This is the last day of August and like almost all of them of extraordinary beauty. Each day is fine enough and hot enough for sitting out; but also full of wandering clouds; and that fading and rising of the light which so enraptures me in the downs; which I am always comparing to the
The latest version of my still life: And an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s marvellous short essay, ‘The Death of the Moth’, in which she describes the beauty, power and wonder of life and the mystery of death. It is given added poignancy by the fact that it was written late in her life and published
On the V&A being named 2016 Museum of the Year The ‘loot’ of an empire’ s the proud V&A From the days of pink maps when Britain held sway So each acquisition And each free admission Takes us quite round the world in a day. And some photos I took on a recent visit to the V&A.
The brushes and oils want to paint I must go with their flow and impose no restraint Inert? The material Suggests things ethereal Such ease at the easel! I’d have no complaint. I have, as I promised myself, begun a still life and offer here a glimpse of the painting in progress.
There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there, four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in
I had occasion to be in Hove on the Spring Bank Holiday and while strolling along the prom I spotted, on the rich yellow façade of a Renaissance Revival-style mansion block, a pair of blue plaques. The names on the plaques, very familiar to me, were of two contrasting personalities of the Victorian and Edwardian stage.
Google has today been celebrating the 117th birthday of Lotte Reiniger, pioneer of silhouette animation, with a rather wonderful animated ‘doodle’ by Olivia Huynh: For my Actors’ Company production of Jack and the Beanstalk (in a double bill with Euripides’ Bacchae), Lotte designed a marvellously effective shadow play for the Jack-Giant sequence; it was the
We have some more complimentary Audible downloads of Edward reading Charles Veley’s The Last Moriarty to give away. The offer is open to UK residents only on a first-come-first-served basis. Please go to the website’s Contact page, type TLM OFFER in the subject line, and in the message box type your answer to the following question:
This latest short film includes a rare audio excerpt from my play Pillar Talk and a reflection on the recent installation in Trafalgar Square of the replica of Palmyra’s triumphal arch. In the revised radio version of Pillar Talk, I included a letter to Simeon Stylites from a Roman actor. It too has something to
Peth’s Staging Post is delighted to offer complimentary Audible downloads of Edward reading Charles Veley’s The Last Moriarty to the first ten blog readers who contact the website and correctly answer the question below. The offer is open to UK residents only. Please go to the website’s Contact page, type TLM OFFER in the subject line,