A very brilliant and informative lecture by Thomas Marks about Elizabeth David and her (mostly postal) relationship with Lett Haines, Cedric Morris’s partner at Benton End.  It helped to humanise Benton End, now stripped of its contents, with so many photographs of the kitchen, including the cooker (very basic), the refrigerator, and detailed menus of what they ate.  It seemed surprisingly sybaritic for the 1950s, but then there was apparently a very good delicatessen in Dedham, as well as a good butcher in Hadleigh.  Maggi Hambling made the soup.

Slightly surprisingly, she left her library of cookery books to the Warburg Institute in 1992.  They are mostly on the fourth floor under Banqueting, apparently well thumbed and with her book plate inside.

I have only just spotted that the article I wrote a while back about the V&A Dundee has now appeared online.

I felt slightly badly that I had not visited when it first opened and rectified this in November.  In reading its press coverage on the way up, I was struck that few were enamoured of its design.  But I thought it worked well in its prominent position on the River Tay.  The galleries are quite small scale, but the exhibition space is big and impressive.

See attached:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/jam-jute-journalism-japanese-design/

I am pleased to have been sent the online obituary of Marc Pachter from the Washington Post and even more pleased to be able to read it.  I knew Marc had died – totally unexpectedly – in Bangkok where he often stayed.  He was a citizen of the world, with an apartment in New York, often in London where he celebrated his eightieth birthday, sometimes in Edinburgh and sometimes Sydney.  I always found him a good and helpful critic of books.  He read and helped me with my National Gallery book and very characteristically suggested that I should visit MONA in Tasmania for my book about museums.  He also helped organise the content of a workshop on museums in about 2001 held at J. Paul Getty’s villa north of Rome, an event made worthwhile by the eclectic range of speakers he and Charles Landry had assembled. 

I will miss our breakfasts in the Wolseley.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/02/22/marc-pachter-portrait-museum-dies/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzA4ODM3MjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzEwMjE1OTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MDg4MzcyMDAsImp0aSI6IjQ3NWIyNmZkLTZhNzktNDBkYi05YWExLTA3ZjI1NmE1YWFhOSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9vYml0dWFyaWVzLzIwMjQvMDIvMjIvbWFyYy1wYWNodGVyLXBvcnRyYWl0LW11c2V1bS1kaWVzLyJ9.Qyv5ljm4Y0Y9WZsHbzKPsimjTgKnlPdpvn4o4iFmurc

I wasn’t sure what to make of Santiago Calatrava’s massive projects for the City of Arts and Sciences.  Undeniably impressive.  And popular.  They have put Valencia on the map.

The opera house:-

And the Science Museum:-

We saw La Lonja, the late medieval hall for the trade in silk.

This is the internal courtyard:-

And the great vaulted spaces of the Transactions Hall:-

Then to the church of St. Nicholas of Bari and St. Peter Martyr with its opulent, recently restored baroque interior:-

And back by way of the Cathedral:-

I spent the morning walking the streets of old Valencia:-

Ending up in the old market for coffee:-

The Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero opened in November, but I wasn’t able to make it to the opening, so it was a treat to see it today.

It’s in a restored medieval palace.  This is the entrance looking out into an external court with an installation by Jaume Plensa:-

This is the courtyard beyond:-

Downstairs is a vitrine of many of the archaeological remains found while excavating on site:-

I particularly admired the restoration of the Chapel upstairs, with stained glass windows by Sean Scully:-

You can look out of the windows to the city beyond:-

I had a faint recollection that I started my blog ten years ago, but didn’t have the appetite to scroll all the way back.  But then I realised that my first post was called, not very imaginatively, ‘My first blog post’.  Lo and behold, it is dated 19 February 2014.  So, it was exactly ten years ago, when the Royal Academy was in the process of launching a new website.

The original idea was that it would be a way of communicating with the Academy’s staff, but it quickly became evident that I would put my foot in it whenever I wrote about the RA, so I started writing about everything else I was doing away from the RA, helped by the fact that I went to China not long afterwards.

I have a suspicion that there may be some readers who signed up ten years ago, in which case, I salute you !

We walked down by the shore at Llanfaglan which was, as always, extraordinarily beautiful in the late afternoon light:-