Southampton

An old Sotonian

Southampton is a port, a place of arrivals and departures. Ships are its raison d’etre. It enjoys renown for being the leaving place of the Pilgrim Fathers and the ill-fated RMS Titanic, which is feted in this city and which took its toll on the city’s seafarers. But it is also a city of handsome buildings such as the Bargate, the fortified entrance to the ‘old’ town, where Jane Austen sojourned for a short time. It also has a respectable Art Gallery, famed for its Henri Gaudier Brzeska portraits, an exemplary selection of Camden Town School of painters (England’s response to post-impressionists). The Art Gallery is found in the city’s Civic Centre, which is not without its own architectural merits, and whose clock tower cum campanile plays “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” every four hours, a ‘chimely’ reminder that Southampton above all is a maritime city. Given that we have so much of the last four months flying by boat, on the sea or beside it, it seems only fitting that Colin is an old Sotonian.