The King George VI Chase will be run over three miles at Kempton Park later today. At least one reader here will be watching and I’d like to congratulate her on being elected to the Jockey Club this year.
Great discoveries have been made in a bath in Greece and an orchard in England. I make my contribution in the library bar at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner.
Reading P G Wodehouse is a source of great pleasure to me but it has a serious angle. It, subliminally, provides education on titles and forms of address and he doesn’t put a foot wrong.
I hadn’t visited the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields for about a decade. It has had some major work done in that period and now looks even more like it did on the day of Soane’s death in 1837.
The Naval Museum in Madrid originates from a proposal my ancestor, Mendoza y Rios, made towards the end of the 18th century. It is only a biscuit’s throw (a favourite expression of my grandfather) from the Prado and is worth visiting for one exhibit alone.
In the Church of England the period leading up to Advent, the fag-end of the interminable Trinities, is second only to Lent in popularity – if you are on the flower rota.
There were no poppies on sale in the Irish Republic in my childhood. The same ones were brought out each year, like Christmas tree decorations. They had wire stalks and a small black button in the centre with Haig Fund written on it.
A recent comment, by John Fairhead, turns my thoughts to the entry barrier to London clubs. It was reported that Jeremy Paxman was blackballed from the Garrick a few years ago; “too pleased with himself”, apparently, but then he does have a lot to be pleased about.