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Obama’s in, so how about a new name for Bush House
• WHOOPS of joy universally at the inauguration of Barack Obama echoed in your last week’s issue, as you reported on the celebrations of Caribbean Camden and the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion as he chilled his champagne to toast the swearing in.
Welcome Obama, good riddance Bush.
A fresh start and such a good thing.
How could we mark it? It could be done symbolically on both English-speaking sides of the Atlantic.
Just south of Camden’s southern boundary lies the Aldwych, dominated by Bush House.
It is almost synonymous with the BBC World Service.
A change of name is called for, to prevent the universally admired international broadcaster being associated, even subliminally, with a now polluted brand.
Downing Street should consider pressing for this. The building is named after the US entrepreneur, Irving T Bush, whose Anglo-American company started to build it in the 1920s.
Though the Prime Minister could be flattered, the “Brown House” would have unfortunate associations with the Nazis.
But just across the street is the London School of Economics. Here Jomo Kenyatta in the 1930s studied anthropology with Professor Bronislaw Malinowski, leading to Kenyatta’s book Facing Mount Kenya and account of the Kikuyu.
There could be no more elegant tribute to President Obama than to rename Bush House after President Kenyatta, as his own father was Kenyan.
President Obama could himself reciprocate.
The Bush-Blair relationship seemed to so many in the United Kingdom, myself included, a humiliating mésalliance.
Curiously in Washington DC the official state guest house for those invited by the President is Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Purchased in 1942, it is named after a newspaper publisher who lived there in the 1830s.
An imaginative name change without the resonance of an unfortunate era now ended might well even now be in the mind of a new president to whom we all look for new beginnings.
GRAHAM GENDALL NORTON
Author of London
Before the Blitz
Address supplied, NW6
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