Ah, the National Gallery. In what other museum could you trample on a mosaic of Bertrand Russell lowering a naked woman into a well while removing her sunglasses. The woman is very small compared with Russell. She is holding a magnifying glass up to Russell’s face so he won’t notice. Do you think she stands any chance of a hot date with the philosopher, or will she ever remain to him merely “Experimental Subject Number Five Hundred and Eighty Three”?…
When faced with any collection of medieval or renaissance art, Paula and I immediately start playing Ugly Baby Jesus. The aim is to find the ugliest depiction of the Christ child in the gallery. We’d like you to join in with these selections from the National Gallery’s Jesus collection. Leave a comment in the blog to tell us which you think is the ugliest baby Jesus of all. The contenders are… Psycho Baby Jesus Hipster Baby Jesus Stoner Baby Jesus…
It is hard to imagine a less ostentatious or more important bit of sporting memorabilia. The picture doesn’t really give you an idea how small it is, so here is a selfie, purely to give you a sense of scale of course. The story goes like this. In 1882 a team of cricketers came from Australia, and defeated the English team in a close game. Being beaten by a bunch of colonials (and from a former prison colony at that)…
We took the train to Oxford to have tea with our old friends David and Carole. This is what a proper English tea looks like. Sandwiches (smoked salmon, egg salad, crab, and chicken), cakes, and scones with clotted cream. Oh, and somewhere there may be a cup of tea in there as well. Carole is now the master of one of the colleges, so even on a public holiday she had a working lunch, but David met us at the…
We were off to the Royal Albert Hall this morning (actually to the Elgar Room there, a small studio theater) for coffee and classical music. We heard the brilliant young pianist Jean-Paul Gasparian playing difficult bits from Debussy, Mozart, and Chopin on a bright red piano formerly played by Elton John. Between you, me, and the piano, I think Jean-Paul is a better pianist. He had brilliant technique and great expression, and played for an hour or so from memory…
Yesterday we went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, both parts. It was brilliant, and worth the extravagant price we paid for the best seats. Good story, good acting, great staging, and fantastic effects. I’m not going to say any more, except Wow! Before and between the shows we wandered around Soho. When I was young and living in the UK I would head for Soho whenever I had time in London, because that was where Dark They…
Today we walked through Regent’s Park again, and got a good view of a coots’ nest. Though there was one egg already present, the pair of coots were still working on the nest. One of them was paddling backwards and forwards to the reeds, chewing off lengths of reed with its beak and bringing then back for its mate to add to the ramshackle raft that constituted their domicile. It may not look like much but in London it’s worth…
Handel and Hendrix were neighbors, separated only by a brick wall and two hundred years. A pity about the two hundred years really, because I’m sure Jimi would have invited George over for a jam session. Hendrix owned two LP copies of the Messiah, and they were some of the most worn records in his collection. In fact, Hendrix did see the ghost of Handel once, as he wandered through the wall into Hendrix’s tiny flat wearing a nightgown. That…
Today we visited the former home of the historian Thomas Carlyle, and his wife Jane, a modest Victorian house in a Chelsea terrace near the river. The furniture is mostly the Carlyle’s, including the sofa, on which may have rested such illustrious bums as those of Dickens, Tennyson, and Darwin. Jane Carlyle felt the need to justify such an extravagant purchase to her husband. I came, saw and bought – a sofa! – It is my own purchase, but you…
Sometime a great tree can grow from a tiny seed, and sometimes a bloody great weed. The Chelsea Physic Garden has been collecting and cultivating medicinal and useful plants since 1673, and has been responsible for some of each. The garden occupies almost four acres of some of the most desirable real estate in London, just across the road from the River Thames. They pay a rent of five pounds a year for this, a figure that was set in…