Have been to see a) the Joseph Cornell exhibition at the Royal Academy (not just boxes, also assemblages, collages and films) and b) Small Stories at the Museum of Childhood (includes a certain amount of general materials about domestic life and its changes from C18th-C20th). Both worth seeing, though in the Cornell case the particular theme of the ( Read more... )

Anyone up for a jaunt to that dolls' house exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood next week? (any day except Wed) as I realise that the following week is already looking difficult; and then it ends.
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The ghastly news that Jonathan Franzen's next novel includes 'a fanatical feminist' and that some woman writer whose name is unfamiliar to me ( Read more... )

Another thing I've been brooding over about the 'let the children run wild and explore nature' question is thinking about that in the context of my post about visiting the Museum of Childhood and this
image:

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Okay, I am pretty much I don't even about these churches that build life size replicas of Noah's Ark (thanks, or do I really mean thanks? to
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Today, braving the adverse weather conditions, I foregathered with
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Not perhaps quite such a name to conjure with as Soho, Chelsea, or Bloomsbury, nonetheless Fitzrovia has significant claims to be one of London's Boho Centrals.

Even before these epics of pub-crawling -
By the time Julian Maclaren-Ross met Tambimuttu and Dylan Thomas in the early 1940s this literary group had moved away from the Fitzroy Tavern, ( Read more... )

There is annoying WOEZ WOEZ PC article criticising the protest against pink girly Lego ('celebrating not architecture and action but beauty salons, cupcake bakeries and poodle parlours': pass me a sparkly pink sickbag) in today's Guardian.

It is particularly irksome because Hannah Betts goes ' the one area we should never seek to police is [ ( Read more... )

The House At Pooh Corner Goes Up For Sale.
Cotchford Farm, the story book setting for the adventures of Winnie the Pooh, has just been put on the market. Author A.A. Milne lived in the real life Pooh corner home for three decades until 1959*. The English estate is where Milne dreamed up several of the stories and poems about the lovable bear. It is ( Read more... )

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For some, a doll's house is no mere plaything but a way to create their fantasy home. Even if that means building a tiny bondage room. And to take the thing entirely into the Couldn't Make It Up realm, 'she found a woman selling 1:12-scale condoms at a craft centre in Braintree'..

The gallery of tiny interiors. And what do we not spot in the life ( Read more... )