Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I shared a round-up of British stories, mostly related to COVID-19. Tina shared the British e-books that she bought to read while staying at home.
I don't seem to have the focus to manage a post about one thing, right now, so here's a post about several things.
Did you all see the Queen's speech about the pandemic? I was encouraged watching it.
The speech was nearly overshadowed by the news that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized on Sunday due to persistent symptoms of COVID-19 and moved to ICU on Monday. He's still there, as I write this at mid-day (US Central time) on Thursday, but the latest report from No. 10 Downing Street is that he's improving.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is deputizing for the Prime Minister. He had already been playing a leading role in the government response to the coronavirus.
This video explains the lack of succession planning in the UK government compared to the detailed list that the US uses.
We watched the film 1917 last week and enjoyed it. It's a World War I story of an attempt to get a message to a front-line command before troops are ordered into a German trap. You'll recognize lots of actors in support roles, but the movie is carried on the back of George MacKay. I'll always remember him fondly from the movie Pride, since I saw that while we were in England, a day that included a visit to the library in Birmingham.
I listened to the audio version of Tan France's autobiography, Naturally Tan. Tan is the style guy on Netflix's reboot of Queer Eye. He grew up in Yorkshire, born to parents who immigrated from Pakistan in their teens. I enjoyed learning about the immigrant experience in Britain and, also, about how he navigated being British on a show based in the US.
I'm in the midst of the A to Z Challenge, using the theme "What to Pack on Your Creative Journey." Since the posts are about creativity, I've been sharing illustrations from the Victoria and Albert Museum to indulge my fascination with all things British and Irish. My favorite so far is this architectural rendition of an amusement center in Trafalgar Square that never materialized. It certainly would have changed the landscape!
What British content have you been paying attention to this week?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
