This is the actress and poet Mrs Mary Robinson, aka Perdita, and boy is she pissed. I think this painting was by way of being a threat. She had had an affair with the Prince of Wales, the man soon to be ruler of a powerful country. The affair had not lasted, but she had the evidence, and now she wanted money in exchange for his texts letters. She commissioned a portrait from Gainsborough, one of the great painters of…
There has been a botanic garden at Kew since some time in the 1600s with the current collection being started in 1759. That means it’s older than America. There’s 300 acres of outdoor plantings and greenhouses with plants from every continent and climate zone. We visited at peak rhododendron season. The rest is pictures.
It’s clear that the inhabitants of Camden Town eke out a precarious existence giving one another tattoos. Every other shop on the main street seems to be a tattoo parlor. Now, I know what you are thinking. Andrew, you’re thinking, that’s an economic impossibility. Eventually every inch of skin in Camden town will be covered in tattoos, and the whole economy will grind to a halt. But you’re wrong. Some of the tattoo joints also offer laser tattoo removal, thus…
We were off to the Kensington Science Museum this morning, and the then walked home through Hyde Park. The Science Museum’s best exhibits are the steam engines, airplanes, and timepieces. They have James Watt’s workshop, reconstructed exactly as he left it when he died. OK, maybe not exactly as he left it, the video projected on the wall is new. Wen he died, Watt was working on machines to copy sculpture, or as we would call them, 3D printers. Modern…
We’re back in the UK, in London for a couple of weeks, and then on the canals and rivers for more adventues on Wharram Percy. The pub was long a mainstay of British life, being at once bar, social center, entertainment venue, gambling den, and in some cases even a place to eat. Times change, though. Pub food has got better, but far fewer people drink and drive, and many immigrants to the UK have no tradition of social drinking….