This is an absolutely spiffy set of china plates: Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, The Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932 - 34.: A bold, feminist statement
In the Famous Women Dinner Service, women are invited to sit at the head of the table, so to speak. Their lives, achievements and accomplishments become the focal point of the conversation.

A ( Read more... )

More weirdness from the Harry Ransom Center - okay, when I was there I was nose-down in the British Sexology Society/George Ives collections and a few other related things, so I never really delved into the bizarre depths: collection of famous people's hair compiled by the Romantic poet and essayist Leigh Hunt: 'Hunt's interest in hair is well ( Read more... )

What I read
Well, I did indeed complete the Cat Sebastian binge: It Takes Two To Tumble, A Gentleman Never Keeps Score and Two Rogues Make A Right. And that is it until the next thing Ms Sebastian brings out (? sequel to Hither, Page?)
Read the Ben Aaronvitch Tales from the Folly, new collection of assorted shorts mostly written to specific remits ( Read more... )

A Degrees of Separation story and maunderings on the past.
Finished the Goldhill book on the Bensons yestereen, and he concludes with an anecdote from his time at Kings College Cambridge when the very elderly Dadie Rylands was still in residence, Rylands having been AC Benson's last crush (though Goldhill did not know at the time that he was going ( Read more... )

Two dos, both in the same Bloomsberries-associated venue on Monday and Friday this week (though oddly enough, the invites gave different addresses - but several of the houses on that side of the square are all connected, and in the event, entrance was through the same main one, both times, with some matter of emergency handwritten notices.
(I ( Read more... )

Lately, that is, two minutes ago, discovering that there is a free Kindle edition of A Room of One's Own, and while I have a pretty Penguin paperback with by now somewhat yellowing pages, I thought, why not, as the reason I was even looking was because I had had need of a particular quotation from that work and it would be useful to have an e- ( Read more... )

What I Read
Ben Aaronovitch, The Last Station (2017) - rather short - only a novella - does to be getting along with, but one would like to know where the series arc is going.
Ann Leckie, Provenance (2017) - I found this a bit of a slow starter, but then it got going and was doing some very interesting things with plot, worldbuilding, character ( Read more... )

In one of those buildings which are now part of one of the Institutionz of the Highah Learninz in the Bloomsbury area, and are really not entirely fitted for purpose when you take into account things like accessibility, because the entire row if not the whole square is probably Grade II listed and therefore limits what one can do with the internal ( Read more... )

Which, admittedly, I was scheduling myself to do even if the houndz of spring had not been snapping at my heels for walkiez.
Since I had finally had the go-ahead to go and affirm at the Probate Office so that, in due course (10 working days, I was told) I can get the Grant of Probate and start getting things moving.
(In other executing news, that ( Read more... )

(No, not really, the weather is just too uncertain at the moment for me to be a beach-bunny.)
On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss review - an enthralling, deeply personal book: medical historian picks nits - either the author or the reviewer does not understand why vaccination was different from preceding forms of smallpox inoculation, which ( Read more... )