I was invited to lunch today at Bibendum to celebrate the publication of a big book about Tony Snowdon, A Life in View, which has been put together by his daughter, Frances, and published by Rizzoli.   It included lots of people of Tony’s generation – Terence Stamp wearing a green corduroy suit he acquired from Far from the Madding Crowd and had remade by Cerruti ten years later – and lots of Frances’s as well.   Lucy Snowdon reminded me of what it was like to sit for Snowdon:  the old blue shirt one was forced to don, the stiff leather arm chair.   I was photographed with a battered green leather suitcase on my lap.

I’ve been asked to explain my use of the term Tyburnia to describe the area of shabby chic streets and squares that lie between Paddington and Bayswater, from Craven Hill to Cleveland Square.   The term derives, of course, from the fact that public executions used to take place at the Tyburn Tree near the junction between the Bayswater and Edgware Roads where a grandstand was set up for people to watch the hangings.   Paul Sandby lived in the semi-rural St. George’s Row and so did Dominic Serres.   The area, once owned by the Bishop of London, was developed in the early nineteenth century by Samuel Pepys Cockerell and George Gutch as surveyors to the Paddington Estate.   They were responsible for the layout of its streets and squares, including the grand houses of Hyde Park Gardens.   It retains an attractively nondescript character of boarding houses and cheap hotels.

I went to the barber today and noticed for the first time, which I should have noticed before, the elaborately carved inscription over the window.   It was apparently an advertisement for the wood turner’s craft alongside the ornate brick decoration and, once upon a time, rich plasterwork in the interior.   Nothing could be nicer or more therapeutic than a haircut and capuccino as the sun rises over the back streets of Tyburnia.

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I spent the day helping to judge an art prize called Young Masters, which is based on the principle that it’s good for artists to be interested in the art of the past.   It wasn’t at all straightforward.   The works were split between two venues, one in the city, the other in Notting Hill.   Artists whose work looked strong in one venue before lunch looked less so in the second venue, and vice versa.   We didn’t all agree.   The work of photographers was strong, but not necessarily original.   We were asked which individual works were the strongest which gave a different answer to which artists were the strongest.   We couldn’t decide whether tastefulness was good or bad.   Eventually we reached a decision which wasn’t the one which would have been predicted from the discussion.   But we agreed in the end.

Yesterday, the President and I were taken on a tour of the not-so-new Bonhams by Alex Lifschutz of Lifschutz  Davidson Sandilands, who suggested that they could hollow out a house at the top end of Bond Street to provide a grand ceremonial entrance to their auction rooms.   Nothing could more obviously demonstrate the transformation of the art world into a sleekly modern business than his conversion of the higgledy piggledy old Phillips building.   It now has intelligently curved staircases and hyper serviced auction spaces and a small restaurant about to open in Haunch of Venison Yard.

Ⓒ Hufton and Crow

Ⓒ Hufton and Crow

Ⓒ Hufton and Crow