16th September 2016 Kolkata, India
It is a cracking first line for a novel: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.* As a thought – that the past is somewhere different – the line sounds very appealing. The past is distant from us and we can’t access it immediately. But the idea is nonsense, of course, […]
22nd April 2016 Vancouver, Canada
April 23rd is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Few of us would dispute that he was a great playwright, few except perhaps Grade 8 students all over the world being forced to study symbolism in Macbeth or how to write iambic pentameter. But why is it Shakespeare we still celebrate? Why him and not […]
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14th April 2016
How could the British embassy to the Holy See contribute to the Shakespeare 400th anniversary this year? There is an extraordinary programme of official events organised under the Shakespeare Lives banner, but the Vatican was not an obvious element. And although the Royal Shakespeare Company had performed Shakespearean excerpts before Pope Paul VI in 1964, the […]
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29th March 2015 London, UK
In 2015, England marks two major anniversaries. It will be 800 years since the Magna Carta was sealed and 750 years since the formation of the first English parliament. Anyone who is interested in seeing the document that has been described as England’s greatest export need only visit the British Library, where not one but […]
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22nd February 2015
– Guest blog by Hala Elhaj, Media Officer at the British Embassy in Khartoum – This month marks the 50th anniversary of the state visit of Queen Elizabeth to Sudan. On the 8th February 1965 Queen Elizabeth landed in Khartoum. She arrived at a time of great political tensions yet despite this Sudan gave Her […]
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24th April 2014
Yesterday at the Residence we marked St George’s Day, the feast day of England’s patron saint, and the week of the 450th anniversary of the birth of England’s and the world’s greatest dramatist and poet,William Shakespeare. A British architect, Rueben Thorpe, talked to us about the excavation of the Rose Theatre in London, one of the […]
23rd April 2013 Ottawa, Canada
In anticipation of William Shakespeare’s 449th birthday, our Science and Innovation team decided to pay homage to the most celebrated poet and playwright in history. Brimming with the “stuff as dreams are made on”, Shakespeare’s plays have captivated readers throughout the ages. Although his plays have had a spellbinding effect on their readers, we can’t […]
12th July 2012
I had a rare treat yesterday evening. A troupe of travelling actors turned up in the George Enescu square and put on a free show for the Bucharest public. The play was Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like it’. The actors happened to be from William Shakespeare’s very own theatre, the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London. For […]
28th July 2011 New York, USA
Guest blog by Sir Alan Collins, Consul-GeneralThe last month has been pretty typical of my four and half years as Consul-General in New York: almost every engagement has provided evidence that the relationship between the UK and US is special and essential. 27 July, my final day as Consul General and Head of UK Trade […]