Thanks to the Ancient World in London (and currently the books from Neal Stephenson) I’m quickly catching up on my history of London and neighbouring areas. I’m still far from an expert, or even seriously knowledgeable – hence I’ve decided to judge who the best invaders of London were on looks. Instantly the Silures – quite sexy in King Arthur, 2004 – spring to mind. Quite neglected when talking and writing about history, they would make the perfect entry… were it not that, unlike Boadicea, they never made it to London, and spent their days in Wales making sure the Romans had one hell of a time. Figuring that the Vikings are quite the clich (and Mel Gibson is covering that one already anyway), this leaves me with just the Romans – a bunch of wusses that eventually got kicked out, and had quite some problems getting in in the first place. They and J. Caesar (pronounced ‘YOO-lee-us KYE-sahr’ for those in doubt/the office!) bored me to death, or at least sleep, during that particular chapter of De Bello Gallico.
Thank God (and maybe the Romans?) for lunch breaks, though. A quick stroll outside offered the solution; the only ‘invaders’ London never got rid of (disregarding all immigrants, Belgae included) are pigeons. So if we combine the well organized but eventually unsuccessful Romans with these quite persistent birds, you get a new breed of super-invaders.
Thus behold:
Roman War Pigeons
(which are quite handy,
and beat
Greek War Elephants,
as they can multi-task,
delivering mail without having the urge to go on strike!)
Somewhere halfway through messing up the shadows on this entry, I realized Pixar (and various armed forces) quite got the idea before me. So definitely check out their (World) War (II) pigeons.
I admit, Valiant would would kick my Roman attack pigeon’s bird-ass any time! 😉
You have a better take on London’s Greatest Invaders?
It is not to late yet to join our Bloggers Challenge!
(and you don’t really need to worry about having my splendid Roman War Pigeon entry as competition,
as I can’t win anyway. ;))
A semi-random fact to prove I am not totally insane: Atotal of 32 ‘war pigeons’ were rewarded with the Dickin Medal, honouring the work of animals in war during World War II. Congratulations to Commando, GIJoe, Paddy and William of Orange (and Kaiser, also pronounced ‘KYE-sahr’)!