Month: May 2017

Two Recliners

I am partial to reclining effigies like the Fettiplaces and this is a cracker in the South Transept of Bath Abbey. I saw it yesterday.

Scandi-noir

A Scandi-noir TV series was recommended to me last week: Follow the Money. The second series has just finished so I am not an early adopter The forecast is for rain in London most of this week so, unseasonably, it may be an opportunity to get started on it.

London Guide

Some readers live overseas and will inevitably feel marginalised by many posts. Indeed, if you live as far away as Shepherd’s Bush you may feel a bit left out.

Casanova

I am usually at home but one year I was in Warsaw, another I was on an aeroplane, so Robert had to do it for me, once I was in France and one year I forgot.

Published
Categorised as Music

Assassins

LAMDA’s new theatre is almost finished. The first production is a musical, Assassins by Sondheim.  The eponymous assassins are the men and women who have attempted, successfully or not, to assassinate Presidents of the United States and the music is a reflection of popular music in their times.

Published
Categorised as Theatre

Fettiplace

Many years ago, after a walk in the Cotswolds with Sandy Murray, we stopped at Swinbrook to look at the church where Nancy and Unity Mitford are buried and there are these magnificent reclining ancestors. There are two triple-deckers so it is worth the detour.

Boyne Bloomers

A letter in The Times suggests that the name of the president-elect of France could be derived from MacRonald, “one of the wild geese Irishmen who migrated to France after the battle of the Boyne”. What nonsense.

Flag Flying Days

Yesterday, 9th May, was a Flag Flying Day. These are listed on the College of Arms website with some guidance on how to fly flags correctly.

An Uncle in the Strand

My maternal grandmother is a Cator. If you’d like a thumbnail sketch the Cators are genetically rich and pathologically mean. There is probably no connection, although …  My paternal grandmother is a Jameson – less rich and wildly generous.

Published
Categorised as Family

Flying Bomb

This marked the beginning of a second Blitz. James Lees-Milne was living in 96 Cheyne Walk.