I heard about the two sides of Richard III at university, when a lot of students were milling around for theatre group auditions. There was a girl wearing a heraldically-coloured baseball jacket. Across the back of it was an elaborate medieval embroidery of a white boar, emblazoned with the word Dickon. I had to ask … Continue reading The legend of Richard III
Summer holiday: all those unnecessary possessions spilling from boxes and cupboards and wardrobes and drawers reduced to camping stuff and a couple of bags of clothes. And nothing is missed, we’re just here in the present. There’s a lesson there I’ve patently failed to notice, because back home I’m shuffling a new hoard around and … Continue reading Holiday haul
Quadriga, a copper sculpture by Harold Gosney currently on display at Ripon Cathedral. Continue reading Equine
A stop at Witley Court near Worcester on the way to North Wales. Partly destroyed by fire, gutted for salvage in the 1950s, and perfect for the recent meander at WhistlesintheWind about what we keep and throw away… pondering the popular view of Britain before the 1960s, what modernised us, and the things salvaged from … Continue reading Decline and Rise
An edition of Winifred Holtby’s Yorkshire novel from 1938. And the memoir by Vera Brittain from 1940. The Observer said at the time: “The tale of a life which combined a candle’s briefness with a beacon’s challenging flame has its own strong fire, and is itself a challenge to posterity, lest it forget”. There was … Continue reading South Riding and Winifred Holtby
Tom Courtenay as Billy Liar (1963) Is Billy Liar really 50 years old? It’s one of the key sixties films catching Britain at a time of transition, mirrored by Billy’s dreams of escape from small town doldrums to something more ‘swinging’. In the early 1990s there was a wonderful BBC weekly retrospective of the era, … Continue reading Off to Ambrosia with Billy Liar
One of my Christmas presents was Miranda July’s book It Chooses You. Sometime last year I saw her second movie The Future (which you really need to see before reading the book, which is about the creative process in writing the screenplay, but to save time here’s the trailer at the risk of patronising everyone … Continue reading January, July, invisible artlessness
Claire Leighton trained in England at the Slade School (which also produced, over the years, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and Rex Whistler) and later emigrated to America. This wood-engraving is one of twelve that she produced for an American illustrated edition of Wuthering Heights in the 1930s. I think it’s brilliantly composed, particularly in the … Continue reading Claire Leighton’s illustrations for Wuthering Heights
WHISTLES IN THE WIND 