Category: Uncategorized

(To Patrick Cullinan) “The Old Rectory Farnborough Wantage Berkshire 2 May 1950 My dear Patrick, . . . The words on you postcard are gay, lucid, arresting and sound as though you were creatively happy, even if you aren’t putting anything down on paper. Doesn’t one work in spurts? – long periods of silence, then… Continue reading John Betjeman

On 26 May 1954, Queen Elizabeth II approved a new artistic depiction of the Royal Arms, above. Now the King has new, slightly different, Arms, below.

Roy Jenkins’ biography of Churchill is sometimes dull but more often of interest. He digresses, something of which I approve, to relate his own experiences.

Sorry, Ella, it was a sunny day in London Town yesterday. We walked through The Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and saw snowdrops.

Winston Churchill in Great Contemporaries writes biographies of twenty-five famous men, there are no women, who he knew. It’s an appealing format and one any of us could adopt but could we, would we?

The Via San Gregorio Armeno is a narrow alley in Naples full of shops selling nativity scenes. When I went some years ago I thought it all rather kitsch, verging on vulgar. I have changed my mind.

Why did Roy Jenkins decide on another major biography in his old age. (It was published when he was eighty-two, the year before he died.) John Campbell explains.

Paris in the 1920s was a crucible in the heat of which Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were forged by artists like André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes. There was a woman in another country and another continent who wanted to learn about these new styles.

More than five years ago Bertie and I went to The Charterhouse. B was impossible on the tube, wriggling and squirming, and not very well behaved in the grounds of the C. He was a puppy.

“Few of us are aware of how much … we eat – because we tend to consume it indirectly. … oil is used for cooking and can also be found in margarine, chocolate, ice cream or baked goods, as well as in cosmetics or soaps. … production has more than doubled over the last two… Continue reading Pufuleti