Very beautiful and atmospheric photographs of Charleston in the latest post on the Bible of British Taste:-

https://bibleofbritishtaste.com/charleston-farmhouse-needs-you

Red sky at night:-

Red sky in the morning:-

Attached is the best piece of long form journalism as to what went wrong in March leading to Britain’s poor performance in facing the pandemic and the highest number of deaths.

The analysis is helped by the fact that it has obviously been informed by a great deal of insider information, including possibly Cummings himself, so sounds like a semi-official version of events. It is particularly useful to the government because it implies that the problems are systemic, requiring root-and-branch reform, and are not in any way the fault of any individual, most especially Cummings as the advocate of herd immunity, and Johnson for taking a two-week holiday at the end of February in order to sort out the arrangements for his divorce. It avoids any culpability in poor judgment or human error, which is no doubt the 10, Downing Street view. But is it the view of the rest of the country ?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/08/why-britain-failed-coronavirus-pandemic/615166/

A nice account of the perils of Charleston under Covid in this month’s New Yorker:-

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/will-charleston-a-fanciful-bloomsbury-shrine-be-a-covid-casualty

Llanbadrig Churchyard is on the edge of the sea, windswept and remote, marking the site where St. Patrick was shipwrecked on his way from Iona to Ireland and decided to build a church:-

We went up to the north of the island to a place we used to visit long ago, an old derelict Porcelain Works down a grassy track, past reed beds to a rocky cove:-

I’ve been sent a copy of the article in the New York Times which explains the now long-running controversy over ICOM’s definition as to what a museum is, and should be, which might seem a tiny bit arcane to those outside the profession, but which encapsulates the generational divide between those who still feel that they are pre-eminently about a collection of objects or works of art however interpreted – what in the 1970s was described as ‘the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity’ – and those who feel their their social mission should come first and be stated more radically. I have paid less attention to the dispute than I maybe should, but suspect that donors are not quite as enthusiastic about their social mission as is assumed:-

https://nyti.ms/31oA4E1

One of the things about lockdown was spending so much time indoors that one became more attentive to views out. Our windows need cleaning, but this means that they diffuse the evening light:-

Having been turned away from the beach yesterday, we were there this morning as the gate opened at 8am, so were able to enjoy it relatively empty at the beginning of the day, including a swim in the cold Irish sea:-

I sometimes feel that perhaps I am unduly pessimistic about the current political order – the taint of corruption, the fact that nobody apparently wants to be Cabinet Secretary because they know that it is now a job in which they will be blamed for the mistakes of ministers and abused by the press, elements of which are now on the payroll of government, the contracts which are given out without competitive tender to special advisors, the ripping up of planning rules; and then I read something which puts it better than I could:-

https://amp.economist.com/britain/2020/08/08/boris-johnsons-horrible-house-of-lords-list?__twitter_impression=true