Sitting in the library of the Paul Mellon Centre this afternoon, Joshua Mardell asked if I would be interested in a poster drawn by Gavin Stamp advertising a series of lectures on ‘Best Buildings’ due to be held at the Architectural Association in Autumn 1983 and Spring 1984.

Indeed I was, not least because the first lecture in the series was by me. 

I had never seen the poster, but remember the occasion well.  The lectures were organised by Robin Middleton, then head of general studies at the AA, as well as librarian in the Department of History of Art at Cambridge.  They were unpaid, but included dinner afterwards at the Neal Street Restaurant, then über-fashionable; and it was nearly the only time I met the late Andrew Saint.  The lecture was going to be published in AA Files, but for some reason wasn’t. 

I would like to have heard Roger Scruton on Chiswick Power Station.

The lectures were thought to represent a shift in intellectual interests from the nineteenth century to the eighteenth, although this is scarcely evident in the overall choice of subjects.

GMS/6/1, Best Buildings lecture series poster, advertising lecture series held at the Architectural Association, 1983, Gavin Stamp Archive, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

I have been waiting to post something about Dick Humphreys, a friend from when he was Head of Education at the Tate (and, indeed, before that) who died entirely unexpectedly in October.

I’m glad that an obituary has now appeared in the Telegraph which is a very good record of his character, his contributions to the intellectual life of the Tate and the exceptionally wide range of his interests:-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/520e02fe6dc7a5b8

We went to the beautiful David Nash exhibition at the Ruthin Craft Centre on the way back from Anglesey.

Not an easy place to get to, but very well worth it (I have a feeling the best way from London is train to Chester and then taxi to Ruthin).

It closes on January 11th.

Three Shieves (1993):-

Crack and Warp Column (2002):-

Three Scrags on a Shelf (2003):-

Three Iron Humps (2006) on Very Long Bench (1975):-

Red Rain (2023):-

I am posting four of the last five sunrises in Angelesey:-

Saturday

Sunday:-

Monday:-

Today:-

This is what I’ve learned about Charles Tunnicliffe from reading his Shorelands Winter Diary (with apologies to those who already know all this).

He and his wife Winifred moved to Malltraeth in March 1947 and he kept a diary of his first year there.  The Shorelands Summer Diary was published in 1952 and was a succès d’estime, much admired for its close observation of bird life on the estuary and its detailed drawings.  But it was expensive to produce, so the winter months were unpublished until after his death.

They give a good sense of country life after the war.  For anyone inclined to romanticise it, there was a great amount of shooting, not in an organised way by the local grandees, but by local schoolchildren who would take a pop shot during the shooting season at the geese as they flew overhead.

Here is the estuary at Malltreath, as seen from close to Shorelands at very low tide today:-

And from the Cob, where Tunnicliffe often walked, as did we:-

So, I’ve now signed up to Merlin.

Thank you for the suggestion.

As it happens we have also just been to Oriel Môn to see the exhibition of the work of Charles Tunnicliffe who lived in a bungalow on the edge of the estuary at Malltreath:-

Now I must read his Shorelands Winter Diary which records the wealth of Anglesey bird life.

So what I thought was a hoopoe turns out to be a lapwing.

Shows I am an ignoramus when it comes to birds:-

Rather late in the Christmas season, I have caught up with Tim Abraham’s very nice and generous recommendation of my Vanbrugh book in a pre-Christmas post on Engelsberg Ideas (I also enjoyed Dirty Old River).

I am a third of the way through Robin Holloway’s unbelievably magisterial Music’s Odyssey: An Invitation to Western Classical Music, if you want some New Year’s reading:-

Books of the Year 2025 – Engelsberg ideas https://share.google/bG4gBHH2UsMsd2XsL

Another church recently taken on by the Friends of Friendless Churches is St. Twrog in open farmland atmospherically placed on a knoll surrounded by sheep.  We were told it would open at 2.30, but didn’t.

But beautiful nonetheless:-