Photos from England 3

Westminster Abbey - I didn't take a particularly good photo, but this is a striking memory.


All around Leicester Square are these plaques identifying the "colonies", their capitals, and the distance ceom London. Here is ours.


And here is the Leicester Square statue of Charlie Chaplin -- it was raining too hard to get a shot of the Shakespeare statue. There are a thousand parks and squares and a thousand statues -- on the way back in the cab, we passed by the statues of Sidney Herbert and Florence Nightengale, who reformed British health care after the Crimean War, so I regret not getting the chance to photograph these ones.


On the left is Andre Philippe, our amazing "ripperologist" guide for what turned out to be an amazing "Jack the Ripper Tour" -- I thought it would be sorta silly and it turned out to be absolutely fascinating because our guide has been studying the Ripper for 20 years. He is an historian who lived in the East End so that he could track down the descendents of the Ripper's victims and develop his theory about the man who was very likely the Ripper - Andre makes a compelling case and he is writing a book about it. If any Ripper book deserves to be published, it is his.

For my earlier posts, see Photos from England 1 and Photos from England 2