In May, I was invited to a ceremony to unveil a “blue plaque.” Blue plaques in Britan are not quite official, but they are smiled on from above. They are put outside of buildings, which have a particular resonance with an important person from the past. You will not see one outside the (largely fake) tourist trap which passes itself as Shakespeare’s birth place— but go to 23 Brook Street, Chelsea, London and you will see a plaque stating that here was once the home of Jimi Hendrix.
Blue plaques are not patriotic tub-thumping because there is one outside the house in London where Benjamin Franklin stayed—he was hardly one for the British Empire—and there is another for Voltaire. There is even one on Baker Street, in honor of a fictional private detective.
