A Petto Nudo

by | Dec 4, 2019 | art, book reviews, Fashion, General interest, history

Political commentators inform us that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson both enjoy a faithful horde of unqualified supporters to vote them back to power. The US system has the slightly reassuring limit of the maximum of two terms for their president. That can, however,...

Landscape

by | Jul 3, 2019 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, people, poetry, travel

As a child, the Nottinghamshire novelist D.H. Lawrence used to watch his father walking slowly back home up the dew-strewn pastures between his mining village and the pits after a night shift and later wrote, ‘that is the landscape of my heart’. Those words came to...

In Miniature

by | May 8, 2019 | art, Fashion, General interest, history

An image to hold in the palm of your hand or hang in a jewelled case on a chain around your neck, just hidden under clothes but close to the heart – your symbol of deepfelt emotion. The miniature paintings of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver in Elizabethan England...

The Lumber Room

by | Sep 20, 2018 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, Italy, museums, travel

One of the most powerful of many memorable sequences in the Visconti film of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) is when the hero and heroine – Tancredi and Angelica (acted by Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale) – run, frolicking, through the attic rooms of an immense and...

Iran in Retrospect

by | Jul 14, 2017 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, people, travel

‘Is Iran a police state?’ I asked Ali, our excellent guide. He hesitated. The organisers of our tour of Iran asked us not to name anyone we would like to meet there as we are requested to do on our visa application. Any meetings should be arranged through our guide....