When I opened my computer this morning, Google flashed an article from Country Life in front of me which, because of its lovely picture of books, I opened up and found it was an article about the London Library in which I am quoted.

I owe the London Library a great deal and use it constantly. I like the helpfulness of its staff at the front desk and the curious arrangement of the stacks at the back, with topography down in the basement and a section on the history of museums in Science and Miscellaneous. In the early 1980s, I was sometimes the only person in the Reading Room apart from John Julius Norwich. Now it is always packed.

Here is the article:-

After visiting Clandon, I wanted to visit Kirby Hall, which has been a romantic ruin since the nineteenth century, was taken on by the Ministry of Works in 1927 and was John Summerson’s favourite building (he made a TV programme about it in 1971).

It’s slightly surreal, so close to Corby, and totally deserted:-

The sun came out on the north façade:-

Amazing carved decoration on the gate to the entrance courtyard:-

It was an incredible treat to stop off on the journey south at Hardwick, such a wonderful house on its hill overlooking the M1.

The approach:-

Not surprisingly, I liked the Muniment Room:-

But I was totally ill prepared for what lay upstairs:-

The glories of the Long Gallery.

The state bed which I have discovered is a nineteenth-century fake (aka a reconstruction):-

The mantelpiece which is not a fake:-

But most magical is the ensemble, the way it envelops one:-

A beautiful place !

I have been to the Piece Hall before, but not recently.  In fact, I remember it – not necessarily correctly – as unoccupied in the late 1980s.

A monument to commerce on a magisterial scale:-

Strange to find the remains of such a fine Cistercian abbey so close to the centre of Leeds,, but I presume it was remote countryside in 1152 when first established:-

I haven’t been to Hepworth Wakefield since COVID and indeed since Tom Stuart-Smith created a garden to its south, filling the space between the gallery and the adjacent mills.

I was incredibly impressed by how well David Chipperfield’s design has worn: its sense of complexity of internal gallery spaces, the quality of light in its galleries, its reticent monumentality.

One of the strange things about it is that it is exactly as it was originally drawn for the competition entry – a set of complex interlocking polyhedral spaces. 

£35 million, more than double the cost of Turner Contemporary, but very well worth it:-

The mills are due to be renovated:-

The gallery mirrors some of its industrial surroundings:-

A very beautiful exhibition of work by Liz Fritsch at Hepworth Wakefield, quietly monumental.

One only normally sees them as one-offs, as shown by Adrian Sassoon, but they look wonderful in groups as if they had been composed that way.

Bowls from 1974-5:-

1976-9:-

c.1984:-

1998-2008:-

1990-2000:-

1999-2001:-

Much as I admired the Hastings House and feel that its owner should have won the Client of the Year Award, the Appleby Blue Almshouse is in every way deserving of this year’s Stirling Prize: thoughtful, well considered, bringing the highest quality of both design and construction to a not very easy part of Southwark. 

And they won the Client of the Year Award.  And the Neave Brown Award for Housing:-

Julian Bell has an exhibition for one week only in a gallery space in 15, Bateman Street in the heart of Soho.

I was particularly taken by two pictures.  One of Dover, apparently topographically exact, but at the same time subtly symbolic.  The three castles;-

The other was a picture of the never-ending queue of cars going into the Blackwall Tunnel.  Although I know this scene only too well, it took me a bit of time to figure it out – again, a subtle mixture of the real and the symbolic, like American painters of tge 1930s:-

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I was invited to an art/architectural installation in 14, Cavendish Square by OF A, a Reykjavik firm of architects.

The house itself is remarkable, one of two grand houses on the north side of Cavendish Square on a site previously owned by the Society of Dilettanti.  No.14 was apparently bought ten years ago, but, although restoration work began, it has been used as an event/party venue.

OF A have made only minimal interventions to make it into magical space:-