The Serpentine at night.
Physical Energy by G F Watts, in Hyde Park in London.
This statute of a man on horseback, executed with deliberate coarseness and vigour, and cast in bronze, exists in three versions: one in London (pictured), one in Cape Town (South Africa) and one in Harare (Zimbabwe). The original plaster also survives, and is on display at the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey.
My photograph doesn’t show the detail of the statute, but I love the way the rising ground behind it in this view makes it appear to stand in countryside, although it is only moments away from the London traffic in the Bayswater Road and Knightsbridge.
This is where I was born. The building is on Hyde Park Corner, in London.
It was originally Lanesborough House; built in 1719 for James Lane, Viscount Lanesborough. By 1733 it had become a hospital, named after the patron saint of England, St George. In 1827 the old building was demolished and replaced by the present building, completed in 1834.
In 1980, it closed as a hospital, and re-opened (in the old building, however) in 1991 as the Lanesborough Hotel, which it still is.
The room in which I was born looked across Knightsbridge towards Hyde Park and the Rose Garden.
A suite at the Lanesborough Hotel now costs up to £14,000 a night (US$22,000). The restaurant is very good and it is also a good place to sit in with a coffee or a tea after a walk across the Park.
The Cascade at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
This gravity-driven waterfall was built by Grillet for the 1st Duke of Devonshire (1640-1707). It drops down over 200 vertical feet in a fall of 24 steps. Each step is of different size and shape, which causes the sound to vary as you pass along it. Visitors are allowed and, indeed, encouraged to paddle and play in the cascade.
In many ways, it foreshadows the Princess Diana Memorial in Hyde Park, which is also a water feature passing over varying depths and forms, and which is also designed to allow paddling. The Princess Diana Memorial depends on electric pumping systems and requires daily maintenance, which makes it less satisfactory than its much older predecessor. But both are very successful as public art and entertainment.
