I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

Very impressed with the Picton Garden (Colwall), its collection of Michaelmas daisies on top form at the moment

1/ My latest blog post looks at the Gidea Park House and Cottage Exhibition of 1911, showcasing ‘the infinite variety that will be possible in house building when skilful architects are employed to build the new town-planned suburbs of London’ .... municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/g...

This item by Mehdi Zannad from the latest Drawing Matters, providing a method for sketching an urban scene (including time lapse of how it works in practice) is rather wonderful drawingmatter.org/urban-landsc...

Garden scene

Fascinating article on Gavin Stamp by Joshua Mardell in British Art Studies: main--britishartstudies-26.netlify.app/issues/26/ga...

Glorious weather for our annual bluebell walk

Delicious magnolias at Batsford

Fascinating essay by Mary Mitchell on an experimental AA new town planning project from the 1930s and its continuing resonance drawingmatter.org/tomorrow-tow...

That is the spirit. Bravo WilmerHale.

The @jrct.bsky.social - a relatively radical York based grant making foundation - is looking for new trustees micro.green-park.co.uk/jrct-trustees/

Brilliant front page

Calling Zelensky a “Dictator” must be where the line is drawn. It is my sincere hope that the whole political spectrum in the United Kingdom will speak with one voice in opposition to Trump’s lies.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Oxford Faculties of English & History are delighted to host the 25th anniversary conference of the British Association for #Victorian Studies on 23–25 July. Papers on any aspect of long-nineteenth-century studies are welcome (submit by 17 March). #BAVS #Victorianstudies #19thC

A proposal to deregulate the disposal process for church buildings is on the Church of England Synod agenda this week. Here is our joint statement on the new Mission and Pastoral Measure and Regulations to be debated at this week's #GeneralSynod. bit.ly/4hUurmu

Incredibly moving Justin Trudeau remarks: "We have fought and died alongside you....During your darkest hours...we were always there. Standing with you, grieving with you, the American people....Canadians are a little perplexed as to why our closest friends and neighbors are choosing to target us."

Oxford University Press will be awarding as many as 10 ECRs the opportunity to publish their first book in fully open access as well as in hardback. Today the website was revised to make clear that independent/unaffiliated scholars are eligible. Deadline March 3. academic.oup.com/pages/early-...

VICTORY! In late 2023 I (among many others) wrote about the reckless plan to destroy the historic probate records after digitising them. My column from the time is here inews.co.uk/opinion/gove... Today the government has confirmed it has had a rethink and dropped the plan. Good sense prevails

Astonishing 55 years of diaries from 1839 over 5,000 pages by John White of Parsonage Farm, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire being digitised & some will go on display at The Three Rivers Museum, Rickmansworth 👇 Rickmansworth farmer's diaries could take 20 years to analyse www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Above Chastleton this afternoon

A bijou Philip Webb property on the market for c.£500,000 - 2 bed central section with clocktower of “Goldenfields” built for Mrs Mary Anne Robb in Liphook, near Haslemere, Surrey (d.1890-1; e.1891-2) www.henryadams.co.uk/property/chi...

Seeing the King’s speech from the Fitzrovia chapel reminded me on when they saved it after demolishing the old Middlesex Hospital

Day 24 of my Advent calendar. Happy Christmas to you all from me and my tiny garden angel

Day 21 of my Advent calendar. Rejoice! The shortest day is over and before you know it the freshly-clothed oaks will be ankle deep in cow parsley.

Day 7 of my Advent calendar. Another one from Cornwall. I have a million pics of tree ferns from those gardens but I particularly love the underside of the silver fern, Cyathea dealbata embroidered with double rows of French knot sporangia.

Day 4 of my Advent Calendar. It has been quite a birdy year, including a trip to Staffa to fulfil a long-held ambition to see puffins. Flittering onto the cliff edge in front of us they strolled about with their hands clasped behind their backs, saying “maaaaawww” and looking wistfully out to sea.

Guy Dawber’s Coldicote near Moreton-in-Marsh glowing on our afternoon circuit www.archiseek.com/1905-coldico...

Time to start my fourteenth #adventcalendar and to me it’s obvious that I must start with “my” robin. I first met him in January this year, when this photo was taken, and could see he was BOLD. He soon started coming to my hand for mealworms. He may feature more than once in this advent calendar…

Sadly now long-closed (and converted into apartments), a Hook Norton pub the Wellington Inn stood on the corner of our road (Evenlode Rd)

Back to St Barnabas, Oxford last night for our performance of Stanford’s Requiem (unjustly now largely forgotten)

To St Barnabas for a day of rehearsing Stanford’s Requiem

Interior of St Mary the Virgin, Holmbury St Mary (G.E.Street, completed 1879)

To Holmbury St Mary with @thevicsoc.bsky.social to see G.E.Street’s lovely stone church (completed 1879) set on the hillside between the Hurtwood Forest and Pasture Woods

Enjoyable brickwork from the Oxford office window yesterday #JamFactory

Research challenges #1

Et maintenant, en français! A mysterious package arrived today and I was very excited to find it contained the French version of my book. So please tell your francophone friends (of course the English version is still available..) #jardin #jardiner #pots #jardinière #potées #potéesfleuries

Webb was rarely satisfied with his own work. It is nice to think that there was at least one project that he was happy with. Of Forthampton Court he wrote to Mrs J.R. Yorke in 1891: “It is THE house, of all I have had to deal with professionally, which it is a pleasure to me to think of.”