“While sketching in the street, Eardley would set her easel up on a child’s pushchair. Andrew, then twelve, cheekily asked, ‘Do you want to paint me, missus?’ And she did. Ann remembers: ‘My mum said to Andrew, “I want to know where you’re going after school.” And he said, “I’m going to a woman’s house.” She got him by the…
I keep returning to Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th Century British Painting because it’s that kind of book – one that invites rereading. Neve’s introduction is a guide to how to read the book which is not an art history survey of schools or influences, but a reminder that landscape painting is never just scenery. It is about…
Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her family. I wanted to read her account of life in pre-war Germany The Lights Go Down in part of my preparation for the 1940 Club and here. I couldn’t track down a copy so I read School for Barbarians: Education…
I’ve just read Back To My Beginnings by Paddy Staplehurst. It’s a memoir of growing up in St. Etheldreda’s in Bedford – a home for girls that was run by Anglican nuns. Paddy and her younger sister Bille arrive in 1944 to join an older sister, Dawn, after being taken into care by Norfolk County Council because of persistent abuse.…
I love this poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s a commentary on the fact that – even in the darkest times – simple acts of unexpected generosity and kindness have the capacity to remind us that not everything is bleak and hopeless even in a nasty, brutish, trumpian world. Optimistic Little Poem Now and then it happens that somebody shouts…