Gunpowder Treason, Tower of London
My son is a 13-year-old sports fanatic, who has never willingly read a book, let alone a display panel, in his life. Museums are not, shall we say, high on his list of preferred destinations. But he has an appetite for gore and enjoys a good jaunt, so I asked him to accompany me to Gunpowder Treason, a new audiovisual show at the Tower of London.
It is a story well told on the top floor of the White Tower; 400 years ago, a group of radical Catholics planned to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament and kill all those attending the opening of parliament on 5 November 1605, including the king and queen.
As parliament was then a wooden structure surrounded by a dense townscape, the conflagration would have been devastating and the political fallout incalculable.
When the plot was discovered, Guy Fawkes, the gunpowder expert charged with lighting the fuse, was taken to the Tower, questioned and then tortured for his confession, before being hung, drawn and quartered, while his fellow conspirators suffered a variety of fates broadly within the death/imprisonment spectrum.
Gunpowder Treason is part of a countrywide commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the plot, with parallel displays at other locations including the Royal Gunpowder Mills, the Houses of Parliament, the City of Westminster Archives Centre and Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.
The show is an object-free zone, with high audiovisual production values, and a design language of streaming live news and tabloid headlines. The captions are concise but slightly timid and plays the relevance card by addressing terrorism, religious fervour and the response of the state to attack.
So in the build-up to the plot, the conspirators 'planned an act of terror on an unprecedented scale - they believed it was an act of God against a tyrannical regime'. In other words, 9/11.
You might read: 'Was there a secret sponsor behind the Gunpowder Plot waiting to take control after the big explosion?' and think about the 7/7 London bombers. Or you might think of Guantanamo Bay when the caption tells you that 'the quality of information obtained by torture could not often be guaranteed'.
The analogy was interesting, but lacked conviction. In the final part of the display the curators explain their design and text choices, which is a nice touch, but perhaps they were intimidated by their surroundings, with a dungeon just a yeoman away.
My co-conspirator had a predominantly oral rather than aural memory of his trip to the Tower, with a proper understanding of the pressure on my pocket. I'll hand you over to him, since I imagine he's within the target viewing age for the show.
'Things started well with a comic (£1.20) for the train (£18), sniggers at the snoring passenger, a short tube journey (£2.60), and a pit stop at Eat on Tower Hill (£7.40 - it was lunch time. Good hot chocolate).
The wind blew and the sun shone as the pigeons strutted on the cafe tables. Then we bought our tickets (£24) and picked up the guide book (£3.95). In we went, snatching looks at Traitors' Gate, the ravens, the Beefeaters and the Bloody Tower before heading into the White Tower to accomplish our mission.
'The armour was good, especially a massive tournament lance and Henry VIII's full body armour, but it was a bit claustrophobic in the Tower. There weren't many signs to Gunpowder Treason but we eventually found it on the top floor. At last. I felt quite excited when the big fiery red panel announcing the exhibition had a PG sticker. Into the show, it was a relief to sit down and watch TV - home from home in fact.
'The screens were lively enough to stop me from feeling bored, and I got the references to terrorism in the writing. The pictures of Guy Fawkes's signature getting worse as he was tortured were quite shocking. I was glad they copped out of making a film of the conspirators being hung, drawn and quartered, but I don't really get why it was a PG: I've seen scarier moments in a Bond film.
'The arrangements of weapons downstairs were really good, and there were a few I would definitely not like to make close contact with. I tried lifting a sword and pushing my arm into a fake gauntlet to see how armour felt. By now I was flagging so Mum recognised my plight, and we got a drink and a chocolate cake at the new Tower Cafe in the old Armouries (£4.25) before we had a look at the Crown Jewels.
'I refused to go into the torture exhibition in the Bloody Tower, just seeing the thumbscrews in the Armoury was quite enough, thank you very much, so we walked along the battlements, out past the ice cream stall where my yearning looks went unanswered, back by tube (£2.60) and train to Ipswich - car park (£4.20) - and home.
'I slept most of the way back - it's exhausting, all this history. But it was quite good fun, and I really liked the weapons... and the Beefeaters' hats.'
Alfie learned something, so did I, and we had a good time together. Total cost £68.20. So not a cheap outing, and, housed as it is in the White Tower, there's no alternative to the £24 entry fee. It's a pity that the website doesn't contain all the text and the films, because there is nothing in the show which could not be experienced just as well from the comfort of your own PC.
And I'm still a bit aggrieved by that PG sticker. Why can't we have 18-certificate exhibitions, with full-on looks at adult issues like terror, death, passion, pain, fear, brutality? They are all there in the Gunpowder Plot. It's just that this show doesn't quite have the guts to address them.
Laura Drysdale is a writer and consultant.
Project data
Cost: £115,000
Funding: largely self-funded, some support from UKTV History
Exhibition design: Flashback Television (films and overall design), Moving Brands (graphics)
Other suppliers: Touch Vision (AV kit), Baddesley Clinton (filming location), Orsolo Construction (walls construction)
Exhibition ends: 30 June 2006
My son is a 13-year-old sports fanatic, who has never willingly read a book, let alone a display panel, in his life. Museums are not, shall we say, high on his list of preferred destinations. But he has an appetite for gore and enjoys a good jaunt, so I asked him to accompany me to Gunpowder Treason, a new audiovisual show at the Tower of London.
It is a story well told on the top floor of the White Tower; 400 years ago, a group of radical Catholics planned to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament and kill all those attending the opening of parliament on 5 November 1605, including the king and queen.
As parliament was then a wooden structure surrounded by a dense townscape, the conflagration would have been devastating and the political fallout incalculable.
When the plot was discovered, Guy Fawkes, the gunpowder expert charged with lighting the fuse, was taken to the Tower, questioned and then tortured for his confession, before being hung, drawn and quartered, while his fellow conspirators suffered a variety of fates broadly within the death/imprisonment spectrum.
Gunpowder Treason is part of a countrywide commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the plot, with parallel displays at other locations including the Royal Gunpowder Mills, the Houses of Parliament, the City of Westminster Archives Centre and Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.
The show is an object-free zone, with high audiovisual production values, and a design language of streaming live news and tabloid headlines. The captions are concise but slightly timid and plays the relevance card by addressing terrorism, religious fervour and the response of the state to attack.
So in the build-up to the plot, the conspirators 'planned an act of terror on an unprecedented scale - they believed it was an act of God against a tyrannical regime'. In other words, 9/11.
You might read: 'Was there a secret sponsor behind the Gunpowder Plot waiting to take control after the big explosion?' and think about the 7/7 London bombers. Or you might think of Guantanamo Bay when the caption tells you that 'the quality of information obtained by torture could not often be guaranteed'.
The analogy was interesting, but lacked conviction. In the final part of the display the curators explain their design and text choices, which is a nice touch, but perhaps they were intimidated by their surroundings, with a dungeon just a yeoman away.
My co-conspirator had a predominantly oral rather than aural memory of his trip to the Tower, with a proper understanding of the pressure on my pocket. I'll hand you over to him, since I imagine he's within the target viewing age for the show.
'Things started well with a comic (£1.20) for the train (£18), sniggers at the snoring passenger, a short tube journey (£2.60), and a pit stop at Eat on Tower Hill (£7.40 - it was lunch time. Good hot chocolate).
The wind blew and the sun shone as the pigeons strutted on the cafe tables. Then we bought our tickets (£24) and picked up the guide book (£3.95). In we went, snatching looks at Traitors' Gate, the ravens, the Beefeaters and the Bloody Tower before heading into the White Tower to accomplish our mission.
'The armour was good, especially a massive tournament lance and Henry VIII's full body armour, but it was a bit claustrophobic in the Tower. There weren't many signs to Gunpowder Treason but we eventually found it on the top floor. At last. I felt quite excited when the big fiery red panel announcing the exhibition had a PG sticker. Into the show, it was a relief to sit down and watch TV - home from home in fact.
'The screens were lively enough to stop me from feeling bored, and I got the references to terrorism in the writing. The pictures of Guy Fawkes's signature getting worse as he was tortured were quite shocking. I was glad they copped out of making a film of the conspirators being hung, drawn and quartered, but I don't really get why it was a PG: I've seen scarier moments in a Bond film.
'The arrangements of weapons downstairs were really good, and there were a few I would definitely not like to make close contact with. I tried lifting a sword and pushing my arm into a fake gauntlet to see how armour felt. By now I was flagging so Mum recognised my plight, and we got a drink and a chocolate cake at the new Tower Cafe in the old Armouries (£4.25) before we had a look at the Crown Jewels.
'I refused to go into the torture exhibition in the Bloody Tower, just seeing the thumbscrews in the Armoury was quite enough, thank you very much, so we walked along the battlements, out past the ice cream stall where my yearning looks went unanswered, back by tube (£2.60) and train to Ipswich - car park (£4.20) - and home.
'I slept most of the way back - it's exhausting, all this history. But it was quite good fun, and I really liked the weapons... and the Beefeaters' hats.'
Alfie learned something, so did I, and we had a good time together. Total cost £68.20. So not a cheap outing, and, housed as it is in the White Tower, there's no alternative to the £24 entry fee. It's a pity that the website doesn't contain all the text and the films, because there is nothing in the show which could not be experienced just as well from the comfort of your own PC.
And I'm still a bit aggrieved by that PG sticker. Why can't we have 18-certificate exhibitions, with full-on looks at adult issues like terror, death, passion, pain, fear, brutality? They are all there in the Gunpowder Plot. It's just that this show doesn't quite have the guts to address them.
Laura Drysdale is a writer and consultant.
Project data
Cost: £115,000
Funding: largely self-funded, some support from UKTV History
Exhibition design: Flashback Television (films and overall design), Moving Brands (graphics)
Other suppliers: Touch Vision (AV kit), Baddesley Clinton (filming location), Orsolo Construction (walls construction)
Exhibition ends: 30 June 2006
