Ode to an Excellent Bookshop

I don’t normally buy new books these days. I tend to use the library and sometimes buy secondhand out of print. The exception is if I’m in an independent bookshop. Some of my favourites are in London and last Thursday and Friday I visited two branches of this shop :  Daunt Books.

On Thursday I popped into the Hampstead Branch at South End Road near the former bookshop in which George Orwell worked now a branch of Le Pain Quotidien (right).

The shop advertises a great idea that I had never heard of before : Daunt Books Walking Book Club! I hope the weather stays fine for them.

On Friday I revisited the shop and its sister branch opposite Belsize Park tube station. I had decided to take up the “challenge” put to me by a member of my local book group to choose a couple of suggestions for future reads for the group. After a search of the tables and shelves I came up with (and bought) my two choices.

“Deep Country: five years in the Welsh hills” by Neil Ansell is “Touching. Through Ansell’s charming and thoroughly detailed stories of run-ins with red kites, curlews, sparrowhawks, jays and ravens, we see hime lose himself … in the rhythms and rituals of life in the British wilderness.” (Financial Times)

and

“The hare and the tortoise” by Elizabeth Jenkins – well, if it’s good enough for discussion on Hampstead Heath on Sunday, it’s good enough for us! Jenkins lived very near South End Road on Downshire Hill. Her memoir ‘The View from Downshire Hill‘ tells about her life and home and living in this delightful area of north London.

8 Downshire Hill, Hampstead. The former home of Elizabeth Jenkins.

Another author who lived very near here was the poet John Keats and that very morning I had heard a brief radio snippet in which there is a visit to the Keats Shelley House in Rome where Keats died on 23 February 1821. I visited Rome back in 2008 and it was one of the highlights of the trip to see inside The Keats Shelley Museum by the Spanish Steps. There is a Landmark Property at the top of the building : Piazza di Spagna. How I would love to stay here!

The Salone, Keats-Shelley House

The Salone is dedicated to the posthumous reputations of Keats, Shelley and Byron. The main library collection of the house is here.

Keats House, Hampstead.

“I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing the top thing in the world.“

(John Keats 1795-1821~Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 24 August 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) ‘The Letters of John Keats’ (1958) vol. 2, p. 146.)

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

Letter, August 28, 1819, to his sister Fanny Keats. Letters of John Keats, no. 146, ed. Frederick Page (1954).

Have you seen ‘Bright Star’?

Tea and Books and Two London Gems

I was in warm, sunny London on Thursday. The original plan was to meet a friend from my online book group and attend a showing of the 1953 film “Little Boy Lost” organised by the Persephone Book Shop. I always book my cheap train tickets way ahead and when we came to enquire about the film all the places had been taken but I still had my train tickets. In the end it turned happily as the weather was so warm and sunny that it might have been a shame to have been cooped up in the BFI.

Our Plan B was to visit the National Trust property Sutton House instead. I’ll copy and paste Clare’s summary of the history of the house as she summed it up perfectly to our group yesterday :

“It is a Tudor house, with lots of later additions, and a
fascinating history. It was first owned by Ralph Sadleir, an important
official in four reigns starting with Henry VIII. After that it was owned by
other individuals plus passing through the hands of two separate girls’
schools, a boys’ school, a church institute which ran all sorts of
activities for young men, and in the 1980s it was occupied by squatters who
wanted to form an arts community there.”

Today Sutton House is very much a part of the local community and the only staff we came across were volunteers all of whom were friendly, helpful and knowledgable. You can check out the website to see the variety of activities organised at the house – not surprisingly it’s booked up for over a year for school party visits. At one point I spotted a flyer for ‘Sutton House Book Brunchers’ who meet at the Bryck Place Tea Room once a month. Bryck Place is the original name for Sutton House and the tea room is a delight – a book lovers’ and tea drinkers’ paradise! There was a bit of renovation going on in the tea room on the day we visited so it was a matter of help-yourself to drinks and cake or scones and jam and drop a contribution in the box. So we did! The tea rooms are surrounded by shelves mostly stacked with secondhand books but some also with secondhand cups and saucers and jugs and teapots all for sale.

The tour of the house began in the Linenfold Parlour (see the poster pictured above). This would have been an important room in Sadleir ‘s original building in what was at the time (1535) a quiet, rural village. You then can visit the cellars, climb the Painted Staircase to the Gallery, the Little Chamber and the Great Chamber, a bedroom now decked out as a Victorian study and climb up again to an exhibition and history room on the second floor. A further staircase takes you right down to the ground floor again where, on this east side of the house, is a Tudor kitchen with access to an enclosed courtyard and a Georgian Parlour. This last room had a corner devoted to tea and it’s accoutrements and I was happy to note the following little verse :

 “In lands near or far

or wherever you be

friendship is welded by

a good cup of tea”

From Sutton House it’s a short walk to Hackney Central Station where we boarded our London Overground trains in opposite directions. As I sat on my train heading towards Whitechapel the following text came through on my ‘phone : “Afternoon tea now available at 45a!”  Some friends, staying at the Landmark Trust property 45A Cloth Fair this week, were inviting me to join them for (another) cuppa and more cake. I’ve stayed at 45A in the heart of Smithfield between Barbican and St Paul’s tube stations half a dozen times already so it was like arriving home as I climbed the creaking staircase to the first floor sitting room and joined my friends for tea and cake.

Princelet Street – A Landmark Library Reviewed

One thing I should point out about in case you didn’t already know is that there are no tellys at Landmark Trust properties. Self-made entertainment is the order of the day. Each property usually has a small supply of jigsaws and every one also has its own library. I have already mentioned Landmark Libraries here.

There are all the reference books needed to find your way around the area, check spellings during Scrabble games or whilst doing a crossword, the trusty latest edition of The Handbook, a Bible and some recipe books NB here these consist of a Madhur Jaffery and The Paupers’ Cookbook and there is always the local Pevsner architectural guide.

Here at Princelet Street the children’s and young people’s books include that lovely ‘This is London’ featured in the previous post about The Tower of London, some Beatrix Potter books and well-chosen titles by Rosemary Sutcliff, Leon Garfield and Sally Gardner.

Of course, you can’t stay within a stone’s throw of Brick Lane without finding a copy of Monica Ali’s book of the same name on the bookshelves.

There is also ‘On Brick Lane’ by Rachel Lichtenstein (her grandparents came here from Poland in the 1930s). A book I noticed on a previous visit and read shortly after. It’s a history of the neighbourhood and the different nationalities and cultures that lived here in Spitalfields and an excellent introduction to the area. ‘Rodinsky’s Room’ is another of Rachel L’s books and the result of her investigation together with Iain Sinclair into the strange mystery of the disappearance in the 1960s of David Rodinsky from his room above the synagogue in Princelet Street itself. It’s another book that I bought after seeing it here although I haven’t read it yet.

“Rodinsky’s world was that of the East European Jewry, cabbalistic speculation, an obsession with language as code and terrible loss. He touched the imagination of artist Rachel Lichtenstein, whose grandparents had left Poland in the thirties. This text weaves together Lichtenstein’s quest for Rodinsky -which took her to Poland, to Israel and around Jewish London -with Iain Sinclair’s meditations on her journey into her own past, and on the Whitechapel he has reinvented.” [From Amazon product description].

The area has been well researched, not only by Lichtenstein. My sister read me all sorts of stuff about the churches in the City and about walks in the East End. And not surprisingly, books on architecture feature strongly, and not only church architecture. I loved this title and mused for a while flicking through looking at the sketchy illustrations of buildings.

Peter Ackroyd’s biography of London is here as well as his novel ‘Hawksmoor’ a dramatisation of which was broadcast on the radio a few years ago. It’s about the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor and the building of Christ Church, Spitalfields, a couple of streets away. I could not find that recording but I have found an interview with Ackroyd talking about ‘Hawksmoor’ with James Naughtie on Book Club on Radio 4, here.

And here also, is dear Amanda Vickery’s ‘Behind Closed Doors’. Very apt for this house as the TV programme ‘At Home with the Georgians’ featured nearby Denis Severs House (that book is here too: 18, Folgate Street).

It would also be impossible to have a library books in London without featuring several Charles Dickens titles.

Finally, the Landmark Trust supply their own History Album at every property. This makes fascinating reading as their investigations into the buildings and their histories are rigorous to a degree. 13, Princelet Street was left to the Trust by Peter Lerwill who bought the house and renovated it very much in the LT fashion. There was little more for the Trust to do when they took over other than decorate, equip and furnish the house ready for its guests . There is still a detailed history album on the shelves.

But possibly the best source of Landmark entertainment of an evening is the reading aloud of the many comments in The Log Book.

 

I was sent to The Tower – but I kept my head!

I’ve just returned from a couple of nights in London staying at the lovely Landmark Trust property at 13, Princelet Street. The house was built in 1719 in the Spitalfields area of east London for Huguenot silk weavers. It’s a lovely, warm, characterful house with all the comforts you could wish for on a cold winter’s evening in the east end of London when the wind and rain are blowing outside – as they were on our first evening. Fetch a takeaway curry from one of about 50 curry houses on Brick Lane, then over a cup of tea inspect the Landmark Library and plan the next day’s entertainment, review the day that’s just finished or take up the Landmark Handbook and plan another trip. I visited the house for a Friends’ Reception last October and wrote about it here.

Staying just two nights gave us only one full day in London and we decided to spend it at The Tower of London. I have visited this Historic Royal Palace on two previous occasions. The first time was at the age of 10 on the annual schools visit to London with my primary school in Norwich. I remember clearly seeing the Crown Jewels in one of the towers, that we all giggled at the name of one of the towers The Bloody Tower, seeing the ravens hopping over the lawns, their wings clipped, seeing The Traitors’ Gate and the wooden block and axe which took the life of Queen Anne Boleyn. I had long wished to return and my next visit was with a Swiss guest in 2010. We had a lot of London sights to fit into our day so I planned to return on the next appropriate occasion to have a closer look.

The Traitors Gate

Off with her head!

On Thursday with our 85 year old mother in tow we made a beeline for the Crown Jewels. These magnificent symbols of the British monarchy are displayed in such a way that everyone gets a good look at them however crowded the Tower may be. In fact, on this bright and dry early January day, although there seemed to be lots of people – of all nationalities – there were no queues at all. Our next port of call was the White Tower which houses an exhibition, The Power House, which tells about all the institutions that originally had their homes at The Tower – The Royal Mint, The Menagerie (now London Zoo), The Ordnance Survey, The Royal Observatory. There are also displays of royal armour and, rather strangely, gifts given to our royalty by nations around the world.

Chatting with a Yeoman Warder (or Beefeater) I discovered that 37 YWs and their families live within The Tower’s walls, plus a doctor and a priest. They have their own church and pub and it’s like a village community. But the Power House exhibition showed that in former times The Tower had been a virtual town.

After lunch we left mum in the warmth of the cafe to have a walk round the walls (for a great view of Tower Bridge)

and to see inside some of the other towers (the ones with narrow stone spiral staircases) to discover more about the Duke of Clarence who drowned in a Butt of Malmsey wine, about The Little Princes murdered in the Tower and about other prisoners including Sir Walter Raleigh. And my thoughts go back to that earlier visit and to the discovery a few years later of my best history book ever – W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s “1066 and all that”

“During the Wars of the Roses the Kings became less and less memorable (sometimes even getting in the wrong order) until at least one of them was nothing but some little princes smothered in the Tower, and another, finding that his name was Clarence, had himself drowned in a spot of Malmsey wine; while the last of all even attempted to give his kingdom to a horse.”

Looking Back on the Missed Months of 2011

A Happy New Year to You All!

Transferring stuff from one year’s diary to the next’s made me think I might make a note here on an event/category from each month of 2011 up to my starting this blogging lark in August. One event with one picture is quite a tough call – especially in the summer months – but I will give it a go.

January 2011 : Landmarking with Milady

The year started well with my usual London Landmarking Trip but this January I was fortunate enough to get a double dose of London Landmarks. I stayed in the 45A Cloth Fair property for 3 nights and visited friends at the Hampton Court Georgian House on one of the days. There is so much to see and do at Hampton Court that we have booked our January 2013 London stay at Fish Court in order to experience more. If you stay there is no extra charge for visiting the Palace. On the other day at Cloth Fair we took tea at the recently totally renovated Savoy Hotel – an out-of-this-world experience from the moment your carriage arrives to the moment you are driven away.

February 2011 : Milady gets culture

An early wet and windy two night excursion to Cambridge led to the wonderful discovery of Kettles Yard. Our trip was planned around a visit to The Scott-Polar Research Institute whose museum had just re-opened after extensive renovation work. But interesting as it was to see the exhibits at the SPRI the highlight of my visit was Kettle’s Yard. We even went there twice. On the Thursday afternoon of our arrival we took a walk from the hotel and ended up at the house that is Kettles Yard. It is like walking into someone’s home – you ring the doorbell and are welcomed, photography is no problem, you may sit and look at the books and the place is crammed full of art and artefacts of what I suppose is called the modern era. It was on this visit that we heard about the Friday Lunchtime Concerts so from the SPRI we headed back to KY and joined a winding queue of keen concert-goers and enjoyed with them a chamber group of student musicians.

March 2011 : Milady gets Culture

Photograph: Robert Workman

At the end of March Out of Joint brought their play  ”A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson” to The Carriageworks in Leeds. I’d read quite a bit a bit about Dr Samuel Johnson and visited his house in Gough Square in London so was intrigued to see this well-reviewed piece. I was not disappointed. It is quite short, full of fun but with some pathos and there is also the most wonderful dog actor who must have been standing in for Johnson’s cat, Hodge. I would have loved to have seen the performance actually at Dictionary Johnson’s House but this was the next best thing. Highly recommended although I think the tour is finished now.

April 2011 : Landmarking with Milady

Friday 29th April 2011 must have seen the high point of the year in Britain – The Royal Wedding of HRH Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton. That very day I had booked (long before the wedding date was announced) to spend the May Day Holiday Weekend in France at Gif-Sur-Yvette the former weekend home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor just outside Paris and now managed as a holiday let by The Landmark Trust. I was visited there on one of the days by my good friend MN and we spent a literary day visiting Alexandre Dumas’ The Chateau of Monte Cristo at Port-Marly and La Maison Litteraire de Victor Hugo at Bievres, Île de France. It was such a good trip that we’ve booked to go back again next May so I’ll be posting in more detail then.

May 2011 : Milady Visits

Window shopping at Didier Ludot in the Jardin du Palais Royale

On 12th May the Optimist celebrated a special birthday! And on that very day we were booked to travel – in style, I might add – by Eurostar train from Yorkshire to Paris to attend our nephew’s wedding in Vincennes, just outside Paris, on the Saturday. What a fab weekend we had – lovely hotel quiet but right in the centre of Paris, lovely weather, except that it rained on the Sunday as we were leaving, excellent company and good food and wine with some “flanez” and pavement cafes thrown in for good measure.

June 2011 : Milady Reads and Visits

In Spring 2011 Persephone Books published a reprint of Adam Fergusson’s “The Sack of Bath”. On June 16th there was an Afternoon of Walks in Bath led by Caroline Kay, of the Bath Preservation Trust, and Adam Fergusson. We met at The Circus cafe for a lovely two course lunch and were then taken on a walking tour to view the effects of City planning policy on Bath during the 1960s. The walk ended at The Museum of the Building of Bath where we were served tea and cakes. But before all those pleasures I had the great pleasure of spending the morning with my online reading group friend Carol who lives in Bath and took time out to show me all the bookish delights of that city – of which there are very many. It was one of those days where looking back it seems impossible to have fitted so much into a mere 7 hours.

July 2011 : Milady Steps Out

On 30th June I set out with my sister on my first long distance walking trail – Wild Edric’s Way in Shropshire. The ‘holiday’ was organised by a local company with the delightful name of Wheely Wonderful Cycling Holidays which deals mainly in cycling holidays but with some walking tours also on their books. I say ‘holiday’ but at times it was jolly hard work!  We walked from the Stiperstones to Ludlow over 3.5 days. Approximately 40 miles was covered in total with 4 overnight stops. For the most part it followed the route of The Shropshire Way which coincided also with The Kerry Ridgeway and Offa’s Dyke National Trail. There were several places of interest on the route – churches at More, Churchtown and Ludlow and castles at Clun, Stokesay and Ludlow. We met other walkers and some lovely B&B owners along the way. I was glad to have done it and it felt like quite an achievement but I was not sure whether I wished to repeat the experience. However, the further away it has become the more I think maybe I would indeed like to do another such walk in the future.

Neglected classics – but not any more thanks to Persephone Books.

“Persephone Books reprints neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers. Each one in our collection of 96 books is intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written.”

As you know I love to sit in my boudoir reading. Some of you may have noticed the uniform grey bindings of the books on the shelves just behind my chair.

Persephone Books produce the most beautiful books, ever – totally thought through with care from beginning to end – from the simple grey covers to the endpapers to the quality paper and print to the Forewords and Afterwords written by well-known authors and others relevant to each book’s content or its provenance.

Each book comes complete with its own bookmark.

As long as you keep buying the books – is that a problem? – they send out a lovely printed newsletter “The Persephone Biannually” free of charge twice a year. In the past it was “The Persephone Quarterly” and  so I have to wait a bit longer these days for my new copy to arrive – Spring/Summer in April and Autumn/Winter in October. The Biannually is always accompanied by a new bookmark.

If you request a copy they’ll also send you their latest annual catalogue. Generally this is published to coincide with the Autumn/Winter magazine.

The publishers operate from their own shop premises in Lambs Conduit Street in Bloomsbury which are a delight to visit. Besides their own books they sell copies of the 50 books which they wish they had or wish they could publish and a selection of relevant secondhand  titles too. Besides books there are some household textiles, some pottery, cards, postcards and their notebook for sale.

Not all of the books are fiction – there’s some cookery, a gardening book, a book about The Sack of Bath in the 1960s, personal memoirs, biography. I certainly don’t have them all. Books can be ordered online, bought from the shop and from good booksellers. For a small extra payment they’ll gift wrap any book. They make perfect presents.

To keep your interest, just in case it is beginning to wane between book publications, you can sign up for an online Persephone Post to drop into your Inbox every day – mine arrives about 9pm each evening. There is also an online book group forum with a new book under discussion each month and you can receive email offers occasionally.

Then there are the real live discussions, talks, films, tea parties and book groups – usually held in London but they have been known sometimes to travel out of town – even as far as Scotland – and once they even went  to New York – to promote their wares and meet their customers.

And what’s best about them is that it was through them that I joined my lovely online reading group of friends around the world in 2004. I have met many of the members, mainly in the UK and mainly in London but also in Stratford upon Avon, Edinburgh, Berlin, Potsdam, Chicago and Massachusetts!

What’s my next Persephone read? In the new year I’ll be reading, along with the group, the latest Dorothy Whipple book to be republished in a smart grey cover – Greenbanks PB95. I already had an ‘original’ copy of the book!

Christmas Past: 400 Years of Seasonal Traditions in English Homes, plus Seven Years of Friendship

It’s becoming an annual Christmas tradition to meet up with some of my fellow online book discussion group members around the very beginning of December. Last year 10 of us planned to meet up at the London Review of Books Cake Shop on Bury Street near The British Museum. Then the snow fell … and fell and fell … so that in the end we were much reduced in number. Those who made it were mainly from way outside London – me from Yorkshire, also Bath, Oxford, plus two nearby Londoners from Chiswick and Dulwich.

This year 9 of us descended on The Geffrye Museum in Kingsland Road, east London. We’d booked a table in the restaurant to meet formally for lunch at 2.30pm. Travelling down from Leeds for the day this arrangement suited me fine. In fact I made the booking myself, just to make sure it would happen!

Christmas at the Geffrye Museum

The weather was certainly kinder to us this year. Although there was rain I hardly noticed it as almost all of my time was spent under cover. The Museum consists of a series of period rooms which at this time of year are decorated for Christmas according to the period. We didn’t really have much time to study the rooms in any depth as our main reason for being there was for lunch, book swops and natter. Our suburban London and Essex members had no problem getting here this time and Eurostar behaved itself so that our member living in Brussels was able to join us as well.

Two tall piles of book swops disappearing fast!

What happens is this. There are two parts to our celebration apart from the meal and tea. Those who wish to do so bring a gift-wrapped book – one they think that it will be unlikely that others will not own or will not have read – not an easy challenge but it was successful. These are all collected up and then the bag full is passed round so that we can each have a ‘lucky’ dip. This we did between courses i.e. after the Geffrye Pie but before the Christmas pudding. I’m now the owner of “Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons. It’s a collection of short stories previously published in magazines such as The Lady, The Bystander, Good Housekeeping and now reprinted in a lovely new paperback edition by Vintage.

We also bring along some unwrapped swops and throw them all into the ‘ring’. These made two fair-sized piles which we put aside until after we’d finished eating. There is none of that “After you Cecil” “No, after you Claude” – we speak up straightaway when we see a book we should like to have. The picture shows a much-diminished pile but by the end there were just 2 books left to donate to the charity shop.

Long may this ‘Countdown to Christmas’ tradition last!

Leighton House in Kensington.

Today I met up with my sister and friend and visited Leighton House in Kensington. It was a beautiful day – unseasonably warm – and we met at Holland Park Tube Station. It’s short walk from there to Holland Park itself. Once inside the park you could be miles away from the busy metropolis that is central London. It was easy to forget that we were only just in Zone 2!

There’s a modern cafe in the middle of the park and it was here that we stopped for coffee (or, in my case, tea) and a chat before heading to the house.

Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830 – 1896), was born in Scarborough, my favourite Yorkshire seaside resort. His father was a doctor and so was his grandfather. In fact his grandfather was primary physician to the Russian royal family in St Petersburg. He amassed a large fortune and because of this Leighton was cushioned for the rest of his life. Although his parents were unhappy with his choice of career they agreed to it and expected him to become “eminent in art”. His successes were many – not least that Queen Victoria bought his first major painting and in 1878 he was appointed President of the Royal Academy. On his death his sisters ensured that the house was left to the nation, or at least to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

As usual no photography is allowed in the house. You enter a huge staircase hall, narcissus hall and the fabulous Arab hall. Leighton was a consummate collector of things Middle Eastern – tiles, textiles, ceramics, woodwork and other crafts collected on his travels – and art – from paintings by  Corot and Tintoretto to his contemporaries G. F. Watts, John Everett Millais and William de Morgan. Despite all the oriental artefacts the house struck me as rather spare and un-Victorian. There’s a lovely big garden at the back but it’s closed in winter. I noticed that they also plan some entertaining events. There’s an Operatic Evening and a Carol Singing evening coming up in December.

For lunch we headed down High Street Kensington to Whole Foods Market where Thanksgiving was in full swing!

Not The Last of the Duchess

My interest in the Windsors dates back to earlier this year when I stayed at their weekend retreat near Paris, now handily converted for self-catering holidays by the Landmark Trust. Back in the spring I read this book and the biography by Michael Bloch “The Duchess of Windsor”, and the one by Hugo Vickers “Behind Closed Doors: the Tragic, Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor” and then most recently Anne Sebba’s new biography “That Woman”. The authors of each book, it seemed to me, had an agenda and I still feel I am nowhere nearer knowing what the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were really like. Of course we can never ever know for sure!

Reading the last sentences I realise that all my reading has concentrated on Wallis and not so much on Edward. I need to address that. I’m currently reading James Pope-Hennessy’s life of Queen Mary which will go a little way to adjust the balance. I think perhaps the library can help too!

Last evening the Duchess was the main subject of the play I went to see at the Hampstead Theatre. This was a performance of the world premiere of “The Last of the Duchess” adapted by Nicholas Wright but based closely on Blackwood’s book.

I booked tickets when I came upon a link to it by chance via Google. At the time I was searching for more information about Lady Caroline Blackwood, the author of the book I had just read, back in May or June this year. At the time there was no inkling as to the cast but I knew that I wanted to see it. And anyway the theatre is just steps away from my elder son’s flat.

The casting was inspired. Sheila Hancock played, as if she were a Frenchwoman herself, the role of Maitre Blum, the Duchess’s Parisian lawyer. Her accent, her French, her dress and demeanor all had that je ne sais quoi of Parisian style that is so hard for Englishwomen to replicate. Of course, that meant that Caroline Blackwood , played so wonderfully by Anna Chancellor, would be the antithesis of the smart, immaculate, maybe teetotal, Blum. There were touches of humour throughout but the major protagonist of act two was Lady Diana Mosley who was played magnificently by Angela Thorne (great buddy of Penelope Keith in TV’s To The Manor Born). Mosley was a Mitford sister and close friend of the Duchess. At this period in her life she was profoundly deaf and forbidden by butler Georges, on instructions from Blum, to see her dear friend.

Photo from Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1367933/Wallis-Simpson-Robbed-abused-Duchess-Windsors-days.html)

The setting is the house in the Bois de Boulogne leased to the Duke and Duchess by the City of Paris. The Duke has died some time before and the Duchess appears briefly at the beginning of the first act, in a kind of dream of Blackwood’s. That is the Last we see of her. From then on she is upstairs helpless in her bed as the arguments and contretemps continue below. Lady Caroline, thrice married  journalist, has come to Paris to interview the Duchess but Blum will have none of it. There’s a suggestion that Lord Snowdon has been appointed to take her photograph. This Blum forbids but somehow as a kind of bribe she manages to arrange her own photo shoot with Snowdon. This takes place offstage during the second act. In the final act Blum coolly responds to every accusation of Blackwood’s as she herself becomes more and more intoxicated. I came away from the play with the same feeling of uncertainty as after reading the book. Was Blum a consummate liar and villain or was she, in some strange way honestly  protecting the Duchess from exploitation?

Photo from The Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8851278/The-Last-of-the-Duchess-Hampstead-Theatre-review.html)

As it turns out, in the end, it is almost the last of Lady Blackwood. She died only months after the publication of her book whereas the Duchess of Windsor was to live for a further 12 years.

At The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsmen

I’ve been hesitating as to whether to post about my visit to the British Museum on Thursday. Obviously I am no art critic, have no training in art and very little knowledge on the subject and even less knowledge about Grayson Perry himself so this is just my own personal comment. When I first heard about “The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman”  I was very excited to see it.

I had no idea what to expect but the thought of choosing artefacts, items made by craftsmen and women over the decades, centuries and millennia, from the vast archive of the British Museum had overwhelming appeal for me. Put together with recently crafted pots and tapestries and what I believe are called installations for me the mix was a huge success. I loved it!

We’ve had A History of The World in 100 objects and Our Top Ten British Treasures and now we have a kind of temporary memorial to all of the unknown craftsmen and women whose work has been collected by the museum – or donated to it – over the centuries of its existence.

The exhibition is divided into themes such as Shrines, Journeys, Magick, Maps, Souvenirs of Pilgrimage, Sexuality and Gender, Scary Figures and Patina and Texture. I think I’ve remembered them correctly.

There is Grayson Perry’s teddy bear Alan Measles in his own shrine on the back of GP’s motorcycle. There was a radio programme about the journey they made to Germany on the bike on Radio 4 last November.

No photography is allowed inside the Exhibition but I did take a few notes of GP’s comments on some of the themes that most interested me.

On the topic of Journeys he says :

“The “journey” has become a tired metaphor of reality TV describing a transformative experience. I come on a journey every time I visit the British Museum. I enjoy idealised foreign travel in my head. Walking from my house in WC1 within 20 minutes I can have an encounter with the world.” 

You may have thought the title of this post included a typing error but it is intentional because GP and many of us see The British Museum as a Tomb to Unknown Craftsmen. A pot by Perry on display is called “A Walk in Bloomsbury”.

On Maps he says :

“We trust maps. Maps are meant to be a trustworthy diagram of reality. All maps though contain some very human bias. They emphasise desirable features and leave out the undesirable. I like maps of feelings, beliefs and the irrational, they use our trust of maps to persuade us that there might be truth in their beauty.”

I have always loved maps and was delighted see a copy of  a book recommended to me by a friend and which has long lain in my Amazon shopping basket:  You are here : personal geographies ; by Katharine Harmon. A fabric map by Perry fills one wall – to see it at its best wait until you have moved into the next room and view it through a hatch in the wall.

On Souvenirs of Pilgrimage he says :

“We all make journeys to see places or people that are significant to us. It is natural to want a keepsake of the trip to remind ourselves and show others. Pilgrims usually travel light so the souvenir may only be a badge, a photo or a signature.”

I was delighted to see masses of badges collected over the years by the British Museum. Even such ephemera has a role in the exhibition. I smile because I have a box full of badges up in the attic.

This final quotation has a resonance for me too. I’m a great visitor to churches on my travels. On the subject of Scary Figures Perry says :

“We have always had images at gateways to warn and protect. Cathedrals had carvings over the doors showing the Last Judgement and the damned going to hell – now we have CCTV.”

To find out more  there’s a book that accompanies the exhibition (of course) and here’s a link to the exhibition in pictures :

Grayson Perry’s Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman – in pictures

In the end I didn’t buy a souvenir but I saw three books which will go on my library suggestions list :

50 British Artists you should know, by Lucinda Hawksley

You are here : personal geographies ; by Katharine Harmon.

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman by Grayson Perry.