by Valerie | Jan 29, 2020 | 1950s, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel
My earliest memory is uncannily relevant to the events remembered this week. I was sitting with my elder sister in our ‘tree house’ intrigued by the pulley with a basket at its end. We could lower it to be filled with sandwiches and, if we ate them, down again for a... by Valerie | Dec 16, 2019 | 1950s, art, Fashion, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel
A few thoughts before Christmas Are all – or most – happy memories bathed in sunshine outside? Or inside? Or does remembrance make them so? Now, in a dark moment as 2019 slides away, shards shine through impending darkness in no particular order, thrown up... by Valerie | Jun 19, 2019 | 1950s, art, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel, Uncategorized
Most days I allow myself a few minutes of fantasy exploring a zone chosen at random on the large globe on one side of my desk. I pause to wonder at the amount of land in the northern hemisphere and the wide expanse of sea in the southern one – a seemingly chance... by Valerie | Jun 12, 2019 | 1950s, art, book reviews, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, Italy, people, poetry, reading groups, travel, writing a novel
Soon tennis will start at Wimbledon, rain permitting! The world-famous championships are about to begin in the prosperous, leafy suburb of London. It’s the season of long, languid summer evenings around the midsummer day on the 21 June, the longest day in the northern... by Valerie | Nov 21, 2018 | 1950s, art, childhood, Fifties, General interest, horse riding, horses, people
It may be the approach of winter but now, instead of looking up at a stone retaining walls beside the rutted track in Tuscany where I imagine I’m walking in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci, I’m looking down at what is underneath my shoes, travelling from ruts to... by Valerie | Nov 7, 2018 | 1950s, art, Fifties, General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
If you crossed the mountains to the east of the once malarial, now drained Tuscan valley of the Val di Chiana into the Tiber valley in search of the enigmatic painter Piero della Francesca, you used to pass woodland clearings with the huts of charcoal burners, their...
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