Tuesday, 26 March 2024

London: Cloth Fair, Wigmore, Westminster, Courtauld, National Gallery, St Bartholomew the Great, RA

Mfd+J gave us a stay at the Landmark Trust's 43 Cloth Fair, to celebrate M's retirment and my 60th.

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It was Betjeman's pied a terre. This is a "photo essay", which is to say I shall not trouble you with many words. If you don't recognise the pictures... check your culture. Full photo set here.

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That's at the Wigmore Hall. Next morning, Westminster Abbey, which neither of us has ever seen, we think. I hadn't realised just how stuffed full of memorials it is. Some discretely understated:

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And some absurdly elaborate, like this life-size figure, one of four:

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And the flag-chapel is stunning.

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Then off to the Courtauld, and would you believe that M wanted lunch?

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I'm having an only-take-famous-pictures jag.

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Fortunately the C, whilst not the largest collection, is relatively free of fluff.

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I'd better stop there. We move on to the National Gallery.

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I finally found this. Sorry about the reflections near the top, the NG aren't very good with their lighting.

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Skipping lightly over my favourite spiderman and Bosch, we close with

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Famous from my O-level history textbook on the development of the English in the 17th or whatever century. Home, via sunset views of St Paul's and quasi-dream views of alien spaceships. M, who had skipped the NG, was hard at work at home.

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Sunday morning dawned. I had a quick walk around, which I spent entirely in St Bartholomew the Great, it being more interesting than I'd expected from Pevsner, with a lovely old feel.

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There was a service going on, but they had gathered at the far end in the shelter of the altar so I wasn't disturbing them. Thence to the RA for intersectional coloniality and so on, which alas wasn't to my tastes particularly artistically interesting (I should have taken the large vibrant guy posing against a bright abstract background which Aesthetica has the good taste to highlight).

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Flaming June, and some other RA-type stuff, is tucked away at the back.

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After that we parted ways, M to church-crawl and me to Vets Head.

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