I was trying to figure out for a piece I am writing how resilient the existing culture of Hackney Wick is to the amount and speed of new building and urban change. The answer seems to be, so far so good, in spite of losses, but I could well be wrong:-

At a time when we are being told by Tory MPs that everyone, including NHS workers, broke the rules in the same way that the Prime Minister so obviously did, a pathetically intellectually (and legally) feeble way of trying to exculpate him – hey, gov, other people have committed the same offence so what does it matter if I have ? – I was rather touched to read the attached inscription in a pavement in Hackney Wick which is a reminder that, far from being a period of rule-breaking, the early period of lockdown was a period of exceptional community solidarity and mutual support, which is partly why, I suspect, the anger against the way 10, Downing Street behaved will endure, whatever Jacob Rees-Mogg says:-

I don’t expect anyone but me to be interested in this, but I have just read that my great-great-great grandfather’s house at Shortgrove in Newport burnt down in 1966 owing to an insurance scam involving the Kray brothers and that its Capability Brown landscape is about to be developed for housing (see attached).

I’ve occasionally tried to find out about Joseph Smith, who was – I knew – William Pitt’s private secretary and I have just discovered that he was Comptroller of the Coins and Mint (1786), Receiver-General of Stamp Duties (1792l and Secretary to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (1792): so, a big wheel. The article says that the house stayed in the family, but his only recorded son was Richard Snowdon Smith, a clergyman, whom I delighted to find lived to the age of 96, but not at Shortgrove so far as I’m aware.

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-demise-of-shortgrove-estate/

I resisted the temptation to go on the Elizabeth Line on Tuesday (actually, I overslept), but we took it from Whitechapel to Bond Street this morning (but Bond Street is not yet open). It’s impressive, as everyone has said: generously proportioned, more like Moscow than the Northern Line, with a gentle swoosh like going on the RER. The stations also look good, what we saw of them:-

We went in to Hauser and Wirth in Savile Row to see their temporary exhibition, Beyond Nature (it closes on Saturday). It shows the work of artist-makers normally shown by Make, their gallery in Bruton.

I had never seen the work of Martin Rusac, very complex and elaborate works in resin containing pressed flowers from the Piet Oudolf garden:-

Matthew Day Jackson is one of the artists represented by Hauser and Wirth doing a crossover piece:-

Katie Spragg in porcelain unfired, so delicate:-

We went to a fund-raising event at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields last night organised by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, based on their podcast ‘The Rest is History’ which I didn’t know about, but the rest of the audience obviously did, not least from the cheers which greeted Holland and all the other speakers. They managed to tell us an incredible amount about global history in a spectacularly short time through extreme compression and concentrating on a rapid narrative, employing other experts to fill in the narrative in rapid-fire, two-minute slots, a way of talking about the past which seemed to work unexpectedly well. So now I must pay more attention to their podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-history/id1537788786).

Some time ago, I went to look at some of the new architecture in Oxford, particularly the fine new library at St. John’s by Wright and Wright and the new buildings at St. Hilda’s by Gort Scott, both good examples of what can be achieved by thoughtful clients and a long-term view of architecture. I don’t think it’s just a matter of money. Below are my reflections.

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2022/dreamy-spires/

I have very much enjoyed reading Iconicon, an oddly titled, but immensely absorbing history of the last forty years of building development by John Grindrod, subtitled ‘A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain’. It feels like the first draft of history, making sense of a mass of contemporary journalism by treating the material thematically, beginning with postmodernism and the development of docklands through the advent of the national lottery and the era of grand projets, including an account of the Millennium Dome, the Millennium Centre in Cardiff and the Scottish Parliament, a very detailed and damning account of Grenfell Tower, and ending with supportive descriptions of the work of Peter Barber in Donnybrook Quarter and Ordnance Road in Enfield, and the work of Assemble in Granby in Liverpool. The lesson of the book is that iconic buildings by big name practices have been of much less benefit than smaller, more local projects by the less well known: a good lesson post-Covid.

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571348138-iconicon/

I have just discovered a relation who till this morning I didn’t know existed, my great aunt, Helen, who is commemorated in a fine piece of stained glass in Steyning Church, north of Worthing. I had assumed that all my great aunts had lived in Australia, where they migrated in 1890 when Helen was twelve, but she must have returned to England and lived in Sussex unmarried. I don’t ever remember her being mentioned, so would be interested to know more about her life, if anyone knows.