We had lunch in Bedfordshire.   After lunch, I slipped out into the garden to admire the lawns lightly covered in snow:-

I went for a short walk to blow off the cobwebs of Christmas, reduce the fat of the Christmas pudding, and exercise the Leica.   Up the canal, as usual:-

Through Meath Gardens, which has an unexpected, pyramidal, brick gate pier:-

Past the railway bridge:-

Past the curious cemetery in Globe Road:-

And back past the flats:-

I have been forbidden from posting a picture of our Christmas tree, but have been allowed to post a photograph of the Christmas decorations on the staircase, a minor work of art, which I do with best Christmas wishes to all my readers, wherever you are, a highly select group, together with a picture of the curious creature on the top of the tree:-

It was as if a bomb had dropped on East London this morning, as if everyone was sleeping off a gigantic hangover which, of course, is always possible or has gone on holiday in the Azores:  nothing but the smell of wood smoke from the barges which is soon to be banned:-

I ended up in the Ceramics Galleries:-

I admired the small statuette of a Mourning Woman by Henry Cheere, done as a preparatory model for the tomb of Thomas Archer:-

And a bust of Napoleon done in 1805:-

In the Gilbert Bayes Sculpture Gallery (new to me), I admired the recumbent terracotta of Dr. Hugh Chamberlen by Scheemakers (c.1728):-

And the astonishing self-portrait of the Burslem potter, Enoch Wood:-

An ivory of the Countess of Sunderland by David Le Marchand:-

I had actually come to the V&A to see the reproductions of medieval tombstones in the Qala Quraysh fortress in Dagestan, which are displayed in the so-called Prince Consort Gallery, till recently the textile store room:-

I spent the morning in the V&A. I started in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries.

My eye was caught first by two hats, not particularly ornate, presumably those of a commoner, tossed away and somehow preserved, roughly five hundred years later:-

The Head of a Young Man by Michel Erhart, made out of limewood in Ulm:-

And the Descent from the Cross by Sansovino, made for Perugino when they were both in Rome:-

An angel by Riemenschneider:-

A Donatello Lamentation:-

Three angels by Giovanni Antonio Amadei:-

I have spent the day immured in the RIBA library on Portland Place:  a fine piece of 1930s half-modernism, designed by Grey Wornum and opened in 1934 to commemorate the centenary of the RIBA’s foundation.   Wornum was the grandson of Ralph Wornum, the prolific writer on art and Keeper of the National Gallery.   Grey Wornum edited books on craftsmanship before the first world war, lost an eye during it, and in the 1920s worked with Louis De Soissons.   His design for the RIBA was chosen from 284 entries, its half-modernism owing to his knowledge of contemporary Swedish design.   I love its library, which sadly is closed for the rest of the holiday season.

It was pretty icy in the park this morning and I felt old and shaggy like the aged heron:-

I went in to Hatchard’s art department today to sign some more copies of East London for Christmas.   It always gives me a slight frisson because it is where Romilly was working when I first met her in December 1973, nearly 45 years ago.   In those days, there were three people working in the Art Department:  Maureen Boland, a spinster who always wore a nylon overall and went on to publish Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners jointly with her sister;  Baron Nicolas van den Branden de Reeth, a very well read Belgian baron who lived with Terence Davis, the architectural historian, in a grand flat in Cornwall Gardens;  and Romilly, who got the job by walking in off the street.