Royal Wed TIL

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TAKE AN ‘IMMERSIVE’ TRIP TO THE
REGENT’S PARK SORTING OFFICE
Visitors are invited to make a free
‘interactive’ visit to a pop-up WW1 mail
sorting office in The Regent’s Park –
evoking the giant wooden building
called the ‘Home Depot’ that handled all
the mail from the front line 100 years
ago. Two free public events, hosted by
The Royal Parks charity and The Royal
Parks Guild on 12 and 19 May, invite
the public to discover this vital role
played by London’s Royal Parks during
wartime Britain.
The visits are part of a series of
activities hosted by The Royal Parks,
together with The Royal Parks Guild, to
mark the centenary of the Great War and
the involvement of the parks.
During the war, soldiers and their
families sent over two billion letters and
140 million parcels. Every single item of
post sent to members of the British
Army went through the Home Depot at
The Regent’s Park. It was sorted by
thousands of postal workers – many of
whom were women – and sent on to
soldiers across the world.
The sorting office was believed to be
the largest wooden building in the
world – initially it covered four acres of
The Regent’s Park and was then
extended, increasing its area to just
over five acres.
Now one hundred years on, visitors
can join an immersive experience,
bringing to life the story of the 2,500
people who worked there to make sure
soldiers' mail was delivered safely,
securely and quickly, even work a shift,
as part of an interactive session led by
The Postal Museum.
There is a First World War outdoor
exhibition showing how the Post Office
kept the war going and how jammy buns
kept them going.
And there’s a chance to write a
postcard to a soldier, a postwoman, your
great-grandparents, or a parks gardener
to tell them what you think about the
First World War.
The First World War project runs until
December 2019, with a host of events
being organised in the Royal Parks over
the next two years. Further information
at ww1@royalparks.org.uk
THE GREAT SPECTACLE: 250 YEARS
OF THE SUMMER EXHIBITION
The Royal Academy’s Summer
Exhibition is the world’s longest running
annual exhibition of contemporary art and
has been held each year without
interruption since 1769. Staged to
coincide with the 2018 Summer
Exhibition, The Great Spectacle will tell
the story of the annual show by featuring
highlights from the past 250 years.
The exhibition will include over 80
paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints
from the first Summer Exhibition through
to the present day by artists such as Sir
Joshua Reynolds, Angelica Kauffman,
Elizabeth Butler, Thomas Gainsborough,
Thomas Lawrence, John Constable,
J.M.W. Turner, John Everett Millais, Sir
Frederic Leighton, John Singer Sargent,
Peter Blake, Tracey Emin, Zaha Hadid,
Sir Michael Craig-Martin, David Hockney
and Wolfgang Tillmans, amongst others.
Since 1769, the Summer Exhibition
has played a central role within London’s
art world. This great spectacle, dominated
by the famously crowded and collage-like
arrangement of pictures across the RA’s
walls, has captured the interest of millions
of visitors. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the exhibition
provided the main forum within which
artists and architects could showcase their
individual practice and compete with their
rivals for popular and critical acclaim.
Today, the exhibition continues to feature
works by distinguished painters, sculptors,
printmakers, photographers and architects
as well as up-and-coming artists.
The Great Spectacle will focus on
moments in which the Summer
Exhibition made an especially significant
impact within the British and European
art world, and on pictures that
experienced particular success or failure
within the exhibition space.
t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g a z i n e • t h i s i s l o n d o n o n l i n e