Richard D North.

Yes, I am sure Out of the Furnace is that good. I think most of the comment from its creators is very interesting, and reassuring in the sense that what they aspire to seems to be what one warms to and feels to have been delivered. The one big reservation one might have is also overcome... Read more...

I have been listening to an interesting show, From Bengal to Baker Street, about the Indian painter Jamini Roy. Poor old Radio 4 couldn't get beyond its anti-colonial meta-narrative... Read more...

The St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery in Lymington always boxes above its weight and its current show, "Home Lad Home, the War Horse story" is no exception. It isn't an enormous display, but it is very moving on several counts, and not least its beauty and - more surprisingly - its positivity. This show and the fine town which houses the gallery make a wonderful away-day. Read more...

I have been mulling over how to continue being an ageing small-boat sailor on a tight budget... Read more...

I had a fairly decent outing on The Jeremy Vine Show, whose stand-in host, Vanessa Feltz asked me and Philip Lymbery, author of Farmageddon (with Isabel Oakeshott) to discuss the arrival of mega-farms in the UK. Naturally enough, I stuck up for them... Read more...

Jonathan Meades is a vital figure, a sort of a Christopher Hitchens for architecture, with a dash of Ian Nairn, but considerable wallops of Suggsy, and a undertone of some late 18th Century person (wonderful to think it might be JM's admired Burke himself). I very much approve his appreciation of Brutalism, though I would go further and wider.... Read more...

BBC R4 had a great In Our Time episode last week. It discussed Social Darwinism and taught me (I fear for the first time) to wonder which came first: the sociology, as in social, or the biology, as in Darwinism? Put it another way: who was the precursor of whom? Who got to evolution - and got to its messages - first? Was it our obvious hero Charles Darwin, or the famous old villain, Herbert Spencer? Naturally, I was rooting for Spencer.... Read more...

There was a fascinating vignette of modern government when the former head of GCHQ (the government’s listening post), Sir David Omand, was quizzed by Keith Vaz, the chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee during on a session on counter-terrorism. (The Home Affairs Committee, 11 February 2014.) Sir David argued - rightly, and counter-intuitively - that character was a better guarantee of probity than transparency. Well, there was more to his argument than that... Read more...

I am working on portraits of various modern warriors, starting with memoirs by people who fought in WW1 or WW2, or - importantly - both. Two such strike me as breath-taking. They are accounts of the young pilots of the beginning of WW2. Read more...

I am fond of the Selsey "Wave" and its three-dimensional homage to the great 19th Century print by Hokusai... Read more...