I took a walking tour of Westminster, London the other day. It was just drizzly enough to make you open an umbrella and at least windy enough to invert the umbrella once opened. English weather likes to tease visitors. The moment you think it's about to pour, it changes it's mind and goes all sunny. But as soon as you're ready to declare the rain past, it grays up and drizzles all over again.

The tour guide was a frumpy, middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Gillian. She was occasionally funny, especially when she slipped in political barbs and bits of sexual innuendo, and she had some interesting historical facts to share, e.g. Anne Boleyn was believed to be a witch by nature of a sixth finger and a third nipple. (Fact check: It was a mole not a nipple, but I'll give Gillian a pass on this one). But overall, the tour was a bit dull and less informative than a wikipedia session. Here's a sure moneymaker: GPS walking tours that tell you when to turn left and when Westminster Hall was built; option to select from several voices.

I was joined by a couple of friends and two dozen strangers, aged five to sixty or thereabout. History is for all ages. The youngest were were two button-nosed blond girls, the cereal-commercial-cute variety who remain indistinguishable from one another until they reach puberty. One of them amused the adults by asking hard questions, like, "What does 'drunk' mean?" and "What's a nipple?" I suspect that her parents keep her locked in closet. She had an older brother, around eleven, who had discovered the principle of the public wisecrack and applied it enthusiastically, but he had yet to master the elusive art of wit. (Some people never master it.) He was not, however, a know-it-all. That role was reserved for one of my companions. When Gillian prompted the children for the nickname of the Scottish rebel, William Wallace, whose name starts with "brave," my friend breathlessly shouted, "Braveheart!" The kids still looked mystified, so no harm done. Other than my friend, the adults were mostly mute, which seemed to suit Gillian.

The gods of tourism had not been kind to Gillian on this day. The mercurial rain distracted her audience, and the wind made it difficult for us to hear her. Still worse was the chanting from a large crowd of Tamil demonstrators across the street. They had been gathering in the square for weeks to protest the military actions of the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil separatist guerrillas and thousands of civilians which the separatists had been holding hostage. The separatists, led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been fighting a 26-year civil war to establish independence from the Buddhist Sinhalese majority for the Hindu Tamil minority. That evening, the Sri Lankan military succeeded in freeing the hostages and launched a final attack which defeated the separatist. So much for the power of protest.

The protesters annoyed Gillian more than the weather. Why, she wondered aloud after offering the audience a one-sentence summary of the conflict, did they feel the need to demonstrate in London about events in Sri Lanka? No one answered. Then we moved out of earshot of the protest so that Gillian could explain to us how the English government ripped the entrails from the still living William Wallace, the Scottish separatist ("Brave--") who led a civil war to establish independence from the English majority for the Scottish minority.

Wallace's rebellion was the most glaring parallel, but almost every element of the Sri Lankan conflict had some correspondence to events in the brief English history that Gillian presented for us.

Religious conflict? We saw the square where Puritan Oliver Cromwell executed Catholic Charles I after vanquishing the crown in a civil war. When Charles II was crowned after Cromwell's death, he had Cromwell's embalmed body hanged, which is not nearly as much fun as hanging a live person. Charles then planted the head on Windsor Palace where it remained until the ever mischievous wind blew it down into the road. Supporters carried it off, and it can now be found in Cambridge.

Political repression? Gillian explained to us how the Queen of England, who has no power, still annually opens Parliament with a speech in the chamber of the House of Lords, which hasn't much power either. Why not the House of Commons, which actually runs the country? In 1642, King Charles I tried to arrest five parliamentarians. Royal sovereigns have not been allowed in the Commons Chamber since. We also learned of a jail cell inside the Clock Tower which is reserved for politicians gone bad. It's only been used once--for an atheist parliamentarian who refused to swear the oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria on a bible. (Big Ben, by the way, refers to the bell, not to the clock tower.)

War? We saw a house with a rare black iron railing. Queen Victoria ordered London to paint its railings black in mourning for the death of her husband, Prince Albert. The railings are rare because the British military appropriated most of them for munitions during WWII. The iron proved to be unsuitable for the munitions, however, so most of them were cast into the sea.

Perhaps it's unfair to blame Gillian. She just gives the people what they want. History seems much prettier when sealed in box so that it can't infect our safety and stability with its dark diseases. We have novelized our history. Historical figures have become characters, caricatures even, performing the parts of heroes and villains in a lively play that has no consequence in our lives. Thus, Velupillai Prabhakaran of the Tamils cannot be compared to William Wallace of the Scots. Prabhakaran was a dark and complicated man who led a morally ambiguous rebellion which utilized terrorist tactics against a repressive government. Wallace was a warpainted Hollywood hero who fought gloriously to save his people from a villainous king.

But Prabhakaran should not despair. In time, once it's safe and his terror has been reduced to memory, he too may get his own Hollywood movie to glorify his exploits, like Robin Hood, Genghis Kahn, Billy the Kid, and others. In the meantime, we ask his supporters to please be quiet and stay out of site. We have history to learn.