These are some shots from the morning before my flight to Israel on the evening of July 23. We spent the morning at Westminster Abbey, taking a guided tour with Ben who has worked as a verger at the abbey for 17 years. A verger is someone who carries around a stick and beats back the people who are crowding the clergy. No joke. Ben was a fabulous tour guide. Not only was he patient and extremely knowledgeable, he also let us break a few rules and go places other tourists weren't allowed to go and even take some pictures when no one else was looking (rather against the rules). The abbey, as many may know, is the final resting place to about 3000 people, a number of them phenomenally famous: Newton, Darwin, Chaucer, Queen Victoria - and many other British monarchs, Oliver Cromwell for about 3 years before he was disinterred and his body completely desecrated, Hardy, Handel, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Tennyson, Kipling, Rutherford, Sir Laurence Olivier, and so on). Here are some licit and other deliciously illicit shots.
View from the Westminster Abbey.
Statue to celebrate olympics.
View from behind the altar.
Tomb of Edward the Confessor.
I think this is Eleanor of Castile.
Cloisters courtyard.
Exterior shot.
Cloisters.
Mordu and I took this same picture almost two years ago when I visited him while he was doing pre-dissertation research.
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