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Chelsea was ‘a Village of Palaces’ in the 16th and 17th century but all the great river-front houses with their magnificent gardens – Cheyne Place, Shrewsbury House, Winchester House, Beaufort House (2nd picture) &nda

Charles Jencks’ complex, intriguing, amusing, eccentric and sometimes overwhelming Cosmic house in Lansdowne Walk explored with the Furniture History Society.  

His transformation, with Terry Farrell, of the early Victorian house bou

When is a putto a spiritello? When it has wings and is not a cherub perhaps, nor an amoretto. A winged sprite seems closest.  They obviously delighted Donatello and appear everywhere in his work, and there is a joyous and mischievous group

Florence - new discoveries and an old favourite.

Botticelli’s fresco, in the church of Ognissanti, of St. Augustine hearing the voice of St. Jerome advising of his imminent death. Opposite is it’s pendant, Ghirlandaio’s fresco of S

Hair bleaching in Venice
A watercolour ‘Italian c.1700’ bought at one of Bill Drummond’s irresistible exhibitions at his Covent Garden Gallery many moons ago.   It turns out to be a generic image but from what main so

Wonderful to visit Goodwood House with the Furniture History Society and James Peill and be reminded of the mouth-watering treasures within – the famous Stubbs’ and Canaletto’s, furniture almost certainly designed by William Kent, G

A red brick interloper in Eaton Terrace.

There is little red brick in Belgravia.  The new houses going up from the 1820s onwards had facades of stucco for the grander first and second-rate houses and a mix of stucco and yellow brick for th

The sartorial choices men are faced with…
So much to enjoy, and to be astonished and bemused by, at the V. & A.’s latest blockbuster exhibition ‘Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear’, just about to open. &nb

So delighted that the gates of Ranelagh Gardens, a favourite haunt, are open once more.

“It has totally beat Vauxhall… You can’t set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland.” (Horace Walpole in the 1740

The all-seeing eye of God - the Great Architect of the Universe in Freemasonry.

The forget-me-not was first used as a Masonic emblem in Germany in the 1920s. Since World War II it is sometimes worn in remembrance of all who have suffered in the name

Troubled and dangerous times:

A rarely-seen portrait of Elizabeth I by George Gower painted in 1567 was one of the stars of the marvellous Elizabeth and Mary (Queen of Scots) exhibition at the British Library.  Comparing the two, ‘El

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his first symphony – No. 1 in E flat major – when he was living at what is now 180 Ebury Street, then in rural Five Fields Row.  He was eight at the time and on a Grand Tour of Europe with his fa

The boys in blue
Zoffany painted his group portrait of George III, Queen Charlotte and their six eldest children in 1770, the same year that Gainsborough painted his Blue Boy. Presumably the royal family had their own ‘Vandyke’ costumes,

Mrs. Thomas Gainsborough, c.1778 (The Courtauld Gallery)

Thomas Gainsborough married Margaret Burr in 1746.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, her being the illegitimate daughter of Henry, Duke of Beaufort, and receiving a useful annuity of £

William Hogarth, The Lady's Last Stake, 1759 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York)

Thrilling to see this painting in the flesh at the Hogarth and Europe exhibition.
This was Hogarth’s final ‘comic histor

New year sorting through the stacks and piles revealed this little drawing.   A typical conversation piece perhaps, but the room is curiously sparsely decorated, devoid of pictures, but with some Regency pieces of furniture – a G

Happy New Year!  It’s almost been warm enough for this.

�Postcard artwork by Arnold Taylor, 1960-5
(Postal Museum on loan from Kirklees Museums and Galleries)1)

For the person who has everything…
Fabergé gum pots.  One is opaque purple enamel over gold and the other white enamel over silver; both at Brighton Museum, and discovered with other Fabergé objects langu

'The Loathsomnesse of Long Haire’, a tract published in 1653 by a Puritan clergyman, gives a flavour of the hostility towards Frenchified (Catholic) fashions that were being adopted in England. The Dutch led the way in this trend, particular af

Easy way of getting through the dreariest day of December, 1830 by Robert Seymour, published by Thomas McLean.

The caption reads:
Jones? Shut out the daylight, and after I’ve breakfasted let me have an excellent Luncheon  - bid the C

Visit to Reading Museum to view Britain’s Bayeux Tapestry - July 2026

1064 Edward the Confessor and Harold in the Royal Palace of Westminster

Life at the time- farming techiques

A detail of the funeral procession of Edward the Confessor to Westminst Abbey

William ordering the construction ofa fleet of warships.

The Norman soldiers ride off to gather food

the killing of Harold by the Normans

Visit to North Yorkshire June - July 2026

View of Castle Howard from the flower gardens.

Castle Howard, Sir John Vanbrugh's Great Hall

Castle Howard, The Tapestry Drawing Room created in 2025

Ampleforth Abbey

Sutton Park. Sutton-on-the-Forest

Shandy Hall, Coxwold, Home of Laurence Sterne

Hovingham Hall, entrance Hall

Hovingham Hall, Playhouse

Lunch at Brockfield Hall

Visit to Paris and the Chateau de Chantilly September 2025

The Lady and the Unicorn, detail, Musée de Cluny

Stained glass detail, Musée de Cluny

Late 15th Century Chapel, Musée de Cluny

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, March Musée Condé à Chantilly

La Grande Singerie decorated by Christophe Huet, 1737, Chateau de Chantilly

Notre-Dame des Blancs-Manteaux

Notre Dame Cathedral

Musée de la Chasse

Medieval timber-framed House, Marais District, Paris

Durham Visit June 2022

Raby Castle

The Silver Swan, The Bowes Museum

Raby Castle Hall

Rokeby Park

Durham Cathedral

Escombe

Paris Visit January 2023

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