Nelson's Column

To illustrate how revolutionary this was, Chesterton uses this hilarious thought experiment about a monument.

Oh, the Nelson Column.

Yes.

He says, imagine if you went to a foreign town and saw a giant, glorious pillar reaching into the sky like the Nelson Column in London.

You naturally assume it's erected for a great military admiral who defeated an armada, right?

But you ask a local and they tell you, no, the hero on top of that pillar is famous purely for his politeness and hilarity while enduring a chronic toothache.

Hmm.

London is certainly one of the most monument-rich cities in the world, and some of them, like the Prince Albert Memorial and Nelson's Column, are incredibly ornate.

But after World War I, the Cenotaph, a very minimalistic, white, empty tomb, drew enormous crowds and still does.

Why? Is there something about it that keeps the dead in our thoughts?

Alistair.

Yes, on the Carlton Hill in Edinburgh, there's a ball, Nelson's Column, there's ball drops to signal to the ships in the 3rd and 4th the time at 1 o'clock.

The castle only doesn't go on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas, I believe.

Well, that's very fortunate.

Another ball drop? Well, it was Nelson's column, wasn't it? It was.

It's very, very fortunate.

He only had one.

And the station that's the deepest underground is Hampstead, 192 feet below pavement level.

That's 20 feet higher than Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

I made a mental note not to go there.

i had to get the tube to jess's anyway texting her to say i'd arrived at king's cross she told me which tube station to head for and said she'd meet me outside the exit on the escalator down to the platforms i stared hard at the underground map i'd downloaded to my phone it was to check my direction and changes of train but it was also to take my mind off the fact i felt like i was traveling down to the center of the earth to the depths of hell so dramatic it was a cool autumn day but i was sweating by the time i found my platform my armpit sticky beneath my hoodie the platform actually shook under my feet as the train arrived it was so much louder than i was expecting a kind of powerful do

Trafalgar gave its name to a tube station called Trafalgar Square, but this has since been swallowed up by the nearby Charing Cross tube station.

However, the actual Trafalgar Square, along with its famous Nelson's Column, still exists.

In a similar vein, Russia commemorates the Napoleonic era with just four metro stations, all of which are in Moscow.

and three of them are adjacent to one another on the same line, the Phileovskaya, and none of them really need much explanation regarding who or what they represent.

Trafalgar Square itself was a symbol of how disillusioned, out of touch, London aristocracy had become.

Built a few decades prior as a monument to commemorate the grandeur of the empire, Nelson's Column stood at the center of the square, an impressive monolith of stone and bronze.

But the working class in London was not pleased.

First, the area where Trafalgar Square now stood used to be home to hundreds of working class folks already struggling to survive.

They were evicted, their shops closed, their houses demolished, and they were forced into the slums of the East End to sink or swim on their own in overcrowded, dirty, and dangerous conditions.

Second, construction of Nelson's Column, a monument to honor a military hero, took way longer and cost way more money than it was supposed to.

The working poor were outraged that London was spending so much money on the square that no one even wanted when they could have spent it on hospitals, public housing, and much-needed food instead.

The poor saw the square as a hostile, spatial takeover, the wealthy elite literally tearing down the spaces of the destitute to build a monument to themselves.

Columns can mean different things.

They can, you know, chimneys or Nelson's Column and, you know, they can refer, the same kind of symbol can communicate.

Enjoyably written, but also kind of, I don't know, pretty obvious maybe.

It feels a bit more like he's describing how you can read buildings if you want to.

A deflated Verloc walks by a man staring at a tank who turns out to be the Scotland Yard detective.

Stevie and Winnie are at Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, feeding the feral pigeons [pigeons cooing] at the base of one of the four identical bronze lion statues, which was a popular activity in the day.

The lions were cast from the melted down bronze from the cannons of the defeated ships in the Battle of Trafalgar.

However, if you want to see them come alive, you'll have to stream A Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.

And because this is the 19th century, it can also be very, very large.

Meanwhile, London gets Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square in the 1840s.

Admiral Nelson stands at the top, around 50 metres above ground level.

which is an extraordinary way of honoring someone.