tarmac, the absence of hats, women in trousers. Everyone so tall, healthy-looking and well-fed (to put it kindly), with wonderful teeth. Would he comment on the number of black and Asian people in the streets? How many buildings would he recognise? How many street advertisements would he understand? How surprised would he be to discover that the House of Hanover (or at any rate its heir as prescribed by the Act of Settlement) is still on the throne and that his beloved Church of England is still staggering on? How would he react when I told him about the EU, Trident, Scottish nationalism, universal suffrage, the Tory party, same-sex marriage, Syrian refugees?

What if an ancient Roman revisited Londinium? When you came down the stairs from Charing Cross station into Villiers Street there used to be a shop sign opposite which said VIDEO VICTORIA. Julius Caesar would have recognised those words, though he might have been puzzled as to what they meant. 'I see, O victory'? 'I, victory, see'?

[Eagle]

Robin

I agree very interesting . Like you very interested in History.

Would The Bard be writing for Eastenders ??

[leenewham]

Talking of visitors from the past…

[Tim Lund]

Does anyone else sometimes play the game of imagining that someone from the past has travelled through time to present-day London and that you have been given the job of showing them round and explaining to them what has changed since their day and why?

No - but I might now. With me, it's more imagining that I might be doing the time-travelling, and I've always supposed I'd have to keep discreetly in the background, rather than engage in conversation

I once read a piece by a literary journalist who said he did and that his imaginary guest was Shakespeare. Mine is Dr Johnson, because I think I would have more in common with him than with Shakespeare. I think that he and I would be able to understand each other's English better than Shakespeare and I would. Also I think that Johnson died at a particularly interesting time (1784) - when industrialisation was just beginning to gather speed, just after the American Revolution and just before the French one. I think it would be easier to make him understand how these events had been in some sense harbingers of the modern age than to explain to Shakespeare that his pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment world had largely disappeared.

What would Dr Johnson find most interesting and surprising when he touched down in twenty-first century London? Obviously cars, buses, bicycles, aeroplanes, electric lighting, central heating, radio, TV and smartphones. Clean streets, clean air and clean buildings, tarmac, the absence of hats, women in trousers. Everyone so tall, healthy-looking and well-fed (to put it kindly), with wonderful teeth. Would he comment on the number of black and Asian people in the streets? How many buildings would he recognise? How many street advertisements would he understand? How surprised would he be to discover that the House of Hanover (or at any rate its heir as prescribed by the Act of Settlement) is still on the throne and that his beloved Church of England is still staggering on? How would he react when I told him about the EU, Trident, Scottish nationalism, universal suffrage, the Tory party, same-sex marriage, Syrian refugees?

I'm sure you're right about Johnson rather than Shakespeare - although I note you have selected two fellow Midlanders. I'm currently reading Roy Porter's

Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

which, as well as being a good read, and survey, backs up the argument that something akin to our modernity had developed by Johnson's time, as opposed to Shakespeare's. It also covers attitudes towards sexuality being seen in many quarters as a matter of inclination, rather than sinful or not, so more modern some ways than the Victorians, or even Freudians in the 20th century.

I'm also enjoying Amanda Vickery's current TV series, At Home with the Georgians

[_HB]

I wonder if someone from 1784 could even cope with being woken up in 2015? I can imagine a very rapid and fatal psychological breakdown. Still, a very interesting thought experiment.

[stuart]

I wonder if someone from 1784 could even cope with being woken up in 2015? I can imagine a very rapid and fatal psychological breakdown. Still, a very interesting thought experiment.

Oh I dunno. Take 'em down to the Royal Courts of Justice and they would feel right at home, powdered wig 'n all. Though they might be disappointed by the lack of public executions but impressed by our Dickensian prison system. Then along to St Paul's for evensong. You might have to remind them that this is their future and not their past.

Stuart

[Robin Orton]

I'm sure you're right about Johnson rather than Shakespeare - although I note you have selected two fellow Midlanders.

Well spotted. I like the story of David Garrick mocking Johnson's Midlands accent as he squeezed a lemon into the punchbowl and asked 'Who's for poonch'? When I moved to London, that sort of thing used to happen to me all the time until I poshed up (or at any rate Southernised) my accent a bit, in the (vain) hope that it would help me to get on in metropolitan society.

Stuart, I wonder what the musical standard of evensong at St Paul's was in Johnson's day? Unrecognisably dire, I wouldn't be surprised.