THE PERSONAL ENRICHMENT LIST or, 49 things to do in London before you leave Tallis...
London is full of marvels, so many that you could spend a lifetime sampling them and not exhaust the possibilities. Whilst you're endeavouring to gain a few decent A level or BTEC results you ought to also consider nourishing your soul. London is a great place to do that. Here's a modest list of things we think will entertain, educate and otherwise improve you. Why not attempt to do the lot? Don't forget to tell your tutor when you've completed one of the challenges. Send photos of you at the relevant locations to this address. Use the same address to let us know if you have any suggestions for additions to the list.
Go to Highgate Cemetery, one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries of Victorian London. Find the author of Das Kapital on the Tour. Visit George Eliot's grave, which is there too. Then read 'Daniel Deronda'.
Visit Nunhead Cemetery with a telescope and look across London to Highgate from the vantage point. Then go on the tour of the catacombs under the ruined church. (Once a year. Spooky.) Or find the Stearne Monument and, sitting nearby, read one of Cicero's 'Tusculan Disputations' (perhaps 'On the contempt of death' would be suitable?). Or find the Attic Monument of John Allan and read aloud the Iliad book 23: 106-261, where Patroclus' funeral pyre is raised.
Find out about the drains. Either visit the Crossness Pumping Engine, or write to Thames Water to see if they'll take you on one of their occasional sewer tours.
On foot, visit the accessible (above-ground) remnants of London's abandoned underground stations. Just where is York Road station, anyway?
Read a book by an author writing in a language you don't know a single word of.