Drinks By The Pool (Or Structured Products Made Simple)

I visited a large house in East Anglia a few years ago and the owner outlined his plans for landscaping and extending his already extensive grounds. More a project for a French King and more a blog topic for The Irish Aesthete you might think.

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Categorised as Business

Phoney

Kingsley Amis kicked it off with Colonel Sun in 1968. “It” is the craze for continuation novels and authors such as Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle have all been victims of this literary mugging.

Garter

Thomas Woodcock, CVO, DL, Garter King of Arms, photographed by Hugo Rittson Thomas.

Snaffles

Snaffles, the early 20th century equestrian artist, unwittingly lent his name to a restaurant in a basement in Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, that opened in 1968. Four friends jointly owned it; a wine merchant called Fitzgerald, a flâneur called Cobby Knight and Rose and Nicholas Tinne. In those days small restaurants were unusual – people… Continue reading Snaffles

Hitch

He directed more than fifty films between 1925 and 1976. My mission this winter is to watch the lesser known ones that I have never seen or heard of. So last night I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz, released in 1969.

What Do Bloggers Read?

Where do chefs go to eat? What do wine-makers drink? What do bloggers read? I have had little luck in finding good blogs and then, like the buses, two come along at once. You might like them as well.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828)

The Goya exhibition at London’s National Gallery is well worth at least one visit. It shows his portraits in more or less chronological order. Various aspects appealed to me.

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Categorised as Art, History

Stones of Venice

A new exhibition opens at the Ashmolean today; drawings of Venice culled from the Uffizi, Christ Church and their own collection. Among others they are by Titian, Tintoretto and Canaletto.

The Man Who….

This post is about someone who wrote more than 170 novels, 18 plays and 917 short stories. In 1928 a quarter of all books sold in the UK were by this author. One more clue: this person wrote the screenplay for King Kong.