After Choral Matins at the Royal Hospital we walked in the rain to pay our respects to Sir Denis and Lady Thatcher, both of whom have memorials outside the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary, where their ashes are buried.
It reminded me that before this website started in summer 2015 I was a frequent contributor to the Letters page of the FT. One Saturday morning in January 2012 I got an exiguous e mail from Wanda; “well done”. I was rather Bertie Woosterish and thought of replying: “well done, are you dining at Berkeley Mansions, perplexed, but beef will be jolly well wd”. Then I wondered … had it come to pass … had I had my first letter published and I jolly well had.
JANUARY 14, 2012 From Mr Christopher Bellew
Sir, David Tang (“The perfect G&T for Mr T”, House & Home, January 7) omits to mention Denis Thatcher’s dislike of lemon in a gin and tonic. At an army dinner the same mess waiter twice put lemon in his glass, and twice Sir Denis fished it out adroitly and flung it into the fire. While I like lemon, I acknowledge that it is the least important ingredient. Mr Christopher Bellew, London W6, UK
We walked back to the National Army Museum to fill in a bit of time before lunch. I had last been for an Irish Peers’ Association drinks party where we were shown the silver that had belonged to Irish regiments of the British army. It has recently had a make-over and, like the Design Museum in Kensington, is a big empty space with unsatisfactory exhibits. The NAM has been fairly criticised for catering to children and we couldn’t find anything to interest us on our brief visit on Sunday morning. But that is changing and I will go to their Munnings exhibition, on over the winter. I have this print of the Belvoir hounds being exercised which I have photographed rather badly because of reflections on the glass.
Sir Alfred Munnings was one of Britain’s most celebrated equine artists. This exhibition features over 40 original paintings from his time with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Shown together in England for the first time in a century, these impressionist paintings highlight the role of horses in military operations, while capturing the beauty of these animals in the war-affected landscapes of France. (National Army Museum website.)
I hope the NAM will again become a serious museum. I remember with pleasure their 1994 Rex Whistler exhibition.
I prefer pithy to exiguous.
I should have thought the authors stellar store of anecdote would, by now, have warranted a column. I can truthfully declare that I frequently find more instructive (and jocular) material in his blog than I read in the national press, and, obligingly, all my correspondence is published. The fact that I can avail of such wit and wisdom gratuitously really means its win win. Well done indeed.
I looked out the Army Museum catalogue of the Rex Whistler show and was thrilled all over again at his work and life and the happenstance of its being brought to modern attention in such a place. And now to hear from you that wonderful Munnings is to be celebrated there.
The Munnings story is as splendid as his work. His three volume autobiography starts in an East Anglia and an artistic world which has long gone but which even in the Victorian or Edwardian day he writes of was an anachronism. It will be good to see paintings of his which are not gypsies, fairs and sporting horses – though he did them so well. Of course he was never quite fashionable and ended up badly out of step with the RA of which he was President. His reputational downfall came when in 1949 he gave a broadcast address at an RA dinner and rubbished Picasso and his world. There was of course something in what he said about the perils of Modernism, but it is his tweedy and smocked rumbunctiousness which shines through as making him worth paying attention to.