Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

Here’s a New Year. The stove wins a special commendation.

Tiny panel painting, done on the spot. Young Constable did many of these - an instantaneous and vivacious record of where his eye led him. For me the Tate Britain Turner-Constable exhibition stand-outs. See what you think?

Erasmus programme returns to UK. Hugely welcome.

The glory that is Rousham garden. Be aware, its peerless landscape setting is facing a serious threat.

Just when I thought I couldn't admire the man more... 🎯 🎯 🎯 💯 💯 💯 👍 👍 👍

Terrific talk by Selena Daly at Camden Library (local history) on Cesare Bianchi, chef, who epitomised the experience of expatriate Italians in the UK through both wars.

Terrific talk by Selena Daly at Camden Library (local history) on Cesare Bianchi, chef, who epitomised the experience of expatriate Italians in the UK through both wars.

Backlisted - an anchor to intelligent life. Mine was the 28th, a wee while earlier.

Will Wiles in Apollo nailing Jim Stirling’s Cambridge History Library as it undergoes a careful refit. Lovely piece, kicking off with Summerson.

Read Colin Thubron’s eulogy to Gillian Tindall in Spitalfields Life. And celebrate her rare insight.

‘It would take us until the 22nd century to make the world noticeably fuller of people. But we can already see the way falling birth rates affect national politics and economics.’ David Runciman on the depopulation problem. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Rachel Cooke. Gone. I can’t believe it. Best of a very good bunch.

Boris Johnson says the idea that criticism of the BBC is being organised by the right is ‘complete and utter bollocks’, which makes me think there might be something in it.

November 5, 2025 open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Just learned that the firm responsible for the new Cairo museum also designed the Giant’s Causeway museum in N Ireland - Heneghan Peng. Strange but true!

‘A model of social responsibility’: almshouses in the modern age - Apollo Magazine. Said it then, and now duly recognised and awarded.

So good to hear that WWM’s Appleby Blue won the big prize! I wrote about it (and Lord Leicester’s hospital, Warwick) in Apollo, February 2024. Fantastic clients too.

Well deserved plaudit for BBC director Peter Symes in Last Word on Tony Harrison. A real partnership, pioneering horse and carriage for poetry on television.

Repurposing to follow? Treviso.

Glorious Titian panel at the Scoletto (little Scuola) at San Antonio Padua. Look carefully. It is sublime.

Perfect place to eat a Monday evening meal. Trattoria al Bersaglieri, Padua. OTTIMO.

And here it is. Considered Giovanni Bellini’s masterpiece

This is how the Fondazione Querini Stampali has chosen to welcome home its exquisite Giovanni Bellini. Outrageous and inexplicable.

And in Leiston, the inspired Long House Museum, where Richard Garrett delved for many decades. Other Garretts (at Snape) include Elizabeth and Millicent. What a family.

Excellent day in Leiston for #bookfestival. Matters rural and natural aptly discussed as Sizewell C and massive grid works lacerate the Suffolk coast. So many good topics and books featured. Check it at www.leistonbookfestival.org.uk

Urban renewal. Currently the dirtiest of all words.

Green grew the pavements, oh! For older pedestrians, a zone of continuous peril. Thanks a bunch. One very near death experience in these days, enough.,

Eden Dock, Canary Wharf. Transformative landscape. Seen in perfect conditions, with thanks to the London Society. Join, why don’t you?

Among my heirlooms, a Beatles ticket from June 1965 (in Rome) and a receipt for a paltry sum, for who knows what, from that noted fraud Inigo Philbrick. He’s on your TV at the moment.

Freesias, white of course. Inky dark gladioli. One step at a time. Calm after a day battling endnotes. Autotherapy.

HATING the inchoate hatred. Hurricanes come over the Atlantic - so does the ordure.

Obituary of Andrew Saint in Times. Sparkling and spot on. Anyone prepared to leak the identity of the author?

As September approaches, I realise it’s fifty years since my Villages of Vision was published by the Architectural Press. Bit dumbfounding.

£9 and 90 minutes. IKEA Strandad lamp. The RELIEF!

Neat wordplay on broadcast … as in sowing

Social realism … #BBC style. Anyone know the artist?

Larry Summers: "This is way beyond anything Nixon ever did ... this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers, launching assaults on universities, launching assaults on law firms. This is really scary stuff."

‘London was in his veins’: Gillian Darley (@gmdarksky.bsky.social) pays tribute to the erudition, wit and open-mindedness of the architectural historian Andrew Saint, who has died at the age of 78.

My friend and university contemporary, the wonderful Efi Strousa, is being celebrated at the National Gallery in Athens. She made things happen.

That’s #Apollomagazine btw

Excellent Fatema Ahmed celebration of the late Tom Lehrer in #Apollo

That was then …. Liverpool Street station now?

That was then …. Liverpool Street station now?