Month: March 2018

Blythe Spirit

This is the entrance to a building used by the V&A, the Science Museum and the British Museum for storage since 1979 but, maybe, not for much longer.

Charmed Lives

There is a beguiling exhibition at the British Museum, Charmed Lives in Greece, about Niko Ghika, John Craxton and Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Antikythera

At the belated St Patrick’s Day dinner I attended last week there was an interesting guest: Michael Wright, a mechanical engineer, although that hardly does him justice. We have to go back some way to understand his achievement, in fact to Antikythera in the Aegean in about 80 BC where a cargo vessel carrying booty… Continue reading Antikythera

Death on the Bosphorus

I struggled at first with Dance to the Music of Time. It is otiose to allude to Powell’s circumlocutory style making Henry James’s prolix, copia verborum seem exiguous. However, I persisted and now I am hooked.

Two Architects in Kensington

This is the parliament building in Wellington, New Zealand, designed by Sir Basil Spence in the 1960s; one of his better efforts. I don’t have to look far to see one of his less successful civic buildings, Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall on Phillimore Walk.

Forsyth Saga

I came across this plaque in Kensington Gardens on Sunday. It is the right time of year to see it because William Forsyth’s Forsythia was flowering.

Booth

No doubt you make a Pavlovian association between Booth and gin. Well the link has been broken since production ceased in 2017.

Of Mice and Men

I had a belated St Patrick’s Day dinner on Thursday.  One of the diners furnished us with shamrock (above) expertly bunched by his wife. Another, who came from West Meath, turned out to be a lapsed member of the Irish Peers’ Association, a prospective member of the PG Wodehouse Society and a reader of this… Continue reading Of Mice and Men

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Ten Things To Do List

1. Write thank you letter to Alistair for inviting me to the Hotel Chocolat last week. Here’s the bar of chocolate I made. Looks like a dog mess but I won’t stress that in my letter.

Family History

In the last post John Bellew died in 1679. His widow, Mary nee Dillon, built a fine chapel in the woods above Barmeath where members of our family are still commemorated and interred. He had two sons and a daughter: Patrick, Christopher and Mary. We need only concern ourselves with the eldest son.

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Categorised as Family