You may all be wondering what on earth has happened about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, as indeed am I. The truth is that it has all gone quiet since the Planning Inquiry finished at the end of October, first of all, while the Planning Inspector writes his report, which is apparently now done, and now while Robert Jenrick ponders his recommendation, which we know he is not obliged to accept. So, we are twiddling our thumbs while we await the verdict, hoping against hope that he comes to the right conclusion and forbids Raycliff to convert it into a now totally redundant posh hotel with only vestiges of its former use. The bells of the world will then ring out in celebration.

Down by the river, it was a bit wild:-

I went out walking to check that the outside world still exists. The answer is, it does, but only just.

As the door of St. Dunstan was open – unusually – I wandered in and greatly admired the East Window by Hugh Easton, who had been trained as an artist in France and Italy and then served in the War as a naval commander. He depicts the devastation of the church’s surroundings during the war with wonderfully meticulous topographical precision. A great treat to see some art:-

I am a tiny bit bemused by the exceptional amount of interest my anodyne, but enthusiastic comments about The Dig have had, most especially, it appears, in Alaska.

By way of postscript to what I have already written, I have been interested to discover what an exceptionally interesting person Peggy Piggott (née Preston) was, a formidable and remarkable archaeologist in her own right, entirely independently of her husband Stuart, who she divorced in 1954 (he spent the war years in India), when she married a Sicilian, Luigi Guido, who she then nursed after he had a psychotic breakdown. She was also, not coincidentally, the aunt of John Preston, who wrote the novel on which the book is based, although he apparently did not know her well because his father did not get on with her.

I was also a bit baffled by the house in the film because it is so evidently not Tranmer House, the rather dull Edwardian house where the real Sutton Hoo is based, but is instead, as several people have pointed out, Norney Grange in Shackleford near Godalming, a house designed by Charles Voysey with its incredible Vanbrugh-ian entrance porch, so prominent when Basil Brown arrives at the house to be interviewed:-

Very nice piece in today’s FT, which I hadn’t spotted:-

https://www.ft.com/content/ac142c06-2472-4d1b-855c-04aec58a2089

The more I read about The Dig, the truer it seems to be – at least to the dynamics of the key players and the personality of Basil Brown. Someone has kindly alerted me to the attached account of Basil Brown, which quotes liberally from his diary:-

https://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-britain-country-which-finally.html?m=1

We watched The Dig last night, a perfect piece of lockdown therapy exploring the circumstances surrounding the excavation of Sutton Hoo just before the outbreak of the Second World War. I wasn’t sure how close it is to what happened, based as it is on John Preston’s fictional account. Carey Mulligan is definitely a great deal more attractive than the real Edith Pretty. Ralph Fiennes is totally convincing as the rustic excavator. Stuart Piggott who joined the dig at the invitation of Charles Phillips was definitely gay. So, it feels convincing, but possibly only in the way that The Crown is convincing, taking liberties with the truth in the interests of dramatic invention. Anyway, it’s extremely enjoyable, not least for its depiction of the intellectual snobbery of Charles Phillips, the Cambridge archaeologist who arrives to supervise the excavation and take all the credit.

So, after a long wait, not knowing quite what was happening and not being able to find out, I got the call last night and we went this morning to the Queen Mary vaccination centre in Arts One and we were done – the merest pinprick, but the most enormous relief, like a large dark cloud which now is half removed, the endless anxiety and precautions, not that they stop, but they feel suddenly less a matter of life and death.

The snowdrops are out in the garden:-

In our mourning for not being able to travel to Wales and missing the view of the mountains under snow, we have taken delivery of a bedspread which has our favourite places embroidered:-