I became aware of the role played by architecture in literature reading Colette’s 1933 novella, La Chatte.
Rigaud and Handel
The Private Chapel of St James
It’s lunchtime on James Miller’s sculpture tour in Warwickshire and Northants. (Why do some English counties have an abbreviation and others don’t? It is not the case in Ireland.) Cars roll onto the greensward outside the Private Chapel of St James at Great Packington. Following instructions we park in a huge circle, car bonnets facing… Continue reading The Private Chapel of St James
The Beagle Has Landed
Les Nabis
Les Nabis is not a name with which I was familiar. It is an artistic movement that fizzled out in 1900 after only twelve years. Some of the members’ names are familiar: Bonnard, Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Sérusier, Ranson and Valloton. Be very careful writing about them because spell-check prefers Nazis to Nabis.
Calixto’s Carmen
Big Cheese
I’m sorry, I’ll write that again – big trees. This is a Maclura Pomifera named after William Maclure, an American geologist born in Scotland. The Pomifera means fruit-bearing. It should be named after William Dunbar, another Scotsman, who identified it in 1804 when he was travelling from the Mississippi River to the Ouachita River.
The Urban Birder
The Church of Our Lady, Merevale, et al
This church is now known as St Mary’s but I have chosen to retain its original nomenclature before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Now it is a parish church but it dates from the 13th century and Pevsner thinks it was a capella ante portas of Merevale Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1148 by… Continue reading The Church of Our Lady, Merevale, et al