Like most Londoners, I tend to take for granted the architectural treasures of my native city.  I’ve become a little less blasé since I moved overseas more than ten years ago, but not much.  Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to a private dinner in the Banqueting Hall, and I defy even the most hard-bitten and hard-to-impress of my fellow Londoners to be unmoved by the extraordinary beauty and historical richness of this room.

Perhaps its chief glory is the ceiling painted by Rubens in 1636.  I sat in the Hall, trying to imagine King Charles I being led through one of its windows facing Whitehall and onto the scaffold where he was beheaded on January 30th, 1649.  I sat next to an English historian over dinner who told me that the king, on that bitterly cold morning more than 350 years ago, requested an additional shirt in case the crowd gathered for the execution might see him tremble and mistake it for fear.

It was thrilling to spend time in that beautiful room.  I felt very fortunate, jolted out of my complacency, and reminded yet again how wonderful London can be.