I have for years wanted to understand and explain the soft-left liberal mindset which has become increasingly bossy and dominant since the 1960s. I didn’t enjoy it 60 years ago, when it was the domain of various Hampstead journalists I met as a young man. I like it a lot… Read more...
Hunston’s nuns: Records of their earthly deaths, 1872-1994
This is a record of the 36 nuns who died and were buried within their enclosure during the 120 years’ existence of the Chichester Carmel (aka Hunston Convent). The closure of their convent led to their being reinterred in 1994 in Portfield Cemetery,… Read more...
Richard Hughes produced three enormously interesting novels. High Wind In Jamaica (1929) and Fox In the Attic (1962) are much the better known, but In Hazard (1938) has a devoted following.1True to my usual perversity, I haven’t yet read “High Wind… Read more...
I am posting three MS Word documents and identical PDF versions which gently but firmly interrogate Critical Theory and some allied ideas. These all have long back-stories and some merit if viewed with decent scepticism. The 21st Century has allowed them to grow like Topsy-Turvy and to an unchallenged prominence… Read more...
For about 40 years I have had this oil painting in various sorts of storage and knew it for longer on my parents' walls. It is by my grandmother, the artist and poet who was, on her third marriage, Mrs Clifford Bax, née Vera May Rawnsley (and following marriages to Stanley North and Filson Young).
The undated painting is titled "The Old-fashioned Dress" (but the sitter isn't named). I am pretty sure my parents (Paul and Margaret - Peggy - North) told me it's a portrait of their friend, Nora Whitehall. Read more...
In the past week or so I have visited Luke Jerram's twin Mars and Earth planets, as they temporarily loomed in Chichester and Lambeth cathedrals respectively, and thought of Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg, and humanity's multiple wings and prayers.
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The story of the past 125 years is both terrible and wonderful. The best news was that the world’s poor mostly saw greater affluence. And didn't the West abandon imperialism and defeat Fascism? Our present modernity – our 21st Century – has plenty of good news. But do we not see new proto-imperialisms, and isn’t it peculiar that Westerners have largely lost their former cheerful, mildly cynical realism under respected governments? They may even have forgotten what personal adulthood and public professionalism look like. But do we really have to believe that Fascism might be making a comeback? Read more...
This piece was triggered by the Pallant Gallery’s 2022 retrospective show and monograph, Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit, and deploys much of the research behind that blockbuster show and tome. Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) was a major figure in his lifetime and a marginal one after it - until the Pallant breathed new life into his reputation. The Pallant gave us Philpot's variety and variability, but also his constancy and consistency. And his depth.
I foreground what I take to be the spiritual quest which I think made his life and work a sort of pilgrimage. It is moot what might be heard of Philpot henceforth. He presents, as he always did, an embarrassment of riches, including some forgiveable embarrassments. Born 140 years ago, he is a superb man for our times, as he was for his own. I hope the future enjoys him and makes him the subject of interesting revisionism.
Comments and corrections will be very welcome. Read more...
I want to honour the life of Kate Hepburn, the graphics designer, who died in Hampstead's Royal Free Hospital in late July this summer. She made a big impression at Vole magazine in the late 1970s, and in many other creative ventures. Corrections and new information would be very welcome. Read more...
This is an account of the son of a well-known bookseller who became a pioneer writer and manager of wartime codes and then switched to conceiving and scriptwriting a fictional account of sado-vouyerism. His book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941–1945 (1998) tells the first story (its publication was delayed by censorship issues). Peeping Tom (1960, and directed by the famous Michael Powell), at first reviled and now a cult classic, tells its own story. The real Leo Marks (1920-2001) lurks tantalisingly somewhere in these works, but he is nowhere explicit about all that.. Read more...