Whitehall by Colin Brown is the history of a place – the street in London where most of our UK government is based. This book looks at what the buildings have been used for, how and why they were built, what events have taken place there, and the changes over the centuries. This is exactly the sort of book I like as it is history from a slightly different angle and I must, therefore, have picked this book up at some point in time from a charity shop. I suspect that I have owned it for a few years !!
Whitehall was the site of a great house owned by Cardinal Wolsey and where he operated from when he was the chief adviser to King Henry VIII. When Wolsey fell from power the King took possession of the house and developed it into a glorious Tudor palace which saw some of the great events of his reign and that of his children. The palace grew, with the addition of many other houses and other buildings, including the great banqueting hall which saw the trial of King Charles I and outside which he was executed. Eventually the palace was destroyed by fire but by then the government of the nation and many important people had taken residence in the street.
We think today of Whitehall as where civil servants and ministers work and most of the machinery of our government is based there, including our big government departments, such as the Treasury, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and, of course, Downing Street. I hadn’t realised until I read this book how much of our government is run from adapted residential buildings which are not always ideal for their purpose.
The author follows the history of the street and picks some interesting events which occurred there to talk about, such as the lying in state of Nelson’s body, the tunnels built underneath the street to accommodate those making decisions in WWII, the Great Fire of London, the mortar attack on number 10 by the IRA, the tennis matches of Henry VIII and the arrival of the news that the Battle of Waterloo had been won. Obviously, in a reasonable length book, there has to be a selection of events and developments described but those which this author has chosen are interesting to read about.
I enjoyed this book, although I would have preferred that the author didn’t assume that I knew all the buildings to which he referred – I have been to Whitehall but I don’t have a huge knowledge of the layout and I didn’t want to keep consulting Google Streetview as I read. I would have preferred more maps and pictures.
I shall keep this book as it is an interesting history.
Anne Is Reading 