I don’t know Glasgow at all well and discovered that I don’t have a copy of Pevsner, so decided just to explore the Merchant City. I had been told that it was in trouble owing to Covid, but it seemed – most of it – pretty robust, much of it so far preserved, much of it grandly Victorian, reminiscent more of Philadelphia or Melbourne than any English city in the tame, sneaking south.

I can’t tell you what most of the buildings are that I saw:-

These statues by John Mossman were on the Athenaeum:-

These were on Buchanan Street:-

City Chambers (1882-90):-

The Corinthian Club:-

The building opposite on Virginia Place, currently being restored:-

A good Greek Revival building on Glassford Street:-

Mercury:-

The Ramshorn Graveyard:-

More miscellaneous details:-

It’s pretty impressive, demonstrating a density of classical buildings and built ornament lost further south.

I was walking across Blythswood Square in the cold of the morning when I spotted the very distinctive, slightly Indian (or is it Egyptian ?) dome of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s St. Vincent Street Church over the rooftops. It is now closed – the plasterwork ceiling was at risk of falling onto the congregation – but what a magnificent, heroic, dark ruin it is, high on its podium:-

I hope to goodness that Glasgow City Council, who own it, have plans for its restoration:-

I have been sent – I should really have seen it before – the brief for the competition to redevelop the Barbican. Most of it is probably deliberately vague, allowing the architects maximum freedom to come up with ideas. But it is striking that there is little about the historical importance and integrity of the existing structures and the need to preserve them. Also, no indication as to who is judging the architectural competition and whether the proposals will be published. The services probably need to be renewed. There is a lot of underused public space. But this is partly what gives the Barbican its sense of civic generosity. I look forward to seeing the plans.

https://sites.barbican.org.uk/renewal/

I should maybe clarify a comment I made in last night’s post about Nick Coker, the person on whom the character of Anthony in both parts of The Souvenir is closely based. In the film, it is said that Anthony was involved with the Foreign Office. This was true of Nick Coker in real life, but no-one that I know knows whether or not it was true and I have assumed that now it would be impossible to find out, because we all assumed that the involvement was unofficial and therefore presumably undocumented, occasional payments to collect or deliver documents, which was apparently not uncommon. Nick cultivated a deliberate air of mystery round his activities, which comes across very clearly in the films. I suppose there might be someone still alive who might know the truth of this, but would they necessarily remember ? And, more to the point, would they reveal it ? If anyone does know the answer, I would of course be profoundly interested, as I assume would Joanna Hogg.

We had been much looking forward to the sequel of The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical – actually, so far as we could tell, very accurately autobiographical – film about her fraught love affair with Anthony (aka Nick Coker), who in the film is depicted as devious and over-ripe and in some way, very ill-defined, involved with the Foreign Office, which indeed the real-life Nick Coker probably was, but we will now never know. It half conveyed how intensely glamorous Anthony/Nick was, so not surprising that his death lives on into her entrée into film-making, where reality merges with art in ways which are highly complex, layered in ways which are probably deliberately puzzling. In Part II, she makes her graduation film. She is having to come to terms with Anthony’s death (he was a heroin addict). She goes to visit his parents, who have lost their only son and is annoyed by Julien Temple’s cavalier attitude to the death of Anthony (Patrick in the film), who had been his closest friend. The film is beautiful, true to someone finding her identity as a film-maker in opposition to her unhelpful tutors, but also, to us at least, unresolved. Maybe that’s the point of the film. True to life.

The best comment in today’s newspapers comes from a Tory (unnamed) in the Independent: ‘It comes down to this – do you feel good about Britain today ? The answer is no. We are a laughing stock on the world stage, we cannot get our shit together in terms of moral leadership, we are looking like a stagnating economy. If you are in the Conservative Party that’s not realising the benefits of Brexit and everything else you’ve promised like a low-tax economy, what the f*** are you selling on the doorstep ?’

We went to the Noguchi exhibition at White Cube in Bermondsey thinking – quite wrongly – that there would not be so much more to learn about his work after the admirable, wide-ranging and informative exhibition at the Barbican. But the late work is wonderful – very free and inventive, particularly the room full of lightweight steel pieces, influenced by origami:-

There was an unexpected surprise in the shop as well:-

I was rung up yesterday and asked about the British Museum’s renovation plans which I know they have been drawing up, but which, I think, haven’t yet been published – the so-called Rosetta Project. It does need doing, not just in terms of the way the museum looks, but also the way the collection is displayed and presented. Under normal circumstances, raising £1 billion might seem unimaginable, but since the government has been happy to fritter away £37 billion on a malfunctioning track and trace system, which has still not been adequately investigated, and is it £8 billion wasted on unused PPE, then £1 billion spent renovating one of the greatest museums in the world feels quite good value. It wouldn’t be that difficult to set up a separate lottery fund to pay for it – or simply double the money allocated to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Something for the Secretary of State to leave as a legacy.

https://www.ft.com/content/c3df170e-b064-448c-8c4e-64977f6bb8cf

For anyone who doesn’t have convenient access to twitter, I recommend the attached tirade:-

So, while the Prime Minister takes a day trip to Blackpool in his private aircraft for a photo opportunity, four of his closest advisors and senior aides, including Munira Mirza, who has worked with him for over a decade, depart 10, Downing Street. Although a clear-out had been promised, it is worth reminding ourselves that these are not staff he inherited, but staff he himself hand-picked to run his Downing Street operation, summoning Martin Reynolds, a diplomat, back from Libya to work for him as his PPS. So although there is talk of ‘getting a grip’ and a reformed Downing Street operation, and much blaming of the civil service in private, the atmosphere of total chaos and dysfunctionality is recent and of this administration’s making: not so much about the structure and lines of command, as Sue Gray suggested, but about the people and how they have operated during the pandemic, no doubt an exceptionally stressful period, but it doesn’t look good if his closest allies have all walked the plank simultaneously, together with Munira Mirza’s carefully restrained, but still effective torpedo letter of resignation.