Seeing Double!
Here’s fun. Double fun!
Continue reading Henry Moore King and Queen Sculpture
Cherkley Court
I visited Cherkley Court in Leatherhead in 2007 when the gardens were open to the public and the house was to be viewed on named occasions; a bright orangery spilled out onto a terrace where one could sip tea and be fed on the spectacular view of the Surrey Hills.
Continue reading Cherkley Court
Cheese Muffins Recipe
Dept. of Speculation book review
Any review of the Dept. of Speculation is going to fall spectacularly short of successfully conveying what the book is about, simply because the pleasure of the story lies in the poetry of Jenny Offill’s words. A couple get married and have a baby in Brooklyn, New York. They manage the inanities of everyday life but relationships become complicated. We read it through the thoughts of the narrator / heroine, who always “thinks of saying” and whose forces are internalised.
Continue reading Dept. of Speculation book review
Renoir Exhibition at The Lightbox, Woking
An exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s work has opened at The Lightbox in Woking in Surrey.
The exhibition features paintings, sculpture, etchings, sketches and letters by Renoir, which illustrate the rise of his popularity. Renoir almost exploded into the art scene in 1874 when his work first came to the attention of British art collectors and two of his paintings were shown at an exhibition in London; in the same year six of his works featured in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris. Since then, Renoir has become one of the most internationally acclaimed artists whose art is coveted by collectors in the UK and all over the world.
The Lightbox is the first regional gallery to bring
together a cohesive representation of the work of Renoir held in British collections. ‘Renoir in Britain’ includes loans from The National Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, Ashmolean Museum, The British Museum and The Courtauld Gallery.
It’s a fantastic exhibition, I highly recommend a visit!
‘Renoir in Britain’ is at The Lightbox in Woking until 20th April 2014. Free entry (donations welcome)
Opening times: Tuesday to Saturday: 10.30am – 5.00pm Sunday: 11.00am – 5.00pm.
The Lightbox,
Chobham Road,
Woking,
Surrey. GU21 4AA
The Lightbox is also hosting a lecture on Thursday 27th March at 1pm by Christopher Riopelle, Curator of post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery on ‘Renoir’s Life and Legacy’ (£6 adults, £5 concessions. Advance booking required 01483 737837.)
World Book Day
Happy World Book Day! To celebrate, I’ve chosen five of my favourite books. I think each one represents a different point in an evolving literary canon and highlights the way that literature has the power to change us as people.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Everyone must read this book. It is significant as it marks the start of the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century and sets out various literary conventions value in novels today. A brilliant story.
The American by Henry James
Beautiful and eloquent. If you love learning new words read it with a notebook to make your own mini dictionary!
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
My favourite Conrad book: if you enjoy modern espionage, you’ll want to read this one.
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
By far the funniest book I’ve ever read.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Just read it.
Perfect Pancakes recipe
Pancakes with toffee apple sauce – perfect for
Pancake Day!
Serves 4 (2 large pancakes each)
For the pancakes:
125g plain flour, sifted
300 ml semi-skimmed milk
1 free range egg
Pinch of salt
A bit of butter for the saucepan
A bit of caster sugar (½ tsp per pancake)
For the caramel sauce:
2 apples, thickly sliced
30g butter
25g caster sugar
2 tbsp water
¼ tsp cinnamon
First of all make the caramel sauce:
Place the butter, water and sugar into a saucepan on a gentle heat and keep stirring. Add the slices of apples. Sprinkle the cinnamon evenly. Gently stir so as not to disturb the apple slices (you want these to remain firm on the outside but soft in the middle.) When the sauce bubbles and looks like caramel take it off the heat while you make the pancakes.
For the pancakes:
Whisk the egg before adding the sifted flour, salt and milk. Whisk together carefully (so as not to curdle the eggs) until it’s a smooth batter.
In a frying pan, melt a teaspoon of butter and swirl it around the pan. Pour in enough batter to cover the base of the pan.
When it’s beginning to turn gold in colour, sprinkle half a tsp of sugar over the pancake. Then flip it to cook the other side!
Put your pancakes onto a warm plate before you start doing the next one. When you’ve finished cooking your stack of pancakes, take the caramel and apple mixture and gently heat it again to loosen the caramel in the pan.
Pour some of the apple and caramel mix into each pancake and fold over and drizzle a little extra caramel. You can serve with sliced banana and a small glass of Calvados, if you like. Enjoy!
The Golden Age of Journalism
Journalism has changed radically over the last 50 years. This is not news. The ‘Golden Age of Journalism’, so-called because of the thriving scope of newspapers and magazines and the associated ‘glamorous’ lifestyle of journalists in the 1960s, seems a world away from journalism today. Continue reading The Golden Age of Journalism
The Lemon Grove book review
Everyone is familiar with the sense of trepidation you get when you just know something is going to be a bit different and you have no control over it, but you can’t possibly explain just how it’s going to differ until it’s actually happening or has passed. And it’s how people act in those moments of change that can redefine us and alter our outlook on life.
The Lemon Grove revels in what can happen during those times of flux.
The story takes you on a summer holiday to a villa in Mallorca with a non-nuclear family: Jenn, our protagonist, her husband Greg, his teenage daughter Emma and her new boyfriend Nathan, the unknown and the stranger of the group. The novel cleverly observes how the dynamic changes when someone comes in and disturbs the ‘peace’ of a family who are not without their own tensions; Jenn frequently battles with the innate complexity of raising someone else’s child; Emma struggles with her own hormonal ‘weathervane’ moods and everyone has secrets. So how does one manage a stranger amongst the family as well as attempting to keep things relatively tranquil and enjoy a well-earned break simultaneously?
Helen Walsh’s answer is simple: you don’t. Instead, you have lots of fun with them. You invert familial convention and direct little energy in resisting temptation. You focus on attaining the thing you desire, as Nathan very quickly becomes the object of Jenn’s extremely intense affections and fixations.
It’s a beautifully written and smartly constructed novel. You feel the plot progress with the same rhythm of Jenn’s (asthmatic) breaths. Disaster is contracted into a few words as it happens rapidly, which is in stark contrast to the long, atmospheric descriptive passages of the abundant lemon and olive groves in the heat. The sense of place is a powerful one: you too feel like you are going up round the narrow, mountainous winding roads of Deià with everyone. As the family goes for a walk they find themselves close to the edge of a cliff, which proves to be a catalyst for action. Afterwards their holiday happiness rests on similarly unstable ground. Jenn is critical of her middle-aged body, feels very unhappy about her loss of youth, and, like her name, she feels abbreviated and incomplete, so vents her frustration by behaving recklessly. Cue very steamy sauce on the sand!
The Lemon Grove is a fierce book which encompasses so much and manages it so well: it directly challenges the notion of entitlement; characters move in unexpected ways.
You’ll be gripped and you will love it!
The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh is released on 27th February 2014, published by Tinder Press, RRP £12.99.
My copy of ‘The Lemon Grove’ was kindly sent to me (on my request) to review.
