I have wanted to walk through this door for about the last 20 years…
Turning to Turner
You may recall a few months ago I found the site where Turner painted his famous Fighting Temeraire.
I have always admired Turner’s paintings, and often wondered what he was like as a person as I amble past his former home on St John’s Street, just round the corner from my home. I had him down as a tall angular figure, probably dressed in green velvet, obsessive about colours and light, and who was prone to periods of mania and melancholy.
So I was naturally keen to see Mike Leigh’s new biography of the eccentric painter current topping the UK’s box offices. In an interview on the Kermode and Mayo radio show (if you dont subscribe, you have no idea what you are missing…) Leigh described how he had tried to recreate the life and person of the painter from diaries, letters, and had paid close attention to his recorded mannerisms and eccentricities. Leigh has described Turner as “a great artist: a radical, revolutionary painter,” explaining, “I felt there was scope for a film examining the tension between this very mortal, flawed individual, and the epic work, the spiritual way he had of distilling the world.”
Timothy Spall is unsurprisingly brilliant in the titular role. He appears is thoroughly convincing as a character, and portrays his mannerisms, cadence, and gruff exterior magnificently. My only criticism might be that he sometimes edges close to an almost Churchillian impression of Turner, and waddles more like the penguin from Batman than might be strictly necessary.
The film naturally features some stunning locations including Petworth House, Welsh Hills, Dutch landscapes and Kingsand stands in as a more picturesque Margate. The cast supports Spall well, but he is rarely off screen, and it has received rave reviews… even an Oscar tip for Best Actor and Director. One is left with a feeling of unease owing to his relationship, and I for one could not make up my mind if I liked Leigh’s Turner, or thought him abhorrent. I am not sure it should be watched as a biographical depiction of the great artist, more an opportunity to spend time in his world. There is little actual plot, but the narrative wanders along pleasantly, and you do get a good impression of the world in which he lived and worked. And if that makes us appreciate and understand his works all the more, it can be no bad thing.
And “Hello to Jason Isaacs.”
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream, Timology
Morgan: Made in Malvern
I have always wanted a Morgan.
Ever since I first saw a +8 pooteling round the country lanes of Worcestershire, near to where we used to live and close to where they are still made. Ever since my Dad would explain to his wide eyed (and in my sister’s case, somewhat bored) offspring, that they could do 0-60mph in something like 7 seconds, and that the door handles came as an optional extra (‘gasps’ of amazement). Ever since I was allowed to sit in one at the Prescott Park Hill Climb in 1980 something, and was alarmed at how the steering wheel seemed to jut out at you at an alarming angle. Ever since I learned of their 22 section ash framed bonnets, each and every one hand beaten to match the car. And ever since I have been able to drive, I have always wanted one… despite being restricted to a go-cart (made by dad and I from pram wheels, a skipping rope, and odd timber) or the current (and very lovable) Murgatroyd the MX5.
These are things of rare and exquisite beauty. Stunning and timeless design, classic craftsmanship, attention to detail, and a gut wrenching power, in an elegant British classic. They are still hand made in the factory near Malvern, and this fascinating video shows you just how it is done:
If anyone happened to want to satisfy my cravings; either, an Aero8 Supersports, in midnight blue, cream leather interior, and blue piping, or a +8 in British Racing Green, burgundy red interior, with cream piping. I will leave the optional door handles to you.
Filed under Technology, Timology
Guess Who Friday
After an absence of a couple of months, it is my very great pleasure to offer you another exciting instalment of the marginally popular Friday quiz; “Guess Who Friday.”
Can you tell me who these dapper, albeit slightly grumpy, gents are?
Usual rules apply. Answers by email, or text message, but please don’t post on Facebook and ruin the fun for all. Happy Halloween!
Filed under Timology
Surprised by Joy. C.S. Lewis.
Barfield believed that the imagination plays a very important part in how we know. He rejected the model that science is the only way to truth, to acquiring truth. He felt that the imagination was laid behind even the work of science. It gave meaning to propositions. And so he felt that Lewis was missing out in his whole approach to reality on what made knowledge possible.
I was suddenly compelled to read the Hippolytus of Euripides.
“Oh God, bring me to the sea’s end
To the Hesperides, sisters of evening,
Who sing alone in their islands
Where the golden apples grow,
And the Lord of Oceans guards the way
From all who would sail
Into their night-blue harbors —
Let me escape to the rim of the world
Where the tremendous firmament meets
The earth, and Atlas holds the universe
In his palms.
For there, in the palace of Zeus,
Wells of ambrosia pour through the chambers,
While the sacred earth lavishes life
And Time adds his years
Only to heaven’s happiness”
… I was off once more into the land of longing, my heart at once broken and exalted as it had never been since the old days. I was overwhelmed. I called it Joy.
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream, Timology
… and dust his finger-tips in Yorkshire fog.
I have long been a fan of Robert Byron; art critic, historian, and travel writer best known for his The Road to Oxiana If you have not read it, I can only envy you opening it for the first time. But this week I four a ‘poem’ by him… it’s not in the same league as his travel writing, but it captures some of his charm, style, languid yet vast lexicon, and effortless ability to capture the moment and transplant it to the reader’s mind.
All These I Learnt by Robert Byron
If I have a son, he shall salute the lords and ladies who unfurl green hoods to the March rains, and shall know them afterwards by their scarlet fruit. He shall know the celandine, and the frigid, sightless flowers of the woods, spurge and spurge laurel, dogs’ mercury, wood-sorrel and queer four-leaved herb-paris fit to trim a bonnet with its purple dot. He shall see the marshes gold with flags and kingcups and find shepherd’s purse on a slag-heap. He shall know the tree-flowers, scented lime-tassels, blood-pink larch-tufts, white strands of the Spanish chestnut and tattered oak-plumes. He shall know orchids, mauve-winged bees and claret-coloured flies climbing up from mottled leaves. He shall see June red and white with ragged robin and cow parsley and the two campions. He shall tell a dandelion from sow thistle or goat’s beard. He shall know the field flowers, lady’s bedstraw and lady’s slipper, purple mallow, blue chicory and the cranesbills – dusky, bloody, and blue as heaven. In the cool summer wind he shall listen to the rattle of harebells against the whistle of a distant train, shall watch clover blush and scabious nod, pinch the ample veitches, and savour the virgin turf. He shall know grasses, timothy and wag-wanton, and dust his finger-tips in Yorkshire fog. By the river he shall know pink willow-herb and purple spikes of loosestrife, and the sweetshop smell of water-mint where the rat dives silently from its hole. He shall know the velvet leaves and yellow spike of the old dowager, mullein, recognise the whole company of thistles, and greet the relatives of the nettle, wound-wort and hore-hound, yellow rattle, betony, bugle and archangel. In autumn, he shall know the hedge lanterns, hips and haws and bryony. At Christmas he shall climb an old apple-tree for mistletoe, and know whom to kiss and how.
He shall know the butterflies that suck the brambles, common whites and marbled white, orange-tip, brimstone, and the carnivorous clouded yellows. He shall watch fritillaries, pearl-bordered and silver-washed, flit like fireballs across the sunlit rides. He shall see that family of capitalists, peacock, painted lady, red admiral and the tortoiseshells, uncurl their trunks to suck blood from bruised plums, while the purple emperor and white admiral glut themselves on the bowels of a rabbit. He shall know the jagged comma, printed with a white c, the manx-tailed iridescent hair-streaks, and the skippers demure as charwomen on Monday morning. He shall run to the glint of silver on a chalk-hill blue – glint of a breeze on water beneath an open sky – and shall follow the brown explorers, meadow brown, brown argus, speckled wood and ringlet. He shall see death and revolution in the burnet moth, black and red, crawling from a house of yellow talc tied half-way up a tall grass. He shall know more rational moths, who like the night, the gaudy tigers, cream-spot and scarlet, and the red and yellow underwings. He shall hear the humming-bird hawk moth arrive like an air-raid on the garden at dusk, and know the other hawks, pink sleek-bodied elephant, poplar, lime, and death’s head. He shall count the pinions of the plume moths, and find the large emerald waiting in the rain-dewed grass.
All these I learnt when I was a child and each recalls a place or occasion that might otherwise be lost. They were my own discoveries. They taught me to look at the world with my own eyes and with attention. They gave me a first content with the universe. Town-dwellers lack this intimate content, but my son shall have it!
And if you especially wanted to hear this being read by the heir to the throne, look no further than here.
A Critical Cultural Cluster
In all honesty, I hadn’t got The Spectator down in my mind as a credible source of book reviews, or even as a cultural criticism electronic hub. I admit that I was wrong. I had long thought that its strength (and thereby its weakness) lay in right wing, “Barcwellian“, longevity, and the fact that Boris was once editor. (On which, I recently found a letter from said editor informing me that he would “consider” one of my articles… I have no memory or record of the article!)
The “Culture House” section contains all sorts of gems clustered away under the diverse sub headings; Books Ends, Arts Features, Exhibitions, Music, Cinema, Opera, Dance, Theatre, Design, Television, Radio, Architecture, and Culture Notes. Yes, it is all a touch white, Anglo-Saxon, South East England, centric, but the quality of the writing is very good, and it is written from more diverse perspectives than I had assumed.
I was recently taken by two book reviews. The first was a commentary on the “sad but inevitable downfall of Kevin Pietersen” by Alex Massie. He not only reviews Kevin’s recent ‘auto’biography well, balancing the pathos and irony of the tale, but frames it in the context of the debacle in a fair manner, suggesting alternative courses of action the ECB perhaps should have considered. I am not convinced that the book is worth reading, but that is kind of the point of critical reviews… not to try to persuade you to read the book (that’s advertising), but to tell you what it’s about, why it’s important, and discuss it’s merits and shortcomings.
The second was a review of the recent biography of Ernest Shackleton, who is something of a hero to me. If the reviewer captures the book well, then the biographer has captured his subject well indeed:
“Smith proposes to ‘untangle the myths from the reality’ of Shackleton’s life. He argues that there were two different Shackletons: ‘the charismatic, ambitious, buccaneering Edwardian explorer with a love for poetry, who touched greatness, combating unimaginable hardship and depths of adversity in the most unwelcoming region of the world.’ And there was also ‘the complex, flawed, restless, impatient and hopelessly unproductive character on dry land, who struggled to come to terms with the civilising forces of day-to-day routine and domestic responsibilities.’ ” You can read the full review here.
They are a combination of maverick, divisive, and tempestuous characters that are sure to be examined for years to come, and both deserve a read… or at least a read of the reviews.
Filed under Timology
Oxford and the BBC
The BBC news site this morning features an article asking if Oxford’s application process has become more transparent. It comes as Mike Nicholson, Director of Undergraduate Admissions, is moving on after eight years in the hot seat. The article focuses on the Outreach work conducted by the University, and even goes so far as to claim that, “Admissions to the University of Oxford have become a symbol of social mobility.” I am not sure everyone would be so bold. You can read the full article here.
This is not the place to add fuel to the long running debate (but I note the BBC could not refuse the opportunity to re-post photos of poor old Laura Spence). However the headline and copy editor might want to go back to University. “Does university“?
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream
Tim Myatt 