I feel more than a touch mournful that Rupert Thomas is stepping down from The World of Interiors after a mere 21 years. It seems so recent that he took on what seemed an impossible task – taking over from Min Hogg, the queen of the unknown country house, forgotten, but full of wonders. Rupert Thomas has been more eclectic – more interested in the modern, with a wider range of taste, but still perfectly capable of finding forgotten country house interiors, even if, as sometimes happens, he has to disguise their identity. He will in turn be a hard act to follow, so I can only wish his successor, Hamish Bowles, well in whatever minor modifications he makes, preferably as few as possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html

We were given an Amaryllis for Christmas and over the last month, it has given me the utmost pleasure watching it flower:-

And yesterday:-

As the Sue Gray report sinks in, it is perhaps more striking for what it doesn’t say than what it does. The fault was apparently a failure of leadership: not, note, a failure of management or of the team itself. It was the leadership. Well, who, one then asks, provides the leadership in 10, Downing Street ? It must surely be the leader himself, the man who has always wanted to be king and who Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks is President. It was the fault of the leader. She does not say so, but presumably that is what she thinks needs to be changed.