'Our daughters' daughters will adore us and they'll sing in grateful chorus! FEAR NOT! Sister Suffragette!"
I hadn't seen these before (it amazes me at either how blind I am or how much London has to offer!) on the lawn near Parliament.
Way to go Sistuh! (Can you believe that they were literally handcuffed, jailed and I even heard of instances in the States of Suffragettes being 'tortured' UGH!)
I like this pic, and I'll let you read the explanation - "The Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais) is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1888. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year.
The story goes that England's Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais and Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender. Edward offered to spare the people of the city if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked and wearing nooses around their necks and be carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first and five other burghers soon followed suit and they stripped down to their breeches. Saint Pierre led this envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates and it is this moment and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice and the facing of imminent death that Rodin captures in these figures, which are scaled somewhat larger than life.
In history, though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband by saying it would be a bad omen for her unborn child."
'Meow...' Just some deco from the walls of Westminster Palace aka Parliament....
And to end, I just thought this was a cute picture, all the school kids eating their lunch below a statue of George V (Elizabeth II's grandfather)...
