Category: History
Sargent in Stockholm
February 8, 2019
I’ve always enjoyed grand portraits by the great artists: Van Dyck, Velazquez, Gainsborough, you know the list. I came late to John Singer Sargent. I first encountered his work at an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2015. Two years later I was enchanted by the intimacy of his watercolours at the Dulwich Picture […]
Swedish food, Part One: “what have the Swedes ever done for us?”
January 24, 2019
In her Reith Lecture in 2018, Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan said this about the Swedish people: “Think of the Swedes” “I mean we think of the Swedes now today as making expeditions to Ikea, assembling furniture quietly, not getting cross at it. We think of them going to the woods and picking berries. I mean […]
“You either see it or you don’t”. The Dennis Severs House
January 12, 2019
Where do you go as a treat for a nephew whose 11th birthday is a week before Christmas? We took him to the 18th century. On Sunday 23rd December we travelled by London Overground to Shoreditch High Street. As we walked towards our destination, we passed the strangely rather wonderful shop window of Gardner’s, […]
My round-up of 2018
December 28, 2018
2018 has been a year that required urgent distractions from the shambles that passed for political debate in Westminster. Fortunately it’s been a good year for adventures: exhibitions, travel, theatre, food & drink. Here are just a few of my personal highlights: Theatre – behind the scenes at The Bridge In February I wrote […]
Tintoretto’s 500th anniversary, and Venice today
December 7, 2018
Feasting on Tintoretto Venice is currently celebrating the 500th anniversary of the painter’s birth, in 1518 or 1519. Almost all his major works remain in his home city, spread among 29 locations. I imagined that the exhibition The Young Tintoretto at the Accademia was going to be a rerun of the one at the Musée du […]
The Shooting Party
November 16, 2018
On a chilly November morning, somewhere in the English countryside, we assembled in a farmyard for an early briefing before the day’s action. The captain who was to be our commander stressed that our safety was his primary concern. Later that morning I was sitting in a cramped trailer with twenty armed men and […]
A long walk from Agincourt to Richmond
September 20, 2018
“And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here ….” On a sunny Sunday in August 2014 I walked round the perimeter of the battlefield of Agincourt. It is now farmland, ploughed earth and pasture. And trees. Even allowing for the intervening 599 years, it was easy to imagine […]
“Call me a taxi”, a Postcard from Alghero
September 5, 2018
I have a confession: Does anyone else dislike driving overseas? There’s the de-skilling effect of your expensive hire car having a manual gearbox, when you’re used to an automatic. Driving in an Italian town is like a stressful video game, played in a real car, in hot and humid conditions. You’re proceeding cautiously along […]
Postcards from Paris; May 2018
July 6, 2018
Rue du Nil. Gregory Marchand was given the nickname “Frenchie” when he was cooking in the kitchen of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen. It stuck, and in 2009 he opened his first restaurant with the name in Paris. Since then he has opened a wine bar, a wine shop, and Frenchie to Go, all on Rue du […]