Photo by EP I walked through the alleys up to Hampstead proper this afternoon, retracing the footsteps of the old poets and painters I like to think. I took a picture of the Admiral’s House, painted at least twice by Constable, but I was wondering about abstraction and trying to compose in my head a …
A limerick to mark the fifth annual Women of the World Festival held at the Southbank Centre this past week (audio only): Coming soon: a film celebrating West Hampstead’s special contribution to women’s suffrage. The women’s advocacy paper Shafts, founded byMargaret Shurmer Sibthorp of Westbere Road, West Hampstead
It may be a task that’s humdrum This forcing the dirt to succumb Who is it deplores That I’m doing the chores? When I’ve done them, the cleaner can come. And I have to get rid of my clutter Released from its weight – oh but what a Joy it will be When of dross I …
If ever I saw blessing in the air I see it now in this still early day Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye. Laurie Lee, ‘April Rise’ A little film to celebrate …
Earth our precious planet Light as gossamer, as strong as granite Despite our violence and all our ills Faithful Spring sends budding daffodils For all our cleverness – we couldn’t plan it. Fortune Green, 1st March 2015Photo by EP A special film version, with additions, will shortly follow …
Photo by Michael Ward, 1962 Of course Radio 4 emphasized that she was ‘best known’ for her Miss Marple on televsion, but seasoned theatregoers will remember Geraldine McEwan for her earlier bravura comic theatre performances. I missed a later one of these, her award-winning Lady Wishfort in Congreve’s The Way of the World in the Lyttelton …
Light is therefore colour, and shadow the privation of it by the Removal of these rays of colour or subduction of power and throughout nature these rays aer to be found in the … in the ruling principles of diurnal variations, the gray dawn, the yellow morning, golden sun rise and red departing ray in …
Painting is a companion with whom one may walk a great part of life’s journey. Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime Photo by Chris Arthur Less than three weeks after T. S. Eliot’s death, another defining figure of the twentieth century, Sir Winston Churchill, died on 24 January 1965. (The two men, incidentally, shared a …
For most of us, there is only the unattendedMoment, the moment in and out of time,The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightningOr the waterfall, or music heard so deeplyThat it is not heard at all, but you are the musicWhile the music lasts. T. S. Eliot, …
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf … J. M. Barrie In Slim Chances, describing the finely honed simplicity, the silent eloquence necessary to play Beckett’s Krapp, I wrote: The discipline of doing no more …