Feeling great... feeling Britain!

Visit Britain recently hosted an intimate lunch at the Tower Club, and gracing the occasion was no other than Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador Stephen Lillie — a sure sign of just how earnestly they consider the efforts to promote, foster and encourage tourism to their island nation! As the representatives of Visit Britain proudly proclaimed, tourism to England, Scotland and Wales is at an all-time high, and with the 2012 London Olympics looming, they’ve gone all out in preparation, ensuring that any and every tourist gets his (or her) fill, and wanting more. Their campaign revolves around the concept of 1,000 Reasons to Visit Britain, and to be frank, it’s an aggressive, quality-laden presentation. Theater and the West End, shopping galore across so many price points (Harrod’s and Harvey Nichols on one end, all the way to bargain-full Portobello Road and Notting Hill), royalty and stately homes, national parks and vineyards, Scottish ski resorts, Michelin-star restaurants (we can forget how England used to be the culinary laughing-stock of the Continent) and cuisine from all over the world (some of the best Chinese and Indian eateries — check out Soho — can be found in London), sports and musical events/concerts, museums and galleries, Stonehenge and other World Heritage sites — these were just some of the inviting thousand reasons, and it does help that language isn’t that much of a barrier. Although honestly, the multitude and varieties of accents that can be heard in England alone (Manchester, York and even districts within London) would make the average Filipino’s ears swim in confusion.

The premise was that no matter what time of the year, there is so much happening in London and the other major cities (Liverpool, Edinburgh, Bath as prime examples). Having spent some five years in England while at university, I can readily confirm that all to be very true; and yes, while my time there can now count as Ancient History, predating cellphones, the Internet and soft “bog paper,” perusing the handouts during the lunch certainly had me silently waxing rhapsodic about my time there, and the weekends when I’d go down from Cambridge and “hit” London. Legally Blonde has opened this month as the new must-watch West End musical, and the Roundhouse in Camden is home to La Clique — a variety show that mixes burlesque, cabaret and circus in a startlingly innovative and entertaining manner. For the children, the Natural History Museum is a perennial educational favorite, and an hour’s drive to the Kent countryside yields the Hop Farm Family Park, which has been converted into Santa’s Magical Kingdom.

The only postscript I’d add is to always bring warm clothing and an umbrella (or hoodie)! Other than the torrid summer months of July, August and early September, Britain’s weather remains a constant guessing game of “cold, wet or colder and wetter.” But climate change notwithstanding, while the weather may be dismal and unpredictable, the attractions, events, shows and highlights that are on tap certainly made this “once-Anglophile” grow nostalgic.

Through a lens clearly

With acute clarity, these three authors make strong statements about modern life, whether it’s the hurly-burly of life in the Big Apple (Lethem’s Chronic City), morality and adultery, and the price we pay (Parker’s Professional), or obsessive love, and tempting fate, in modern-day Istanbul (Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence).

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (available at National Bookstore): Meet Chase, former child actor of a hit TV series, and now purported lover of a stranded female astronaut whose dire fate is followed closely by a sympathetic public on network television. And then there’s Perkus, a cultural critic and social misfit who sees conspiracies around every corner. Add into the mix Richard Abneg, former civil rights champion and now municipal fixer, and Oona, a ghost writer for the sterling bios we find on the bestseller lists. Against the grain of the rich and famous, Lethem creates a petri-dish of contemporary New York counterculture, and how this world intersects with Big Money, real estate and politics. Chock full of insider jokes and thin on plot, it’s still vintage Lethem, but not his best.

Professional by Robert B. Parker (available at National Bookstore): Reading a Spenser crime novel is like coming upon an old pet. It may be long in the tooth, but familiarity and dependability will outweigh all else. Along with Susan, Spenser’s psychologist girlfriend, Spenser’s new case has to do with a scheming, amoral Lothario, who gleefully handpicks rich wives and blackmails them with good humor and aplomb. Sociopath or just a dyed-in-the-wool common criminal? The action is fast-paced, the dialogue sparse and themes of honor among thieves, and trying to understand the “Why’s” of a social crime like seduction, are what makes this novel a brisk, yet satisfying, read.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (available at National Bookstore): Recipient of several awards for his Literature, including the Nobel Prize, the Prix Medicis Etranger and the IMPAC Dublin, Pamuk’s reputation is well established. In this new novel, against the backdrop of modern Istanbul, we’re given a tale of rich, engaged boy obsessed with a distant relative who works as a lowly shopgirl, defying social conventions and eventually shunning the ideal match of a fiancee, and living the rest of his life in frustrating and hopeless pursuit of his inamorata. At one level, this could be considered something of a departure for Pamuk, a more restricted and personal world-view; but as the story progresses, one sees the “landscape” expanding, with a different level of obsession and tragedy looming.