Category: Art

Gardening, from Eton to Paradise

My grandmother Jeanie Bellew (1890 – 1973) was an excellent fisherman until she went to live at Barmeath when she turned her attention to gardening. Heather Muir, who created the garden at Kiftsgate, named this viola after her friend and neighbour.

Tits or Ass?

While you ponder on which you prefer, you can get both at The National Gallery. T and A; Titian and Artemisia.

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Categorised as Art

In Pursuit of Rare Meats

I’m sorry, I just cannot approve of an expedition in pursuit of rare meats and I hope few people want to see rare mammals killed. It’s pursuing animals to extinction.

Batsford

It is sometimes instructive to judge a book by its cover. Nobody could mistake the E Phillips Oppenheim cover in yesterday’s post for a treatise on bee keeping, unless the protagonists are being stung.

Monuments’ Man

George Clooney’s 2014 film, The Monuments Men, didn’t get a big hooray this side of the Atlantic, mostly because British participation was underplayed. Oh, it was a bad script too.

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Categorised as Art, History

Two Monkeys

Next time you pop into the Uffizi Gallery look out for this remarkable altar piece. It’s a busy picture so let’s zoom in on a detail.

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Categorised as Art

Lovely Lewes

Lewes has all the conveniences that are expected in a county town: a court house, a prison, a brewery, Waitrose and some rather fine architecture. Somehow the developers have done only minimal damage.

Sir Oswald

This portrait of Field Marshal Lord Alexander is by Sir Oswald Birley. As I am more familiar with his grandson, Robin, who I remember starting out selling posh sandwiches to me in the City before taking on his father’s business, running clubs for people with money in abundance but sometimes insufficient in other more desirable… Continue reading Sir Oswald