place

Walter Besant Memorial

1904 establishments in England1904 sculpturesBronze sculptures in the City of WestminsterMonuments and memorials in LondonOutdoor sculptures in London
Sculptures by George FramptonVictoria Embankment
Sir Walter Besant Novelist Historian of London Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund
Sir Walter Besant Novelist Historian of London Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund

The Memorial to Walter Besant is a bronze bas-relief on the Victoria Embankment in London. It is considered peculiar for the presence of eye-glasses on the sculpture, considered the earliest example of it in London. The memorial is dedicated to Walter Besant, a novelist and historian of London. A campaigner for authors' rights, he is among the founders of the Society of Authors, who placed the memorial on the Embankment in 1904. Besant also played a role in the creation of the People's Palace in Mile End. The memorial is the work of George Frampton.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Walter Besant Memorial (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Walter Besant Memorial
Victoria Embankment, City of Westminster Covent Garden

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Walter Besant MemorialContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.5096 ° E -0.1185 °
placeShow on map

Address

Victoria Embankment

Victoria Embankment
WC2R 2NS City of Westminster, Covent Garden
England, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

Sir Walter Besant Novelist Historian of London Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund
Sir Walter Besant Novelist Historian of London Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund
Share experience

Nearby Places

Civil Service Rifles War Memorial
Civil Service Rifles War Memorial

The Civil Service Rifles War Memorial is a First World War memorial located on the riverside terrace at Somerset House in central London, England. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1924, the memorial commemorates the 1,240 members of the Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles regiment who were killed in the First World War. They were Territorial Force reservists, drawn largely from the British Civil Service, which at that time had many staff based at Somerset House. Both battalions of the expanded Civil Service Rifles were disbanded shortly after the war; the regiment amalgamated with the Queen's Westminster Rifles, but former members established an Old Comrades Association to keep the regiment's traditions alive. The association began raising funds for a war memorial in 1920, and the Prince of Wales unveiled the memorial on 27 January 1924. It takes the form of a single rectangular column surmounted by a sculpture of an urn and flanked by painted stone flags, the Union Flag on one side and the regimental colour on the other. The base on which the column stands is inscribed with the regiment's battle honours, while an inscription on the column denotes that a scroll containing the names of the fallen was placed inside. The memorial first stood in the quadrangle of Somerset House, which the Civil Service Rifles had used as a parade ground, but the civil service began to vacate Somerset House towards the end of the 20th century. As the building and its courtyard were re-purposed, the memorial was moved to the riverside terrace in the late 1990s. Members of the regiment continued to attend Remembrance Sunday ceremonies until at least the late 1980s, by which time many former members were in their nineties; the last known surviving member of the regiment attended a rededication ceremony in 2002. The memorial was designated a grade II listed building in 1987, which was upgraded to grade II* in November 2015 when it became part of a national collection of Lutyens' war memorials.

Savoy Hotel
Savoy Hotel

The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first luxury hotel in Britain, introducing electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous, and other entertainers (who were also often guests) included George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne and Noël Coward. Other famous guests have included Edward VII, Oscar Wilde, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Harry Truman, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, The Beatles and many others. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel.The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has 267 guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.

Humanitarian Futures Programme

The Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) was originally initiated at King’s College, London, as an action research programme based within the School of Social Science and Public Policy at King's College London and over a decade worked with a wide range of social and natural scientists, representatives of governments, international and non-governmental organisations, as well as the private and humanitarian sectors. Its purpose was to identify future humanitarian challenges and solutions. This mission continues as Humanitarian Futures (HF), providing futures-oriented discussion papers and emerging perspectives when it comes to dealing with ever more complex humanitarian crises. It attempts to help organisations with humanitarian responsibilities to prepare for future humanitarian threats. HF believes that these threats will be more complex and unpredictable than those of today, and that their impacts will be of an exponentially different order. The Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team (HDPT), 24 May 2007, accessed 9 April 2009. HF also focuses upon solutions with a view to helping such organisations strengthen their prevention, preparedness and response capacities. These potential solutions come from a range of sources – including the natural and social sciences, the corporate sector and the military. HF has developed a series of tools, methods and approaches to assess humanitarian organisations' futures capacities and the potential ways to strengthen them. In addition to its partner organisations, these resources have been created with the intention of aiding the wider humanitarian community in planning for the future. The programme director is Dr. Randolph Kent, a former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Somalia and several other East African crisis zones.