The Atlantic via Belgrave Square

During my saunter across town yesterday I had to stop and wait while a group of teenage tourists took a photograph. Not at all unusual in London, except that the thing being photographed was an unremarkable sketch on the tiled wall of Hyde Park Corner underpass, depicting Wellington's peninsular campaign. They proudly told me they were Portuguese and had come to visit their "Old Friend" England (Portugal being England's oldest ally, since 1373, as I happily told them but they already knew). It is always a pleasure to have my faith in the next generation restored.

I was on my way to Belgrave Square, where coincidentally the Portuguese embassy is located, as well as a newish statue of their countryman Ferdinand Magellan, and of another transatlantic voyager, Christopher Columbus. Belgrave Square is obviously trying to compensate for its role in a less successful transatlantic crossing, because it was at number 24 that Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star line, dropped by for dinner with Lord Pirrie, chairman of shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, one evening in 1907 and commissioned the Titanic.

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