It was the first performance in the Warburg’s new lecture hall in which Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde was accompanied on Gombrich’s Grotrian-Steinweg piano, newly restored like the Institute itself.

Gombrich’s mother had been trained as a concert pianist and knew both Mahler and Schoenberg.

He married one of her pupils, Else Heller, in 1936, the year that they moved to London so that he could take up a post as a research assistant at the Warburg Institute.  They took the piano with them, not an easy thing to transport.  In later life they would play chamber music together.

Else died aged 96 and so the family donated the piano to the Warburg, to which Gombrich had devoted his life.

We went on a sunny afternoon expedition to the Ragged School Museum, which was, as always, both educational and moving, witnessing the plight of the poor children who were photographed before their death from TB:-

BUT

There are problems with their disabled access, surprising in such a recent project funded by the HLF.  Ground level access is fine; but the lift is too small and nearly impossible to get into for a large wheel chair.

I would not comment except it is slightly too common.  I know how it happens.  The architect – or the project architect – will have said that the lift meets minimum requirements.  The client will have been keen to save money.  Lifts are by far the biggest cost of any restoration project.  So HLF will have passed it.  But they shouldn’t.  Because now it’s been installed, it will never be replaced, thereby making it impossible for large wheelchairs to go upstairs – or downstairs to the excellent café.

I went on a Wren tour organised by Open City, seeing some churches which I should have known, but didn’t, starting with the surviving church tower of St. Dunstan-in-the-East:-

St. Margaret Pattens:-

A detail from the Monument:-

We stopped for coffee at St. Mary Woolnoth:-

St. Michael’s, Paternoster Royal:-

And the tower of St. James Garlickhythe:-

There were more, but I had to peel off.

I have been asked if I am doing any talks about Vanbrugh and the answer is, yes, in particular one for the Georgian Group in late April (https://georgiangroup.org.uk/event-directory/lecture-john-vanbrugh-the-drama-of-architecture/), but also another for the Simonsbath Festival if you happen to be in deepest rural Devon in mid-May (https://www.simonsbathfestival.org.uk/events).

It is is full-on Vanbrugh as I respond to (very helpful) queries from my copy editor. It’s terrible how every time one looks at a text, there are small errors, not helped by word processing introducing its own minor errors, including changes in paragraph indentation and the width of the right-hand margin.

I was going to have to subsidise the costs of obtaining the images by crowd funding, but this is mercifully no longer necessary (mercifully for my friends and readers who I would have asked to contribute).

There was going to be a short, five-minute film asking for money, of which the only survival is an image of me sitting next to Vanbrugh himself (thank you, Adam and Martin):-

You can, of course, instead order the book, out in time for Christmas:-

Another obituary of my nephew Joe.  I knew some of what he did, but certainly not all of it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2025/02/21/joe-saumarez-smith-bookie-gambler-head-bha-died-obituary/

It was indeed a very memorable event.  Three people speaking from totally different perspectives about St. Anne’s Limehouse.  Hélène Binet who photographed the Hawksmoor churches so beautifully for the Venice Biennale in 2012 – as it turned out at some speed, although one would not guess this from the calm formality of her 4×5 black-and-white compositions.  Owen Hopkins whose book From the Shadows appeared ten years ago and spoke about the alchemy of Hawksmoor: the lime of Limehouse; the coal of the coal tax; the whiteness of the Portland stone.  And Iain Sinclair spoke incredibly memorably of his experience of mowing the grass in the churchyard, the tramps sleeping in the windows, and his sense of the potency and personality of Hawksmoor, the underdog, whose imagination was unleashed by the opportunity to redesign a portion of a new city.

In all the years we’ve driven to Anglesey, we’ve never stopped at Tong, a magical church less than half a mile from Exit 3 of the M54.  In fact, the site of Tong Castle, demolished in 1954, is apparently under the motorway.

The church is remarkable.  Constructed between 1410 and 1430 at the behest of Isabel de Pembrugge who built Tong College in memory of her first husband, Sir Fulke de Pembrugge:-

Inside is a richer array of family Monuments than I remember seeing.

This, starting in the Golden Chapel, is the tomb of Sir Henry and Lady Vernon, Guardian and Treasurer to Arthur, Prince of Wales.  He died in 1515:-

Beyond is the tomb of Sir Thomas Stanley (d.1576) and his wife:-

Beyond them is Sir Richard Vernon and his wife:-

Of course, they’re not very easy to photograph.

It’s a place to go back to.

If you have access to The Times, I recommend my nephew’s obituary:-

https://www.thetimes.com/article/9b5763e1-2c22-41dd-8a2b-614ff647b537?shareToken=b5719e55a322a25a30f712c41a7d9122

On the way out:-

Coming back:-