History and Mystery Discovered At the Cavalry And Guards' Club near Marble Arch, London

UK flag

If you walk along Piccadilly towards Hyde Park, or Buckingham Palace, or Hard Rock Cafe, you will pass the Cavalry & Guards Club. If you've walked along towards Hyde Park Corner many of the buildings and passageways hold secret treasures which I am about to reveal to you. Let's start with the entrance to the Cavalry and Guards' club. Walking back in the other direction but on the same side of the road it is just along from Hyde Park Corner from the underground station, beyond hard Rock Cafe. In the hallway of the Cavalry & Guards club is a patriotic painting showing her Majesty the Queen in a park beside the lake and pink flamingoes. What is special about the painting and the painter.

The Mysterious Mouse - Can you find it?

 The portrait was painted by a painter famous for including a mouse in all his paintings. Where is the mouse? 

I can tell you. Lower right hand corner. The man on the security desk told us. Even after he had told us, three out of four of us could not see it. 

I was visiting the club for the second time. Each time I discover something new. On my second visit I did not merely discover the mouse. As I descended the staircase from the private dining room on the second floor, on the staircase I found a flag, a German flag. Why?

The plaque said it was captured in WWI from the Germans at Ypres - by a man who won an award. It seems very sad, now that we and the Germans are friends again, that years ago a young man had to risk his life capturing a strip of land and a strip of cloth.

However, I also passed a grand piano. Downstairs, looking for the mouse in the painting was a distraction. It cheered me up. I left the building smiling.

Useful website

https://www.cavgdsclub.co.uk/

Remembrance War, Peace, Pacifist Memorials to visit UK, Europe, USA & Worldwide & Pacifist Memorial

Armistice Day has been observed since 1919. Traditionally at the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month. Nowadays you can hear the haunting sounds of the Last Post play every night at the Menin Gate in Belgium. Visit graves and memorials to the Great War battles. Glance at plaques as you pass through London underground and overground railway stations. Worldwide, join a jolly tour plunging into the water on a boat which was used in the D-day landings, as I did in New York and Philadelphia. Or simply join me touring the world as an armchair traveller through time.

Permanent Memorials
UK
Town Memorials
Most towns and village have war memorials, often in the middle of the town square. I can't list them all because there are more than 100,000.
www.greatwar.co.uk/organizations/war-memorials-trust

School Memorials
Lists of the fallen are on the walls of schools, such as Harrow School.

Transport Memorials
A memorial to members of London Transport is on Baker Street station. Take the Bakerloo south. Another memorial is at the arched entrance-exit of Waterloo station, Britain's biggest station.

London
Cenotaph, Whitehall, London.

London landmarks include the Polish war memorial. Go along the Western Avenue from the Target Roundabout. It's near RAF Northolt, which probably explains the location.

Museums:
RAF museum, Hendon.
Imperial War Museum, London. (This is where the ceramic poppies (originally placed around the Tower of London) will end up after touring.
Churchill War rooms, under London.

England
National Arboretum, Staffordshire, UK. Includes the Shot At Dawn memorial.
www.thenma.org.uk

Scotland
Edinburgh, monument at Edinburgh's Waverley Station. In 2014 a plaque was unveiled at Glasgow's Central Station.

Wales
Welsh National War Memorial, Cardiff.

France
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

Belgium
Flanders
Menin Gate. Ypres.
In Flanders Fields museum, Ypres, Blegium.

Temporary - Armchair Travellers View These Online
Red poppies, ceramic, surrounding the Tower of London. One poppy for each person who died, UK and colonial (Commonwealth?) countries. 2014 until November.

Recurrent Annual Events
Remembrance Armistice Day
London. Wreath laying by the British royal family and members of parliament at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Two minutes of silence.
Parade.
Playing of last post.

Scotland
Edinburgh
Parade in Royal Mile on Remembrance Day.

Preserved Planes
Planes - spitfire at Bentley Priory, Stanmore, Middlesex.

Preserved Boats
You can take a tourist trip on WWII duck boats (amphibious vehicles on water and on land in WWIII) in the USA (New York and Philadelphia), London, and Singapore, and elsewhere, depending on weather.

Memorial in France.
Wikipedia.

Worldwide Sites
Australia: ANZAC memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney. Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.
Bangladesh
Brazil
Canada: Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa.
China
Czeck Republic.
Egypt: El Alamein cemetery, along the coast west of Cairo.
Gibraltar. American monument (arch with names). Outdoors. Accessible all year.
India. Bombay (Mumbai). India Gate.
Israel. Yad Vashem.
Italy
Japan (controversial)
Malaysia: War memorial looks like the American flag raising Iwo Jima, created by the same sculptor.
Netherlands
New Zealand
Philippines: Manila American War Memorial and Cemetery.
Poland. Warsaw Ghetto. Auschwitz.
Portugal
Russia
Scotland: Spean Bridge Commando memorial.
Singapore: Kranji.
South Africa
Spain: Valley of the Fallen, near Madrid. (Valle de los Caidos.)
Turkey: Gallipoli.
UK Madingley American Cemetery, Cambridge. www.madingleyamericancemteryinfo
Runnymede Air Forces Memorial, Coopers Hill Lane, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey. Tel 01784 433329. See Tripadvisor. wiki commonwealth_war_graves_memorials
Ukraine: Babi Yar, near Kiev.
USA: Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, USA. Gettysburg.
American Battle Monuments Commission abmc warmemorialsandcemeteries

Heritage Plaques

Cemeteries with Memorials
El Alamein, Egypt

I am updating this post and will add more during today and later.

More Information From:
www.findagrave
www.wikipedia Somme
www.wikipedia war_memorials

You can do tours of Belgium and France which will help you visit the grave of your ancestor or the wall where their name is inscribed.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Pub names - what do they mean?

I ordered The Dictionary of Pub Names. I like dictionary format. You can find what you want quickly. The book is not only a handy explanation of pub names, it gives you amusing myths and local history and national and international history. I just got distracted by reading about Ypres and how the French and British pronounce it.


I also bought:
The Old Dog and Duck The secret meanings of Pub Names by Albert Jack (best selling author of Pop Goes The Weasel).

Interesting to read about Captain Kidd who according to this account was not really a pirate but preying on ships from enemy states in wartime. It's more complicated than that.

I also enjoyed reading about Henry VIII and his first wife Anne - whose divorce led to the founding of the Church of England. Next I read about Nelson who suffered from seasickness.

Then on to The Royal Oak, where Charles II hid from Cromwell's men, as Charles later told diarist Samuel Pepys.

The book about pub names also deals with Molly Malone of the Irish song. I was impressed with the song's connection to Dublin (mentioned in the song). She died of a fever - what kind? I have always been too naive to suspect.

If you go to Dublin you can see the statue to Molly Malone, whose day is June 13, commemorating a girl of that name (one of many) who died on June 13.

See pictures in Wikipedia.

Both books are an entertaining read.