14.2.2024
As me and the crocuses raise
our heads into the cool air, thoughts turn to Spring
and trips. I've been busy, so I am looking forward to the South
Tyrol in April, Ferrara & Bologna in May, Piero Country in June,
Norfolk Churches in September,
Burgundy in October and Delft in October. No trip to Venice
planned, as yet, but it's always possible that some
specially-opened Biennale satellite venues might tempt me.
1.1.2024
As ever the new year brings news
of Donna Leon's new Brunetti novel. It's called A Refiner's
Fire, which is a very biblical departure from the usual
cliché-phrase titles; and it's concerned, it seems, with
teenage gang wars in Venice. Further novelty, verging on
actual shock, is provided by it coming out in July, not March. As a wise man once said - amazeballs!
19.12.2023
My
Season's
Greetings
2023
and best
books and music are on my
news
page
3.11.2023
I cancelled the Cardiff trip
mentioned below, as it was looking like being too wet and
wintry a time, and as I type this at the end of the week I
should have been away, it's been a week of constant rain, with
Storm Ciarán sweeping Europe.
In better news, having found a 5th great-grandfather who was a
saddler in Smithfield, called Adam Greenlaw Gray, who lived
near St Bartholomew’s church (my new London fave – it’s so
Romanesque inside!) and who was married and had his children
christened there, I discovered that his wife, Elizabeth
Faraday, was the sister of Michael Faraday! So Michael
Faraday's dad is my 6th great-grandfather.
3.10.2023
My assertion in my last post
that I'd had my last trip of the year is looking premature. I
recently found that an ancestor of my dad's mum, called Jabez
Phillips, was born in Bassaleg, in Wales near Newport, and in
1779 got married in Michaelston-y-Fedw, also not far from
Newport, and now basically a suburb of Cardiff. So I've booked a
week in Cardiff later this month, with a cathedral I missed
last time and a tempting cemetery adding to the appeal. And
then there's the shops selling fresh-baked Welsh Cakes. Then I
read about an rather large exhibition of 16th-century Venetian
art in Munich over the winter so we've booked a week there in
December. Christmas markets providing the extra appeal this
time. I do realise how lucky I am BTW.
22.9.2023
The
Venetian
Terraferma
trip was a very good one, but looks like being my last of the
year. Patrizia, the tour manager on the trip, an old friend
who is also the wife of a good friend of these pages, has set
me to thinking by recommending a stay in Venice of a month to
really get to know the place. This idea is now getting
seriously pondered. In Italian this is known as 'putting a
flea in my ear' it seems. Also there's a new, surprise, Donna
Leon book of reminiscences, which consists of a sequence of
short chapters, we're told, and so sounds like another of
those large-font, wide-line-spacing , blank-page-infected
jobbies, but I'll let you know. I had my Covid vaccine booster
a couple of days ago too, and so far I'm not suffering the
pains which began the day after my jab last year and invalided
be off of a Lucca tour. It was the Pfizer vaccine, though,
like the others I've had, and not the Moderna from a year ago.
Who knows?
old news
here |
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November 2023
Carlo
Fruttero & Franco Lucentini
The Lover of no Fixed Abode
Venice
A Haunting in Venice
Venice films
October 2023
Martin Gayford
Venice: City of Pictures
Lee Jackson
Dickensland
London
September 2023
Donna Leon
A Wandering Through Life
Venice
The Venetian
Terraferma Trips
August 2023
David Hewsom
The Borgia Portrait
Venice
June and July 2023
Philip Gwynne Jones
The Venetian Candidate
Venice
Churches of Suffolk Trips
Lucca and Pisa Trips
April & May 2023
Umbria Trips
Verona & Venice
Trips
March 2023
Medieval Champagne
Trips
Donna Leon
So Shall You Reap
Venice
February 2023
The Victorian London Grime Glut:
Philip Davies
London: The Great Transformation 1860–1920
Judith Flanders
Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London
Lee Jackson Dirty Old London:
The Victorian Fight Against
Filth
Sarah Wise The Blackest Streets:
The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum
Cathy Ross
Bollardology
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