Pencil sharpener alley and enormous lodge, Knepp Rewilding, Sussex. The beavers have been beavering away…

At Amberley Industrial Museum in Sussex. Where virtually every interior smells strongly of petrol. Thank heavens for the smoking ban…

A nice touch at the National Army Museum, where the images of men and women on the loo doors are shown saluting…

Welsh National War Memorial, Alexandra Park, Cardiff. Architect Ninian Comper, sculptor H A Pegram, tulips Cardiff City Parks Dept. It is church architect Comper’s only secular work…

Art of Laundry. The Provençal painter Laurent Mattio (1892-1965) was renowned for the “striking intensity” and vibrancy of his colours. He based his paintings on detailed drawings which he then worked up in the studio in oils, often thick impasto, or transparent watercolour washes…

Ghost pubs in London’s East End: wonderfully atmospheric pictures from the 1990s… spitalfieldslife.com/2026/03/14/a...

Our flowering cherry is approaching peak blossom. It’s not there yet, but the rough winds are shaking it so badly it’s already losing drifts of petals, so I’m posting the pic today in case this is as good as it gets…

At the Aldeburgh Literature Festival. Every session sold out within hours of going on sale. I have given around 90 lectures linked to my books: yesterday’s in Aldeburgh was the first to an absolutely full house. (They were a great audience, too…)

In Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Terminus of the first undersea cable between the UK and the Netherlands, laid in 1922. Aldeburgh is still an important terminus for subsea telecoms…

Art of Laundry. Matti Annala (Finland, 1898-1958). Doing Laundry. Beyond his dates and nationality I can find no other information about Annala. (Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques…)

York station. Not the magnificent affair familiar today, astride that great curve on the East Coast mainline, but the old station, 1841, just inside the city walls. Built for George Hudson, the colossus of the railroads, three times Lord Mayor of York, MP, and the first great Victorian fraudster…

Former ice cream factory, Fetter Lane, York. Now residential. More on its history and conversion, the Capaldi family, alleged Mafia links etc here: yorkstories.co.uk/buildings/capaldi-factory-fetter-lane/

My reading ahead of next month’s Oxford Literary Festival. Some excellent books here, and some stimulating interviews and discussions to look forward to — plus an illustrated talk on my own recent effort, Mavericks. Programme details here: oxfordliteraryfestival.org/about/brochure

Art of Laundry. Alfred Hitchcock by Chiara Samugheo, 1970 (via FB/Luli Primavera…)

All Hallows, Gospel Oak — impressive but unfinished late Victorian church by James Brooks (1825-1901) who also designed a house for himself just round the corner from me in Stoke Newington. All Hallows was meant to have vaulting, but the money presumably ran out…

Art of Laundry. London University from Old Gower Mews (1835) by George Sidney Shepherd (1784-1862), an English watercolourist and topographical artist. The new London Uni (later University College, London) opened its doors in 1828 but was derided in some quarters as “the Cockney University”…

Art of Laundry. By Franz Charlet (1862-1928), a Belgian impressionist who spent several years in Morocco in the 1880s but settled permanently in Brussels in 1890, where he painted genre scenes and landscapes… via FB/A world of washing/Rita M Sjöholm

Art of Laundry. Wash Day by Patrick Leonard (1918-2005). Leonard spent his career as an art teacher in Dublin. His pictures of 20thC Irish life are unexpectedly colourful — almost as colourful as the paintings he made on his holidays in Greece, Spain and the Algarve… via FB/A world of washing

The last para of this. By me in the current TLS, in a correspondence about Pedantry…

Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I wish you everything you hope for in 2026. Thank you for the conversations over the last year. This is Christopher Nevinson's  'Among the London Searchlights,' painted from a hot air balloon tethered above London Bridge in 1916.

Art of Laundry/Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Carlos Bonvalot. Interior 1918. Bonvalot (1893-1934) was a Portuguese realist painter most of whose work depicts Cascais, where he lived…

To the Turner & Constable show at Tate Britain, where they have both Turner’s unfinished 1795 watercolour of the York Buildings Waterworks, and Constable’s huge oil sketch of the 1817 Opening of Waterloo Bridge, in which the works’ distinctive watertower also appears…

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Gabriella Benzi. Charles J. Shore, Menton Washerwomen, 1881. Shore (1840-1915) was an amateur artist and 3rd Baron Teignmouth. Many of his watercolours are of Menton…

The crocheted Christmas puddings atop the railings along St Helens Wharf have been joined this year by snowmen and robins, the work of Abingdon’s answer to Banksy. What next for 2026 from the mystery knitter…?

Boxing Day, Abingdon. Unfeasibly spectacular 17thC County Hall, large Xmas tree and MG owners’ rally in the market square, half a mile from the works where the cars were made until 1980…

And a very merry Art of Laundry Christmas to all…

Let Les Mis look to its laurels…

“Eccentric, mad and full of risk - this is a classic tale of British overseas meddling…” My thanks to @unseenhistories.com for making Mavericks one of their books of the year. If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present…

Those who compare AI with the Industrial Revolution only know about the Industrial Revolution from AI.

And where, pray, will the water come from? The Suffolk/Cambs border is already water-stressed and struggling to accommodate existing expansion plans… The campaign to build a UK city with a million residents by 2035 www.thetimes.com/article/7c7d...

Those excellent people at @hatchards.bsky.social know a good thing when they see it. Signed copies of Mavericks on the table in their History section. Many thanks guys…!

Art of Laundry, cinema section. The Sirens sequence, from O Brother, Where Art Thou…? (Sound up) With thanks to Peter Mate youtu.be/_dl2L4v6ecM?...

How the English invented champagne. I see the former president of the Sorbonne has been reading my BBC article from 2017… www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl... French find claim that English invented champagne hard to swallow www.thetimes.com/article/c0cf...

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Laundress by Ukrainian painter Aleksandr Vutianov (b 1965). Touch of William Russell Flint about this one, perhaps…?

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Gabriella Benzi. By Hamburg artist Ascan Lutteroth (1842-1923): On the Shore at Sturla. Women using a specially-built open air washing place. Sturla is now a suburb of Genoa…

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Gabriella Benzi. By Hamburg artist Ascan Lutteroth (1842-1923): On the Shore at Sturla. Women using a specially-built open air washing place. Sturla is now a suburb of Genoa…

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. George Mainwaring (1907-1996): Look Out Ethel, Clumsy’s Here Again! Self-taught artist Mainwaring was also a mill worker, policeman, transport manager, writer and award-winning scout leader… www.georgemainwaring.co.uk/about/

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Gabriella Benzi. James Holland, RWS (British, 1799-1870) Washerwomen beneath the fountain of Saint Hugo of Genoa, near the Palazzo Doria. Holland began painting birds and flowers on pottery aged 12 but became a highly successful topographical watercolorist…

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. By Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886), a highly successful British illustrator and cartoonist. The Caldecott Medal for the best American picture book for children is named for him…

The splendid library at Anglesey Abbey, Cambs, with bookshelves made out of elm pilings from old Waterloo Bridge. An inscription in the library wrongly credits the original 1817 bridge to Sir John Rennie: in fact it was built by his father John who was offered a knighthood but declined it…

Story of London’s water is more a story of rapacious capitalism than pastoral idyll. The expert on the capital’s water supply is Nick Higham, a former BBC reporter who wrote the definitive book on how we got from one monopolistic water giant to another. (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/london/ar...

“And Saint Sebastian died of fright…” Such a brilliant, clever, funny playwright… www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...

Winter sun. The East Reservoir, Stoke Newington last Thursday…

Art of Laundry. Via FB/A world of washing/Isabel Amaral Lapa Vasques. Jacob Happ (1861-1936) “Washerwomen”. Happ was a German artist and draughtsman. The image is clearly late 19th/early 20thC, but the scene could have been painted any time in the preceding several centuries…

Happy accident department. Was at the Secret Maps exhibition at the British Library yesterday where they have this 1881 OS 1:2500 map showing Troy House in Monmouthshire. The owner, Lord Grenville Somerset MP, in 1841 objected to the map as an invasion of his privacy… 1/2

The late, great Dame Stephanie Shirley discovered this over 60 years ago, long before LinkedIn. Signing her business letters “Stephanie” produced little response. Calling herself “Steve” transformed the impact… www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Toll bridge cat, Whitchurch-on-Thames…

The 458m Bruce Tunnel at the summit of the Kennet & Avon Canal. It’s down hill from here all the way to Bath and Bristol. The commemorative plaque was recarved in 2003 by local stonemason John Lloyd, whose ancestor Benjamin Lloyd carved the original in 1810…

Lovely day for a canal walk…

Spectacular ancient plumbing klaxon: “A boiler like this gave residents and workers something incredibly rare in the ancient world: reliable hot water on demand…”