Fire Dancing in my Lewes Garden.
This is Danse de Feu (Fire Dance), one of my David Austen roses. It has burst into flame this week in its unlikely place at the darkest part of my small Lewes garden on the mostly shadowy North facing flint…
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Bill Viola's Martyrs are going to be moving additions to St. Paul'sCathedral – in more ways than one.
Still image from Bill Viola’s Martyrs (2014) I’m impressed that London’s St Paul’s Cathedral has commissioned the great American video artist, Bill Viola, to make a video installation/altarpiece on the theme of martyrs. I suspect some people will be shocked…
Why I’m glad to have Mortimer Sackler in my Lewes garden.
I’ve been celebrating the arrival of my roses here in my Lewes, UK, garden and today it’s the turn of my rose, Mortimer Sackler, a delightfully vivid pink that grows profusely on the most vigorous of all my climbing roses.…
Benjamin Britten rings in the Summer here in my Lewes garden.
Yesterday I wrote about my tulips reaching their season’s end so it’s only fair to announce the arrival of my roses – various varieties of old rose type climbers and all from David Austin. This one, Benjamin Britten, has a…
My ballerina tulips make their final curtain call as summer arrives in my Lewes garden.
There is a glorious melancholy about a hot day in England’s late spring. The final glory of exquisitely delicate tulips has a special beauty and so it was yesterday when I watched the farewell performance of my Ballerina tulips iridescent…
Pathé Films upload Stephen Dearsley’s Brighton
Pathé Films have released their archive for us all to enjoy on-line. How great is that! I’ve always been fascinated by old films of everyday life so I was excited to see the footage of my old stamping ground of…
The sun came out here in Lewes and look what happened!
I got down-hearted over the wind damage to my rose trellis this week. I know that’s not that big a deal in terms of international natural disasters but it rattled my cage and challenged my gardening instinct to remain optimistic…
New York's new museum: remembering 9/11's victims then and now.
It is right that New York has a fine new building, opened today by President Obama, as a memorial to the unspeakable horrors of 9/11 and built on the site where the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001. It was…
Infamy! Infamy! Lewes weather's got it in for me!
It was the late comic actor Kenneth Williams who coined the phrase when playing a beleaguered Julius Caesar in one of the Carry On films. “Infamy, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” I knew just what he meant…
Conchita Wurst: the new voice of Europe – I hope.
I’m unapologetically uninterested in our great European songfest, the Eurovision Song Contest and I have never joined in with all the razzamatazz that accompanies that over-valued concept of it’s-so-bad-it’s-fab campery but, everyone to their own taste. This year though, like…