Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.
Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
There was an old man with a beard, who said: 'It is just as I feared! Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren have all built their nests in my beard.
I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.
My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.
London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.
I grew up listening in awe to stories of their wartime adventures. My granny, Joan, was a journalist and wrote amazing letters to my grandpa when he was a prisoner of war, while my nana, Mary, was a Land Girl, then a Wren. They were so independent, resilient and glamorous.
When the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the medieval city in 1666, Christopher Wren was invited to design a new one. Within days, he had drawn up an elegant grid of broad boulevards leading to majestic squares, but it came to nothing - the existing landowners wanted things as they had been.
The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford is an astonishing building, designed by Christopher Wren. Its painted ceiling has just been restored so that the darkish miasma that was Robert Streeter's original allegory of truth and light striking the university is now bright with playful cherubs and lustrous clouds.
