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!

The Wonderful World of Byzantium

Last Sunday, I finally went to the Byzantium exhibition, the next ‘culture’ that the Royal Academy has decided to colonise. Wow. It is only on for a few more weeks (typical of me to leave it almost to the end), and I think everyone in London is trying to make sure they see it before it closes. It was packed! I got there as lunchtime was just starting, so during the two hours I was there, I experienced a comparative lull while everyone else went off to ingest some energy to get them through it. I walked straight through to the end of the show, and worked my way backwards – in my experience Royal Academy exhibitions are usually so huge that you are just too tired to take in the last few rooms, so I wanted to see what was there, and then focus on what I was really interested in – though unfortunately this meant that by the time I had got back to the beginning, lunchtime was over, and the first two galleries were jammed again. I felt so sorry for the several people I saw trying to go round in wheelchairs – one guy was particularly vocal about his frustration at not being able to see anything. I don’t think the height of the cases or position of the labels was very DDA compliant, so I really don’t know what he was able to see.

It managed to live up to all my usual gripes about Royal Academy exhibitions – terrible lighting, how can they get away with it? Objects are in darkness, or lit so that you can’t avoid throwing your shadow over them, or so over-lit that the surface of the object just reflects it back to you, and you can’t see any of the detail. Also, small objects with immensely delicate and detailed decoration, positioned so far back in the case that you can’t see a thing. I really must get into the habit of bringing a torch and a magnifier with me to RA exhibitions. They also seem to have developed a new habit of giving only (what we call in the trade) ‘tombstone’ information on the labels (which were in a new kind of reflective silver material which meant that there was no chance of seeing anything if you tried to read them at a sharp angle through the glass because of the long queue of people clustering round one object…), which gives you absolutely no understanding at all of the complex iconography of Byzantine art, where things were found or how they survived or even really why they were in the show at all. ‘Interpretation’ is never the RA’s strong suit, and they seem to have done away with it completely here. If you want to learn anything, you have to get the audio guide, which I am too much of a snob to do, since I hate the way it turns exhibition-goers into automata, looking only at what the machine tells you to. Or you buy the catalogue, which I had already decided to do before I even arrived. A nice traditional publication of the exhibition as it was, with the added bonus of essays by people who know what they’re talking about. And information about the objects – hurrah!

But what objects! It was amazing to see all the real celebrities of Byzantine ivory carving in one room – and such a treat to be able to see their backs! I have, however, seen more icons than I needed to, but I had no idea how large some of them were! Something I thought was really interesting was that the large collection of 6th-century icons in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, in Egypt, was actually saved from iconoclasm by having been absorbed into the Islamic Empire some hundred years before the decree of iconoclasm (730-845) – so now it has one of the best preserved sets of icons from the whole Byzantine world. Nowadays, The One Thing That Everyone Knows About Islamic Art is that there is no figural representation (which is true only in religious contexts, and even then it is not universally enforced), and it seems to be entirely forgotten that other religions, not least Christianity, had their aniconic phases too. I thought the way they covered to and fro of artistic influences with Islam was a bit tokenistic (and they certainly focused on the ‘to’, but there was most definitely ‘fro’ as well, as evidenced by some of the ivories, and the palmette scroll designs in the repoussé silver adornments on many of the icons), and much more could have been made of this important topic – but perhaps that’s actually a subject for a whole exhibition in itself.

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You will be pleased to hear that my book writing is progressing well – I am nearly at the end of the second week of my research leave, though I am not quite on the verge of achieving my target of having a complete finished draft of Chapter 1 by tomorrow. This is because I ended up spending most of the first week gradually moving my accumulated piles of papers and notes and useful books from home into my new office in the Research Department at work, then sorting and filing these. Well, “it’s an essential part of the process”, as I was pleased to hear one of my new colleagues say to me! (And my desk at home has not been so clear for years!)

I decided not to be too worried about trying to over-achieve in the first few days, and I was giving a lecture two days in – to the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery (close to home at least) – so I just let the creative juices start to flow in their own time. Towards the end, Nick, one of my Asian Department colleagues, told me something very important, which immediately turned into my mantra – “Don’t get it right, get it written” (with thanks to his cousin). Now, as you know I don’t have a problem with getting things written, as evidenced by the length of my blog postings – whether they actually say anything interesting is another matter (and one I won’t invite you to comment on!). So, I am very nearly there with a complete first draft of Chapter 1 (which covers the early medieval period in the art history of Islamic Spain, focusing mainly on the 10th to 13th centuries) – trouble is, it’s already twice as long as the chapter is supposed to be. Turns out there are quite a lot of interesting things to say about the rather neglected (in art historical terms) Berber dynasties, the Almoravids and Almohads. So, I’m going to be spending a fair bit of time doing some serious polishing and refining, which is going to take me at least into the middle of next week, by which point I will be behind my entirely unrealistic work schedule. Sigh.

Two things that were keeping me going last week:

1) Catching up on the last seven episodes of Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica (not the original!) – with sincere thanks to Az for his episode pirating skills. Only three more episodes to go – ever!

2) Scandinavian crime fiction, in the form of The Ice Princess, by Camilla Läckberg (with thanks to Lesley for the loan). As people who owned the Complete Works of Henning Mankell before anyone else in the UK had heard of him (and, by the way, weren’t the Kenneth Branagh TV adaptations good? Hope he does more!), and now that Scandinavian crime writing is The New Black, it was with mild disdain mingled with curiosity that I embarked on this new discovery – though helped along by Lesley’s recommendation. I enjoyed it – it certainly helped to take my mind off my own stresses, at the usual two pages a night before falling asleep… But I am not sure it lived up to the hyperbole of the back cover (“a masterclass in Scandinavian crime writing” – er, no), and I thought that most of the subsidiary characters were rather stereotyped. There’s an insightful write-up on it at this blog – I actually though the “obligatory big knicker homage to Bridget Jones” was pretty disappointing. The main protagonist is someone who makes her career writing literary biographies of important Swedish women – and her “favourite literary heroine” is Bridget Jones?? Come on!

Still, I would read more books by Camilla Läckberg (especially if I don’t have to buy them!). Since then I’ve been splashing about in that strange myre you sometimes find yourself in when you finish a book and don’t have anything immediately lined up. I temporarily returned to The Gormenghast Trilogy, since I still have the third book (Titus Alone) to go. But though I love it, it is just too heavy-going for me at the moment – plus now that Titus is out of Gormenghast, discovering the big wide Modernist world, with new weird characters verging on the science fiction, have turned it into a very different, less escapist, reading experience. I will return to it another time.

So, I stopped off at the wonderful Bookthrift on my way to the tube station this evening, and picked up Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – more Scandinavian crime fiction (it might just see me all the way through my own book project!), but I have read a number of plaudits for this guy, who died tragically young just after submitting the manuscripts of three crime novels to his publishers. I’ve enjoyed the few pages I managed to sneak-read on the tube on the way home, so I’ll let you know.

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Last thought for the day, then I’ll leave you in peace: have you noticed how the ad campaigns from our youth are gradually returning? And especially the characters that used to populate these ads? First it was Fido Dido returning to the 7Up campaign – now the bunny from Cadbury’s caramel has returned! (Remember – said in seductively hushed tones, with a slight hint of a West Country burr – “caaaaadbury’s caaaaaaramel”... Indulge in some nostalgia here). I have to admit, I didn’t think that chocolate bar was even around any more – guess that’s the point. But it makes me wonder – has the advertising world run out of ideas? Or is it just that the advertising world is now staffed by guys of our generation, nostalgic for the ad campaigns of our youth? Well, I am just glad the Wispa came back.

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!