Why fork out as much as £14.50 for admittance to expensive attractions like the Tower of London when you can get into most of the capital's museums and galleries for nothing? Like for example the National Portrait Gallery, just north of Trafalgar Square, to which I paid an impromptu visit yesterday. I was unexpectedly impressed by how much bigger the gallery appeared on the inside than on the outside, and by the breadth and quality of the works on display. I bet you'd find a visit fascinating too, should you ever find yourself in the area with an hour or two to spare.
Entrance to the Gallery was through the modern light-filled Ondaatje Wing, named after a financial benefactor whose portrait just happens to have found its way into a prominent position on the ground floor. I ascended a giant airy escalator to the second floor, past a rather ropey-looking Ian Botham, to start my tour 500 years ago in ye olde England. The second floor galleries were very much a chronological history lesson, all kings and queens and famous courtiers. Imagine Queen Elizabeth I and you probably picture one of her portraits hanging here, and ditto for most of the other Tudor monarchs. Later there were more politicians and artists and scientists and writers - many of whose staring faces suddenly made me exclaim 'ah, so that's what they looked like'.
As the centuries rolled by it was fun observing the changing face of male fashion - with hair evolving from from wavy Stuart tresses through flowing Georgian wigs to Victorian side-whiskers, for example. I was struck by one particular self portrait, painted in 1691 by obscure Swedish artist Michael Dahl, whose casual blokeish tousled hairstyle wouldn't have looked out of place in any of the bars round the corner in 2005. The other male portraits looked severely dated, but I swear that beneath the dodgy hair several of their faces bore a striking resemblance to certain modern acquaintances of mine, not that I could quite tell who.
After the austere over-posed Victorian rooms, the 20th century came as something of a relief. These were people whose lives we remember, or have at least seen in photographs, and at long last there was rather more than a token female presence. Even the royal portraits were less posed and considerably more edgy than their historic counterparts - although perhaps the Queen Mother wasn't quite wrinkled enough. It felt strange, but somehow right, to see Alan Bennett and JK Rowling as part of the same historical sequence as Charles II and Florence Nightingale. But I was glad to be brought back down to earth by the bang-up-to-date exhibition of children's self portraits in the basement - we may not all be famous but we're all important.
