I was pleased to discover the attached attractively meditative and gloomy picture of myself on Twitter, sitting in front of Thornhill’s copy of the Raphael Cartoons, with Reynolds in the distance. It was taken by Clare Hewitt for Apollo. She does a lot of work also for the Independent and New Statesman, all on analogue, which gives the images a particular aura:-

@clarehewitt_’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/clarehewitt_/status/1079408087067516929?s=09

Our last Anglesey excursion was to the Point beyond Penmon, where a lighthouse guards the entrance to the Menai Strait:-

There are two cottages for the lighthouse keepers, built by Trinity House in 1839:-

They look out over Puffin Island:-

Some mad fools were swimming in the bay:-

Then we drove back down the Strait:-

For those of you who do not necessarily have the energy or inclination to go through the 232 pages of the New Year’s Honours, here are some highlights: CBEs for Tacita Dean, Yinka Shonibare and Gillian Wearing; OBEs to Sonia Boyce and Alison Wilding; and MBEs to Ann Dumas, the curator of many of the RAs best exhibitions (in my time, From Russia, The Real Van Gogh and Painting the Modern Garden) and Bryan Kneale, now aged 88, a student of the Royal Academy Schools from 1948 to 1952, elected an ARA in 1970, and curator of the exhibition of the exhibition British Sculptors in 1972.

Congratulations to them all (and doubtless many others I have missed).

We watched the sun go down over the Afon:-

No trip to Anglesey is complete without a visit to Evans Bros. – the wonderful, comprehensively stocked hardware shop on two floors in Menai Bridge, with its acres of boxes on shelves and wooden floor:-

Sitting in a small cottage in north Wales, we only have access to a few, elderly DVDs. One is Disc Two of Clark’s Civilisation, so we watched the fifth episode THE HERO AS ARTIST on Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo. Of course, it is easy to disparage the pre-war, affected, Wykehamical enunciation, the posh suits, the de haut en bas of the delivery; but I was overwhelmingly admiring of the clarity with which he expounds the nature and character of the High Renaissance, the role of Pope Julius II, the iconography of the Sistine Chapel, the historical importance of Raphael, and the fertile curiosity of Leonardo. When he says that he has been studying Raphael’s Stanze for forty years, one believes him. And by the standards of modern presenters, he is in some ways, relatively tentative and unobtrusive, presenting what he described as ‘A Personal View’. Given that the programmes were so successful and introduced so many people to the close study of art, it’s odd that they have been, and still are, so vilified.

We walked out to the beach: the tide was high, the weather bleak:-

I am writing to wish my readers a Happy Christmas!

I have been asked if I plan to continue my blog in my new life. The answer is yes. It has become a little bit more intermittent, only because it has had to become less architectural as I have run out of things to document on my journey from Stepney into Piccadilly and the move to Hanover Square is not going to change my working environment very radically.

The New Year approaches. Will Theresa May fall on her sword if, as still seems probable, she loses the vote for her version of exit ? Or will she win by a narrow margin as MPs face the worse prospect of crashing out of the Union without a deal in place ?

I certainly don’t remember eating turkey with so little confidence in what the future holds.