Simon Schama looks at the history and style of Downing Street’s State Dining Room.
Read the transcript for the film below:
Simon Schama:
This is the state dining room, built by Sir John Soane, wacky but brilliant architect, at the end of the 18th, early 19th century. This is a room that’s everything that Downing Street is not. This room is grandiloquent, a little pompous, even. It has imperial aspirations, the oak panelling, the portrait of George II, the silverware, the grandiose table. Essentially, it’s a room of enormous opulence. George II is a good choice by Mrs Thatcher and Quinlan Terry because he’s king presiding over the British Empire at its most flourishing apogee in the middle of the 18th century. And this space really breathes a rather aristocratic demeanour.
Some prime ministers earlier in the century, Bonar Law in particular, actually used to work at this table and would certainly have more dinners. Bonar Law, again, decided to bring the Cabinet up here, the beautiful Cabinet Room not being grand or something enough for him.
Soane, in the early 19th century, under the long-lived Tory prime minister, Lord Liverpool, was hired to actually put grand spaces into the heart of the first floor of Downing Street. He does a small dining room where, traditionally, prime ministers and their families took meals before the flat upstairs was better fitted out for pizza and instant soufflés. But even a democracy, a modern democracy, needs grand, ceremonious, symbolic spaces. And this very beautiful room, 42 feet long, vaulted ceilings put in by Soane, is the expression of that. It’s what Britain might have had as the seat of its prime ministers, were it not to be so self-effacing and modest about wanting a place of work, a place of people’s government. Soane was very interested in Roman history, and this is a sort of rather Roman room. It’s nice to think of Soane himself, very old, pretty crackpot, but wonderful, in 1826, being a guest when this was first used as a dining room. Good for you, Sir John.
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