Revisiting England after Fifty-Two Years
Meera Verma*
Every time we planned a trip to the USA to visit our son Niraj, my husband Rajiva would express his desire to spend some time in England to revisit Coventry, the city where we had lived for three years from 1969 till 1972. Our desire to visit England was finally fulfilled in June 2024 when we managed to break our journey in London for ten days, on our way to Washington DC . For me a revisit to England was essentially a nostalgic trip down memory lane to the house in Bray’s Lane which was our first home after our marriage and where our first son (Niraj) was born , and to the University of Warwick where I studied for a Master’s degree in Politics and my husband for a Ph.D. in English. I should like to add that I managed to submit my M.A. dissertation just a month before Niraj was born!
Though much had changed since we were last there, much remained unchanged. The trains for Coventry still left from London Euston station and still took just over an hour to reach Coventry, though we took a slower train which (like our own ‘passenger’ trains) stopped at every station and took twice as long. Outside of London, the English countryside with its undulating landscape and green meadows was as beautiful as before. And the sight of sheep and cattle, or an occasional horse, grazing lazily or just lying on the grass, unperturbed by the slight drizzle or short spell of rain, gave a sense of permanence to the scene, as if nothing had changed for a thousand years.
The very opposite was the case with the city of Coventry. As we got down from the train at Coventry station, we were quite overwhelmed by the transformation it had undergone. The station itself was quite unrecognizable, much larger and much more complicated to find one’s way through. So was the bus station. What surprised us most was that the people around did not seem to know very much about places and directions and buses, etc. and were therefore not of much help though the old courtesy and the desire to help were still very much in evidence.
The City Centre too had changed greatly. A new University called the University of Coventry has come up in the city. The central plaza seemed to be larger than before but the two main icons of the city, the equestrian statue of Lady Godiva and the Lady Godiva Clock were still there.
Lady Godiva is an inspirational legendary figure of Coventry representing compassion, protest and female empowerment. Historically, Lady Godiva was the wife of a powerful Earl, Leofric of Mercia (11th Century CE).The story goes that she pleaded with her husband against an oppressive land tax imposed by him, but to no avail. She then took up a challenge thrown by him and rode naked through the city on horseback. To protect her modesty, the people of the city covered their eyes, drew the curtains or shut their windows as she rode past their houses. The Earl was forced to relent and the tax was withdrawn.
The following words from a poem by Lord Tennyson are engraved below the statue:
“Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
…She took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name”.
So, though much had changed over these fifty years, much seemed to have remain unchanged. We were indeed pleasantly surprised to see that Bray’s Lane, presumably named after Sir Charles Bray, the 19th century thinker and social reformer and friend of the novelist George Eliot , looked the same as before, and the house, 4 Bray’s Lane, where we lived for three years, still stood there, though transformed into a beauty salon.
Bray’s Lane, Coventry
The bus route to the University of Warwick used to be along a lovely road through wooded areas with thick and tall trees. The bus left one at the University stop on this main road, and one had to walk about a kilometre to reach the department or the library. Beyond the University the bus went on along this road through the beautiful old town of Warwick with its famous castle, and the one-time spa resort of Leamington Spa, to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, 18 miles away from Coventry.
In our good old days, we took a long walk from the bus stop to the University—a walk through nature to suddenly see the university buildings emerge. That nature walk has been lost. The city bus reached us close to the library which is the only building I recognised, somewhat. I could not trace many of the old buildings, such as Rootes Hall and the Benefactor’s Building, which was a rather luxurious hostel for senior students that had been built with the help of funds donated by a person who had chosen to remain anonymous. We could not even find the refectory where we ate our daily meals for over a year, nor my own department of Politics. We did not expect to meet any member of the faculty or fellow student of our time, of course, after such a long hiatus. Besides, this was an unannounced visit and only for a couple of hours. But we did manage to reach the office of the English department, where Rajiva left a recent book of his as a gift to the department with the inscription: ‘In fond memory of my stay here’.
Warwick University has expanded enormously, with impressive new buildings, innumerable eating places and an Art Centre with its very modernist architecture and an interesting wall magazine.
The Warwick University campus like other campuses that I chanced to see during our trip this time (e.g. UCLA, Caltech and Stanford University in the USA) looked truly international and global. Indeed ‘all the world’s a stage’ for the students of today. There is perhaps no going back to being confined to national boundaries. I felt that I was looking at a world much changed and continuously changing.
The Heathrow Airport and the Euston Station, London look truly global too. Enoch Powell (a Conservative MP and a shadow Cabinet Minister) would perhaps be very uncomfortable in his grave. He had pleaded in the 1970s for the expatriation of migrant labour from Asia and Africa at government expense and had opposed the Race Relations Bill (1968). But England has had a liberal tradition. Even in the 1970s the then government acknowledged the existence of the racial problem and instituted a Race Relations Commission to look into the issues arising out of racial discrimination.
Though nostalgia was a motivating factor behind our visit to England, it wasn’t the only one. Yashoda Nandan Singh, an old friend of ours and a former classmate of Rajiva’s, who now lives in the U.S in Columbus, Ohio, was very keen that we go together on a trip to the Lake District, the poet William Wordsworth’s native place in North-West England.
Rajiva was equally keen on seeing Shakespeare’s Globe in London, a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre built in 1599. Many of William Shakespeare’s plays were performed for the first time in that theatre, which was burnt down in an accidental fire in 1613. The reconstructed Globe was completed in 1997 and is situated on the South Bank very near the place where the original Globe had stood. This part of our trip was thus inspired by the two Williams !
The Lake District is a place of great scenic beauty. The main attractions are its beautiful lakes and mountains . Dove Cottage, the small and simple cottage in the village of Grasmere where Wordsworth lived for several years, is also a major attraction to all lovers of poetry and nature. Close by is the old St Oswald’s Church where Wordsworth himself, his wife Mary and his sister Dorothy and other members of his family are buried in the churchyard.
Right next to the graveyard is a bakery shop that boasts of being the oldest gingerbread shop in the world with a continuous history of making and selling gingerbread for more than 250 years. A notice hung on the bakery tells you that the recipe for the ginger bread is a closely guarded secret which has been kept safe in a bank vault. And this in the age of YouTube, WhatsApp and the social media with recipes floating across the world!
To get an overall view of the Lake District we decided to take a guided tour which took us on a day-long drive past ten lakes and many mountains and valleys. The highly qualified driver and guide, who had also been a College Teacher, took us around in the mountains he was so familiar with. His love for the place oozed out as he showed us the innumerable beautiful lakes big and small. His heart bled to see the so called ‘development work’ being carried out on one of the mountains he took us to. He also showed us the artificial lake which provided water to the city of Manchester. The entire place was quiet, as it was peaceful. The mountains, the breeze, the rain and the lakes seem to speak to you. And one felt ONE with Nature. The Lake District is a place every nature lover should visit at least once. One could not but see the importance of maintaining natural beauty and simple living in the midst of a wild race for change and development that brings with it pollution and the destruction of water bodies, aggravating the threat of earth warming.
A period of four days is too short a time for London. We were confined to South London, near Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, to see the labour of love of a Shakespeare lover of American origin, Sam Wannamaker, who relentlessly pursued his dream to build a theatre exactly like the original Globe Theatre .
It was a structure open to the skies with seating all around ( in the Galleries in three tiers) and an empty space in front of the stage (called the Pit) occupied by spectators who bought the cheapest tickets (costing one penny in Shakespeare’s time) and had to stand through the performance. We saw a performance of ‘Much Ado about Nothing’, paying heavily for a seat in a gallery and sitting on a rather narrow bench without a backrest. We paid an extra 2 ½ pounds each for a cushion for comfort (which had to be returned after the performance, of course). The pictures below can perhaps give a sense of the crowds and the excitement and thrill of watching a performance in the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s own time.
Apart from the theatre and the stage, Shakespeare’s Globe also has a small museum where costumes and stage props used in productions in Shakespeare’s own time are displayed. Also displayed is a copy of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespear’s plays, published in 1623,seven years after his death.
London is a happening place, easy to move around, with good public transport and friendly people willing to help, but expensive… more expensive than, for instance, Las Vegas in the USA. I must not forget to mention that I managed to satisfy my desire to eat fish and chips which I had enjoyed eating in my younger days in England. Perhaps we could have stayed longer … or maybe this is a call for another visit.
