Snapshots

I have a fair bit to catch up on from the last month, but I thought I would write it around snapshots of what I have been doing and seeing in that time.

Owls in the British Library

Well, as I had been warned, the British Library was absolutely packed over the summer, and unless you got there by 10 or very soon after, you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the idea of getting a desk or finding an empty locker down in the cloakroom... People resorted to interesting lengths to reserve desks for themselves - I spotted this one in Rare Books as I was popping out for a coffee break: a little cloth owl, and a bashed-up old notebook. Later on in the day I remembered to look and see whose desk it was, and it was occupied by a very respectable-looking middle-aged Japanese lady - she was working away surrounded by piles of bona fide-looking rare books, with the toy owl still in the same position...

We got into a very cosy habit working with Juliette - my arrival time in the library was slightly erratic and she would always save me a desk. We moved around a little bit - she got a bit bored of looking at the mustachioed Italian who alternated his beige or grey cardigans on a weekly basis...

It was an immensely productive month - as Glaire commented in an email, I was obviously ready to do this. I sent off my book proposal and sample material, and got about halfway through revising the thesis. Some of it is not very polished, and I created work for myself in some ways by deciding to add a new chapter - by turning my object appendix into an object-focused chapter - but I feel very satisfied with how much I got done. Plus I felt extremely relaxed by the end of it, and not at all keen on going back to work - especially with the 'age of austerity' looming and no-one quite knowing what is going to be in store for museums and heritage institutions in the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review...

With Nick at Blickling

We got away for the Bank Holiday weekend (typical late August weather, as you can see from the photo!!) and went to visit Nick in Norfolk. We had a rather crazy weekend staying with him at his mother and stepfather's, along with their 3 young grand-daughters (all under 5), the parents of their daughter-in-law, Nick's brother and his wife, and four labradors!! It was actually great fun, though we slipped away during the day, to take in the gorgeous Norfolk countryside and exercise our National Trust membership cards a little - not being drivers, we don't get to do that very much! K had a bunch of places that he wanted to visit for various research reasons, and it was great just spending time with Nick and catching up. We also got to be the first dinner guests at Suzie & Drake's wonderful thatched cottage, which they had only moved into 2 weeks before!


The South Bank had a Morris dancing festival - inspired by the sarcastic remarks apparently made by Sebastian Coe at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing: in reaction to the acrobatic Chinese dancing, he quipped that in London in 2012 we could instead look forward to the performance of 5000 Morris dancers. South Bank took him at his word, and pop artist David Owen created some memorable Morris dancing related images - one of them was (ha ha) Morissey, waving a bunch of wildflowers; another was the famous head from the bookcover of A Clockwork Orange, wearing a flower-festooned hat... But I liked this Star Wars Stormtrooper the best!

We actually didn't see any of the Morris dancing, but we did go to hear The Imagined Village playing at Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was excellent! The night before going back to work too, so I certainly was not sitting around at home moping over my 'back to school' feeling...


People have been emailing me to tell me they have spotted my book for sale in far-flung places! So far, the furthest-flung is the American University of Cairo bookshop - in Cairo! But this photo was taken by Lisa, "in an academic bookshop in a narrow street in Venice, about two weeks ago"... You can just spot it there in the middle on the top shelf!

Have you seen my book for sale anywhere exotic? I'd love to know!


I had one day back in the office last Monday, then went off again on a 3-day courier trip to Munich - installing a few pieces in an exhibition that is soon to open at the Haus der Kunst, commemorating 100 years since a major Islamic Art exhibition held in Munich in 1910. This one has a combination of 'historic' objects - which had been shown at the 1910 exhibition - together with contemporary works, which seems to be a current trend in exhibition curating in Germany these days. The exhibition in Berlin which I couriered in January took a similar approach. It was early days in the installation - I was the first courier - but I was impressed by the quality of the pieces. The Haus der Kunst is a rather ugly Fascist building - it was built in 1937, and seems ironically to be one of few buildings in Munich that actually survived the Allied bombings in 1945 - though they seem to have turned it into quite a thriving cultural and exhibition centre.

Munich was lovely - I had never been before - and it was really nice to catch up with Marion (hello! I know she reads this!). The Glockenspiel in the picture above is one of Munich's major tourist attractions - it is installed in the impressive belltower of the neo-Gothic Rathaus, though it dates from the early 20th century. It commemorates two events from Munich's history. Everyone gathers in the main square for 11 o'clock when it starts to play, and there is a great cry of approval when the Bavarian jouster knocks his Austrian opponent off his perch - lots of fun!

But what a busy week! I was giving a lecture yesterday - in a study afternoon on Seville - so as soon as I got back from Munich, I had to think about that. No wonder I feel like a zombie today!


And last, but by no means least, our calendar image for the month - K's grandfather, Robert, who died this time last year. This lovely photo of him was taken during the war, when he must have been in his 30s. He didn't change a bit all his life!

Damascus - and Waddesdon

A quick note to share these beautiful photographs, taken by my colleague, who co-ordinated the ceramics exhibition I worked on and lived with in Damascus for five weeks at the end of last year - she has captured some really serene and beautiful moments in the life of that great and ancient city, as well as some of the other places in Syria which she managed to get away to visit during her rather stress-packed extended stay there. Check them out.

And while I am on the subject of photos - this now being March (where does the time go??), it is time to share with you our calendar image for this month.

Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire © KR

This rather grand façade is the back of Waddesdon Manor, the extremely over-the-top home of the Rothschild family, built between 1874 and 1889 to house both them and their important art collection, and which we visited at Easter last year. Among the objects in this collection are an ivory casket painted with designs in the Islamic style, made in 12th-century Sicily, and a fine lustre flower pot from 15th-century Valencia. I had suggested a trip with the sneaky hope that I might get to see either of these objects, but sadly the gallery displaying highlights of the collection was closed, or we did not find it - though by that point I didn't care too much, since it was supposed to be a day off from work! The house and its furnishings were that weird kind of construction that seems to have been so popular among the late 19th-century super rich - I encountered many more examples among the 'Robber Barons' of New York, when I was in that august city last autumn, and was searching for traces of the fever for the 'Moorish' style that was so popular among international wealthy elites. The Waddesdon collection is largely French and 18th-century - not at all to our taste - encased within a glamorous house that also purports to be from that period, but is late 19th-century. It's a little bit weird, but exceedingly opulent, and we decided just to give ourselves up to the aesthetic experience, which was refreshingly unrelated to anything we know or really care about!

Getting there by public transport was a challenge - we had quite a long walk from and to the station, and were not very impressed with all the other visitors who swept past us up the long drive in their 4x4s, and not a single person stopped to offer us a lift...! The walk was pleasant, though on the way back a snow blizzard started up, which we were not at all prepared for - but it was beautiful, and the thing I remember with most fondness about the day.

More soon - when I have time to write - about our very pleasant family weekend away in Swansea. It's my father's birthday today! A good omen, I think, given that today is also the day I have moved into an office of my own to begin the work of writing my book, which can no longer be ignored - and the day my sister starts a new job! And a beautiful warm sunny day as well, so it almost felt like spring - a true new beginning?

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Very Excellent New Year!!

Capilla de los Condestables, Burgos Cathedral © KR

On New Year’s Day 2008, we went for a walk in Crystal Palace, among the ruins of the venue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 – an easy bus ride from Brixton on the number 3 bus, which transports you to the rather ghostly traces of what must have been an amazing spectacle until it was destroyed by fire in 1936… K had to give a paper in Oxford on 4th January, and has resolved never to ruin the Christmas holidays like that again.

In February, we celebrated our twelfth anniversary, and K was viva’d in Oxford for his PhD, which he passed with minor corrections.

At Easter, we visited Waddesdon in the snow, and joined the National Trust, which inspired us to visit London properties, such as William Morris’s Arts and Crafts home in Bexleyheath, The Red House, which we did the next day. It was still snowing on Easter Monday when we walked up to Alexandra Palace for a drink with Helen G.

M gave a ridiculous number of lectures this year, including a series of three in April, on Córdoba, Granada and Seville, to members of The Art Fund. She is resolving to learn how to say ‘no’ but already the line-up for 2009 suggests she has a lot of practising to do.

In May, M led a group of V&A Patrons on a tailor-made guided tour of ‘Islamic Spain’, visiting Granada, Córdoba and Seville over the course of a week, and then staying on in Spain for the rest of the month, travelling from south to very north researching for the book she will be writing in Spring 2009. K joined her for the last two weeks, and we celebrated his 32nd birthday in a lovely local place at the end of an alley in Zaragoza, which was about the only restaurant we could find open. Almost everything in the city was closed, in the calm before the storm of the international expo! We had arranged to meet Glaire in Toledo, but also met Jeremy quite by chance, and spent an excellent few days in their company. In Barcelona, it was wonderful as always to see Sarah, Julius, Leila and Isaac, and spent what later turned out to be our last few days in their old home.

In June, K graduated for his PhD in Durham Cathedral, attended by his parents and his (then) 94-year-old grandfather. He wore a very exuberant red and purple gown, which he did not want to give back at the end of the day. (There are some photos here)

In July, we were visited by Bev and James, our long-lost friends returned from Australia for a round of visits. It was brilliant to see them and spend so much time with them! K gave another conference paper, at Leeds International Medieval Congress, and M had the honour to attend her mother’s graduation ceremony (photos here), in Guildford Cathedral, which she suspected and later confirmed was the church that scared Damien in The Omen. We spent a lovely evening with Alison, Steve and Ellie, a few months before the arrival of Nathan.

In August, M took her customary two weeks off work to make the most of living in London, but the weather was terrible, so it was largely spent indoors. Though we did go with Isla to the Canary Wharf Jazz Festival, and picnicked in the rain – something the English will have to get used to doing more and more, I suspect. Gareth celebrated her birthday with us, at Gastro in Clapham. At the end of the month we went to Hereford for a few days to celebrate K’s mother’s 60th birthday and retirement party.

In September, we spent a very pleasant day with Cornelius, visiting buildings all over London which threw open their doors for Open House Weekend – the highlight was definitely the former Granada Cinema in Tooting, now a bingo hall, built in the 1930s in high Victorian Gothic style (see http://cinematreasures.org/theater/9424). We joined K’s family again to celebrate his grandfather’s 95th birthday. K ran a 10k charity run at Hampton Court in aid of Cancer Research, which he made in 58 minutes, and he’s now addicted to running!

M left for New York at the end of the month, to participate in a curatorial exchange at the Metropolitan Museum for a month, but was away in the States for six weeks altogether, with a week in California at the beginning (book research again – honest!), and most of a week in Philadelphia attending the Historians of Islamic Art Association conference. Again K joined her for the last two weeks, having given a paper at the Sixteenth-Century Society conference in St Louis. We were in the States for the Presidential Election which was hugely exciting, especially because of the excellent result. Election night with Albert at Cleopatra’s Needle, watching the early results on a TV whose sound we could not hear and whose subtitling software was spitting out gobbledegook, followed by a late supper at Karen’s in Spanish Harlem where the result was declared and you could hear the whooping in the streets from all over Manhattan! Walking back through the Upper East Side at 1 in the morning with groups of happy people periodically shouting out, ‘Yes we can!’

We were visited in New York by another long-lost friend, Rebecca (though sadly Adam couldn’t make it), and we celebrated the release of her debut EP! (details here).

M was back in London for four days before flying to Damascus to install an exhibition of World Ceramics, the first time the V&A has ever loaned an exhibition to the Middle East, which was hailed in the British press as the right kind of diplomacy (see the excellent Guardian comment by Simon Jenkins here). She then stayed on to supervise it for the first half of its run, and was in Syria for five weeks altogether, trying to make the most of her one day off a week to visit some of the amazing classical, early Christian, and Crusader sites, not to mention Islamic, for which Syria is justly famous. A fantastic experience.

She is very happy, though, to be back home just in time for Christmas, and to be spending the festive season with loved ones. We’re confident that 2009 will be a good year, with Obama at the helm, and we look forward to all the happy hours we’ll spend with friends and family over the coming months. A very Happy New Year to one and all!