Finsbury Park is not my natural habitat, but I am discovering it is not without its charms, with broad streets, like Fonthill Road, a grand, Victorian, Congregationalist, now Catholic church in Tollington Park, designed by C.G. Searle, who lived in Tollington Villas:-

Early Victorian villas in Charteris Road:-

And a host of coffee shops and delicatessens on Stroud Green Road:-

Wickhams Department Store, the Selfridge’s of the East, opened in 1927 and serving East London until the 1980s, has now been cleaned, showing off its 1920s classical detailing, referred to in the muf joke of a broken column buried in the nearby pavement:-

I am posting a link to James Wood’s admirable and thoughtful critique of the intellectual origins of his generation of Etonians, schooled by Eric Anderson, the Scottish headmaster whose name he has inexplicably forgotten, in the responsibilities of noblesse oblige, but which has turned instead into arrogant self-regard and destructive nostalgia:-

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n13/james-wood/diary?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4113&utm_content=ukrw_nonsubs

Back again.

The Zaga Christ by Giovanna Garzoni at Philip Mould:-

A very nice Cedric Morris also at Philip Mould (he supported the Cedric Morris exhibition at the Garden Museum):-

A very recent Peter Blake (2018):-

Finch & Co, including a sixteenth-century alabaster relief:-

Nicola Hicks in 2003:-

A Han Figure with Gilded Blue and White Bowls (2019):-

First, of course, the Blain|Southern stand, conveniently near the entrance, showing work by Anthony Caro:-

And a second stand of work by Bosco Sodi:-

Then, Factum Arte, with its photographs by Mariana Cook:-

Indian Veg (2013-14) by Howard Hodgkin at Ofer Waterman:-

And Alison Watt’s Iris at Ingleby:-

Just a first dip. I must come back later.

I went to the funeral of my cousin-by-marriage, Jane de Falbe, who took me up as a child, inviting me to stay in their house in Hertfordshire, and remained a great, if occasionally, as even the funeral service acknowledged, slightly scatty friend into her old age. Born 6th. October 1927, educated at Downe House and Lady Margaret Hall, where she read Russian and French. I remember her saying that her parents were upset that she went to live in Chelsea, which they regarded as too raff-ish for someone like her. We sung a hymn by John Marriott, a poet and hymnologist, who must have been an ancestor of hers:-

We followed the signs to Asparagus in the opposite direction to Snape and found ourselves driving down a narrow country lane, over a ford to Green Farm Produce for fresh asparagus, broad beans, tomatoes and strawberries, all in a small hut:-

We went to the Long Shop Museum in Leiston, a celebration of the engineering works established by Richard Garrett I in Leiston, making agricultural machinery – threshing machines, seed drills, ploughs, harrows and cooking stoves, many of which were exhibited at the Great Exhibition. Richard Garrett III learned how to make steam engines on an assembly line in the Long Shop in 1852. Amongst his neices were Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first person to qualify as a doctor, and Millicent Fawcett, both liberal social reformers.

This is the Long Shop itself:-

This is the Living Van designed for mobile workers:-

A 1901 fire engine:-

The Drawing Office in 1923:-

And the tools of the trade:-

Finally, the surviving tools of W.D. Titlow, a local hardware shop:-

We crossed the estuary to see an exhibition of sculpture in a disused cow barn in an isolated farm on the south side of the river.

This was the barn:-

The delectable surrounding garden:-

And so to Iken church, thatched and full of incense:-

I am interested in this issue as to who the Concert Hall at Snape should be credited to. The answer probably is to Arup Associates, which was a multidisciplinary practice. Derek Sugden’s Guardian obituary certainly gives him the credit, describing how his family and the Arups attended the Aldeburgh Festival in its early days and how Stephen Reiss, the administrator of the Festival, asked Arup, then in Sydney, to survey the Maltings as a possible concert hall. And Arup, in turn, asked Sugden to undertake the work, which he did with skill and enthusiasm for £127,000 (that’s the cost of the project as a whole). No mention of Dowson. But then Dowson’s obituaries, as I thought, credits the work to him. A double act, perhaps.