First stop The Portrait Gallery. There's a World War I exhibit on. Serious commissioned portraits of generals and kings, and one is reminded again how much Czar Nicholas looked like King George V, his cousin who didn't rescue him from the revolutionaries. Then photographs of young men who signed up, from poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke to a smiling underage boy who never came home. There are some early black and white films too, including the restaged one of soldiers going over the top at the Somme. Ironically the photographer risked his life in getting genuine live footage but the cameras of the day were simply not up to zooming and the men looked like ants. A woman watching tells us that her grandfather was at the Somme and at Passchendaele and came home.
There's also an exhibition commemorating Vivian Leigh, born in 1913, a hundred years before the portraits went up last year. Mostly film promos but some biographical info and interesting. Fairly broad repertoire.
Then down to Covent Garden. Full of tourists but there are buskers and street entertainers and a happy mood.