The second section of the designated Diana Memorial Walk begins at Burton's Ionic Screen. It loops along the south side of Hyde Park to Kensington Gardens, taking us up past Kensington Palace and the Diana Memorial Playground to to the remarkably peaceful classical temple and fountains of the Italian Gardens at the head of the Serpentine, before returning along the lake's north side to Hyde Park Corner.
I prefer to join this second stage of the Diana walk at Alexandra Gate, (named after King Edward VII's beautiful Danish Queen). It leads into the park from Exhibition Road with its complex of stately buildings inspired by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Consort, and his Great Exhibition of 1851.
The Queen's flamboyant Albert Memorial, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott,(1872), stands on the site of the Great Exhibition and dominates the park here. Scott's creation which won him his knighthood from a mourning Queen, is best described by Alastair Service, London's chronicler of Royal architecture. "It is a realisation on a monumental architectural scale of the type of medieval shrine of metal and jewels used to contain the relics of saints". Writing nearly a century earlier in 1895, a critic described it as: "Noble in its plan and dimensions, built of varied and valuable material, and enriched with appropriate statuary, it is at once an adornment to the great city, and a national memento of a good and wise man". Both critiques fail to mention the heady whiff of self-righteous Victorian imperialism that surrounds this bronze gilt statue and its canopy. You will find a close inspection is rewarding. I gain endless pleasure from its powerful, self-confident, (though now deemed politically incorrect), imperial and colonial symbolism.
