A pleasure of being on holiday is the opportunity to catch up on some recent books. One is Richard J. Williams’s excellent and lively account of what he describes as ‘The Multiple Banhams’ – how Reyner Banham reinvented himself from the aeronautical engineer to the scholarly pupil of Nikolaus Pevsner, then unshackled himself as an advocate for Brutalism and prolific journalist in New Society. I read his book on Los Angeles when it came out and still admire it as a combination of analysis of urban form with touristic enthusiasm. He died just after he had been appointed a Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, taking over from Henry-Russell Hitchcock. They were not unlike one another in their eclecticism and their in situ analysis of building types.

We walked down to the Straits today. It was incredibly hot – hot and still:-

Having watched the Dominic Cummings interview (or grilling) by Laura Kuenssberg last night, I have found the commentary on it this morning curiously disappointing. Of course, it is easy, and no doubt tempting, to dismiss him as a swivel-eyed lunatic, now consumed by his own self-deluding arrogance and narcissism. But this is someone who worked as the right-hand man and fixer for Michael Gove over a long period of time, was, by all accounts, the intellectual architect and manager of Brexit, and was hired and given extraordinary powers by Boris Johnson when he became Prime Minister. So, it is surely worth treating his analysis seriously, not least because he is interested in political ideas, and, unusually for a political activist, was successful in implementing what he wanted to happen. And it seemed to me that it is worth giving his own analysis of events some credence: that the British political system is so soft and torpid that it is open to a form of entryism by a small group of ideologically motivated fanatics with their own agenda and in which it proved possible for them to manipulate and co-opt an intellectually slovenly, but personally ambitious proto-Prime Minister for their own purposes. Hence Brexit. I don’t really see anything to dispute in this analysis.

Menai Bridge – the town – is nicer than ever, now that Beaumaris is overrun by tourists. It has the best garage:-

Definitely the best hardware store. And Hawthorn Yard is now full of flowers:-

It’s beautifully, if somewhat surreally hot in a way I don’t remember except for August 1984, which doesn’t seem to be on record – August 1976 is when we travelled round Ireland looking at mausolea:-

Walking down the lane this evening, the hedgerows are absolutely full of butterflies, all the same type – I think Gatekeepers, but am happy to be corrected: hard to photograph, particularly with their wings spread. Maybe it is the sun:-

I can’t remember what made me read We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper. It was a recommendation by either Peter Mandler or Dan Hicks on twitter, or perhaps both. It is about the politics of academic archaeology at Harvard and the Peabody Museum in the late 1960s – incredibly well written, researched and deeply, alarmingly engrossing in the way that it brings out the characteristics of campus hierarchies, personalities and injustices, particularly Harvard’s, so powerfully. Very good summer holiday reading ! So, I’m grateful for the recommendation.

Our favourite antique shop in Beaumaris, an Aladdin’s Cave of interesting Welsh furniture – chairs, tiles, treen – we are unable to go in without buying something – has acquired a new van. Actually, it’s an old van, but very magnificent nonetheless:-