In the last century tube strikes were not infrequent. One morning in the 1980s a colleague was at the end of a long queue at a bus stop in north London. An expensive car pulled over and the driver offered her a lift if she was going to the City.
It’s well known that coronavirus manifested itself in London in the 1960s. The first case was seen in Hammersmith but it quickly spread through the capital.
Van Gogh’s peasants, he painted them in 1885, are startlingly unattractive. His subjects were inspired by The Blessing before Supper by Charles de Groux; a more comely assemblage.
Yesterday Bertie and I walked up the towpath to Richmond for the first time in over three months. During lockdown there had been many too many cyclists, joggers and walkers to use the towpath safely but now it’s back to pre-virus normal and Bertie was off the lead most of the time.
You can judge this book by its cover; the cover is orange, the endpapers green. Brian Desmond Hurst was born a Protestant in Belfast but converted to Catholicism so an apt reflection of his life.