RESTAURANTSHOWCASE
“My favourite has to be Ruth
Belville’s story. I like it because not
that many women that feature in
the history of Greenwich and also
because of its take on the
significance of Greenwich Mean
Time. If you live or work in
Greenwich, you often overlook the
significance of GMT.
“I also like the book because it
is very readable – some of the
others can be quite academic”
Vicky Prodrick, National Maritime Museum
book buyer
An attendant with Ruth Belville
at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich.
Photograph by Fox Photos, in the
Daily Express, 9 March 1908
Charles Jennings’ Greenwich, The Place Where
Days Begin and End,is without illustrations, but is an
excellent overview.Jennings’ comparison of modern-
day Greenwich with the Tower of London, “gradually
eclipsed as a Royal residence…stuck in the east…a
tourist hub…magnificent and free of royals” is
particularly apt.
Amore “on the ground” guide is Phil Frampton’s
Hidden Greenwich,which is an excellent walker or
cyclist’s companion.
For a literary twist, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret
Agent is worth a look. Although not strictly set in
Greenwich, Conrad chose as his inspiration for his
novel an attempt by an anarchist, Martial Bourdin, to
bomb The Royal Observatory in 1894. Bourdin was
hoping to strike a blow against capitalism by blowing
up what he presumably saw as a centreof bourgeois
learning and refinement. However, the bomb went off
accidentally, striking a mortal blow instead against
Bourdin, whose body parts were strewn over
Greenwich Park.
Conrad called the attempt “a blood-stained
inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was impossible to
fathom its origin by any reasonable or unreasonable
process of thought”, adding that, thankfully, the
Observatory “did not show as much as the faintest
crack”.
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