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LONDON DAYS
‘Dear, damn’d, distracting town’ – Alexander Pope
Charles I: King and Collector Lectures and exhibition at the RA Tuesday 27 March 2018 (le 798) Dr Per Rumberg, Dr Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Leanda de Lisle
If you would like to receive our fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days, please e-mail info@ martinrandall.co.uk, or call us on 020 8742 3355. Details and dates are released frequently throughout the year. London Days are all-inclusive, non-residential tours opening doors in the capital to its wonderful art, architecture and history. They are led by carefully-chosen experts who enthuse, interpret and inspire, bringing to life each specialist theme. Radio guides enable lecturers to talk in a normal conversational voice while participants can hear without difficulty whether in a museum or on a main road.
All are accompanied by a trained administrator to ensure the smooth running of the day. The itinerary is detailed and meticulously planned with special arrangements and privileged access significant features. Refreshments and lunches are included and planned in appropriate settings for sustenance, conversation and reflection. These are active, fulfilling days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus.
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Contents – London Days by date
Those with titles in italics fall on a Saturday
17: The London South Bank Walk................ 13
December 2017
21: The Tudors.................................................. 13
2: Spanish Art in London...................................... 3
25: Arts & Crafts............................................... 14
4: London’s Underground Railway...................3
June 2018
7: Ancient Greece............................................... 4
5: Seven Churches & a Synagogue.................6
13: The Italian Renaissance...............................4
19: London Gardens Walk.............................. 14
January 2018
19: The London Backstreet Walk.................. 12
23: Islamic Art in London...................................5
July 2018
25: The Italian Renaissance...............................4
3: The Ever-Changing City Skyline............... 10
27: Spanish Art in London...................................3
10: THE LONDON CHORAL DAY............... 15
29: Impressionism in London............................5
12: The London South Bank Walk................ 13
February 2018
25: The London Backstreet Walk.................. 12
6: Great Railway Termini.................................... 6
August 2018
7: Seven Churches & a Synagogue.................6
22: London Gardens Walk.............................. 14
8: Ancient Greece............................................... 4
24: The London South Bank Walk................ 13
14: Genius of Titian............................................ 7
September 2018
22: Caravaggio & Rembrandt...........................7 March 2018 3: Spanish Art in London...................................... 3 9: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum..................................8
3: The Tudors.................................................... 13 October 2018 9: Hampstead in the 1930s........................... 10
15: The Italian Renaissance...............................4
We also expect to run the following London Days. Please contact us to register your interest in any of them.
26: Paintings of the Passion..............................9
Holborn & Clerkenwell new
27: CHARLES I: KING & COLLECTOR........ 11
London’s Top Ten new
28: Paintings of the Passion..............................9
Thames to Highgate Walk new
April 2018
Alternatively, contact us to receive our fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days. Send an e-mail to info@martinrandall.co.uk, or call 020 8742 3355.
13: Handel in London......................................... 9
10: The Ever-Changing City Skyline............. 10 11: London’s Underground Railway................3 25: Seven Churches & a Synagogue...............6 26: The London Backstreet Walk.................. 12 27: Caravaggio & Rembrandt...........................7 May 2018 9: Hampstead in the 1930s........................... 10 12: The London Squares Walk....................... 12 16: The London Backstreet Walk.................. 12
These are active, fulfilling days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus.
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Making a booking There is no booking form for London Days. You can book over the phone, or online at www.martinrandall.com. If booking by phone, we will need to know: •
Name and date of the London Day(s) you are booking.
•
Your name(s), as you would like it/ them to appear to other participants.
•
Your address, telephone number and email address (if you have one).
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Any special dietary requirements and your contact details for the night prior to the day.
Payment. If by credit or debit card, give the card number, start date and expiry date (but for security not in an e-mail). Up until 13 January 2018, payments made by credit card will have 2% added to cover processing charges. It does not apply to other forms of payment. Confirmation will be sent to you upon receipt of payment. Further details including joining instructions will be sent about two weeks before the day. Cancellation. We will return the full amount if you notify us 22 or more days before the event. We will retain 50% if cancellation is made within three weeks and 100% if within three days. Please put your cancellation in writing to info@ martinrandall.co.uk. We advise taking out insurance in case of cancellation and recommend that overseas clients are also covered for possible medical and repatriation costs.
Illustrations. Above: The City of London, 20th-century reproduction of an engraving by S. & N. Buck, 1749. Front cover: King Charles I of England and his wife Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Robert Voerst, after Anthony van Dyck, 1634
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Spanish Art in London At Apsley House, Wallace Collection and National Gallery Saturday 2 December 2017 (le 722) – Currently full Saturday 27 January 2018 (le 748) – Currently full Saturday 3 March 2018 (le 781) Lecturer: Dr Xavier Bray In 1848 the great pioneer in the study of Spanish art, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, declared that ‘the private collections of England could probably furnish forth a gallery of Spanish pictures second only to that of the Queen of Spain’. A great many of these pictures have since entered public collections throughout the country, making Great Britain one of the best places outside Spain to study Spanish art. Initially, it was the Peninsular War of 18081814 that broke the floodgates and provided a new market for Spanish art, and many more
paintings were to leave Spain when the Spanish monasteries were dissolved in 1832. One such private collection is the 1st Duke of Wellington’s at Apsley House. Displayed inside this aristocratic townhouse are numerous paintings taken from Madrid’s Royal Palace by Joseph Bonaparte during the Peninsular War and later gifted to Wellington by King Ferdinand of Spain. The Wallace Collection includes Velázquez’s mesmerizing portrait of a Lady with a Fan as well as a rare work by the Sevillian artist, Alonso Cano, who was known as the ‘Michelangelo of Spain’. The National Gallery owns 9 paintings by Velázquez that span his career, from his early beginnings in Seville to his courtly paintings for Philip IV in Madrid. Alongside Velázquez hang some of Murillo’s finest paintings including
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several large canvases that originally decorated the altars of Seville’s monasteries and convents. The National Gallery also prides itself on a small group of works by El Greco, an artist who became fashionable in the early 20th century, principally thanks to the art critic Roger Fry who compared the abstract quality of his work with Cézanne. The day is led by the Director of the Wallace Collection, Dr Xavier Bray. Start: 10.15am at Apsley House. Finish: c. 5.30pm at the National Gallery. Price: £210. This includes lunch, refreshments, donations to the galleries and taxis. Fitness: travel is by taxi, but you are on your feet throughout the day while looking and listening. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
London’s Underground Railway A history and appreciation of the Tube Image: experimental first trip on the Underground, wood engraving c. 1880.
Monday 4 December 2017 (le 721) Wednesday 11 April 2018 (le 821) Lecturer: Andrew Martin Shanghai has more track, Paris and New York have more stations, but London has by a clear margin the oldest urban underground railway in the world: 2013 was its 150th anniversary. It is also by far the most complicated, having started messily as several independent and often competing enterprises; contrary to sensible practice, strategic planning by unitary municipal government came towards the end of the process, not in advance. Modern London was shaped by the Tube rather than vice versa. Motivation and management has been various: commercial and philanthropic, entrepreneurial and Keynesian, expansionist and defeatist. The first ‘cut and cover’ lines, in trenches under existing roads, were vigorously promoted by a socialistic solicitor. The ‘deep level’ tube lines were pushed through by a maverick American, while the suburban extensions between the wars fulfilled the utopian ideals of a dour Yorkshireman who came bitterly to regret the urban sprawl they spawned. Now, after decades of relative neglect, investment and improvement are on an unprecedented scale. The day is led by Andrew Martin, journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: a Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012). During the 1990s he was ‘Tube Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. He stresses that his approach will not be drily academic or technical but anecdotal and affectionate, highlighting the human stories, the architecture and design, the overlooked detail and the
downright odd. Among the places and themes examined are the first ever stations, still in use and little changed; the even earlier Brunel tunnel under the Thames, mother of all modern tunnels, opened 1841; the subtle beauties of Leslie Green’s tiled stations of the early 20th century and the revered modernist architecture of the 1930s; and the architectural bravura of the 1990s Jubilee Line Extension. The day is not all spent below ground, and by special arrangement there is a visit to London Transport’s historic headquarters at 55 Broadway.
Finish: c. 5.00pm at Southwark (a short walk to Waterloo station). Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy trains and a considerable time on foot; standing or walking. There are a lot of station steps as well as a flight of 100 which are steep and narrow within 55 Broadway. Price: £205. This includes all Tube travel, lunch and refreshments. Group size: maximum 15 participants.
Start: 9.00am at Baker Street Station.
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Ancient Greece at the British Museum
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Thursday 7 December 2017 (le 742) Thursday 8 February 2018 (le 751) Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth
Image: section of the Parthenon Frieze, wood engraving c. 1880.
A product of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment, it is appropriate that the British Museum should be housed in a building modelled on Ancient Greek architecture – indeed, it is the grandest example of the Greek Revival in the country. It is equally appropriate that it houses one of the greatest collections of Greek art and artefacts outside Greece, given that the Classical world was the first and for long the primary object of antiquarian study and literary exegesis in Europe. It is the case that Britain had a special if controversial role in the creation of modern Greece. The exceptionally wide range of its holdings enables the day to begin two millennia before the Classical period and to finish with Roman copies of Greek sculpture made hundreds of years after the originals. The day consists of four sessions in the galleries of approximately an hour each, with relatively leisurely refreshment breaks. The first session looks at Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, and at the Geometric and
Archaic periods which saw Greek civilisation emerge to greatness again after the mysterious extinction of the earlier civilisations. The second session is largely devoted to the peerless sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, the so-called Elgin Marbles, famously – infamously – the highlight of the collection, and among the most fascinating and beautiful creations in western art. Lunch is at the Great Court restaurant, after which there is a little back-tracking to look at the development of pottery from the Archaic to the Classical periods, almost the only evidence of the glories of Greek painting that remains. Finally comes the Hellenistic period, Alexander the Great and after, especially the remarkable monuments from Lycia, the Nereid Monument and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Start: 10.15am, British Museum, Great Russell Street entrance. Finish: by 5.15pm. Price: £195. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments at the Great Court Restaurant. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
The Italian Renaissance in the National Gallery
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Thursday 25 January 2018 (le 747) Thursday 15 March 2018 (le 783) Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Wednesday 13 December 2017 (le 725) Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley
Image: The National Gallery, engraving c. 1850.
London’s National Gallery possesses the finest collection of Italian Renaissance paintings outside Italy. Unlike most other national collections in Europe, it was formed (over nearly 200 years) by connoisseurs and art historians rather than princes and nobles whose less discerning eyes allowed the admission of a proportion of second- and third-raters. There’s no dross on show in Trafalgar Square.
highly agreeable and efficacious way to enhance your knowledge and appreciation of Renaissance painting. Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: 5.15pm, National Gallery. Price: £195. This includes lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments at the National Dining Rooms. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
There are four sessions in the galleries of approximately an hour each. While most paintings commissioned then were of a religious nature, the call for portraits and mythologies speak of the burgeoning humanistic interests of patrons. Meaning, context, scale and innovation and what it was that marked out images by the great masters in this period will all be considered. Between the sessions there are leisurely adjournments to the calm and quiet of The National Dining Rooms, the excellent restaurant. With no more than twelve in the group, radio guides to eliminate problems of audibility, and the presence of an MRT staffer to oversee the arrangements, this should be a Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Islamic Art in London The V&A & the British Museum
Two of Britain’s greatest museums provide a London treasure-house of Islamic works of art. The first is the V&A. One of its original aims, in 1852, was to inspire British designers and manufacturers. And its Islamic collections did just that, one of its most notable recipients being William de Morgan (1839-1917), the great lustre ceramicist. Today, the Islamic gallery, focused on the famous Ardabil carpet, houses an awesome assemblage of Islamic works of art, including ceramics, tilework, metalwork, woodwork, glass, rock crystal, textiles and carpets. It also has a valuable educational group of cases which display the four elements so common in Islamic art – calligraphy, geometry, the arabesque (‘inspired by plants’), and figural art (‘images and poetry’). The day will start with these to form an initial understanding of Islamic art and what aesthetic or religious principles have helped to fashion it. Moving through the gallery, art and design are put into their Islamic cultural context, while enjoying the different designs displayed, particularly on carpets and textiles, as well as learning about individual pieces.
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ceramics and metalwork, as well as some works of art on paper. The development of Islamic art in the different media is traced and the techniques explored which enabled them to evolve and develop, and to have such an impact on Italian Renaissance ceramics and design.
Image: Mural Decoration, Print c.1870 from The Art Journal
Tuesday 23 January 2018 (le 746) Lecturer: Professor James Allan
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Start: 10.15am at the V&A. Finish: approximately 5.15pm at the British Museum. Price: £205. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch in the William Morris room at the V&A, donations and one journey by Underground. Fitness: travel is by Underground and there is some walking and standing during the day. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
The British Museum’s Addis Gallery offers the visitor an incredibly rich collection of Islamic
Impressionism in London at the Courtauld, National Gallery & the Tate
British collectors were much slower than their French, Russian and American counterparts to perceive the beauty and greatness of Impressionism. Textile magnate Samuel Courtauld was an exception: his enthusiasm for Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, as well as Degas, Gaugin and Cézanne, led to the formation of one of the greatest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. He also founded, in 1930, the Courtauld Institute of Art, to which he bequeathed most of his paintings – now on show in the grand eighteenth-century surroundings of Somerset House – and left a bequest to the National Gallery to assist with the purchase of Impressionists. So here in Trafalgar Square, at the other end of Strand, there is now an excellent group of Impressionists, the result of private bequests, long-term loans and occasional purchase.
The Franco-Prussian war and its aftermath drove many French artists across the Channel. The Tate’s EY exhibition: Impressionists in London explores the network of connections between the Impressionists and the British art world forged during this period. The exhibition includes works by Monet, Tissot and Pissarro.
Image: La Charette, by Sisley, 1890.
Monday 29 January 2017 (le 745) Lecturer: Dr Diane Silverthorne
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Start: 10.15am at the Courtauld Gallery. Finish: c. 5.45pm at Tate Britain Price: £205. This includes entry to the Courtauld and the exhibition, lunch, midmorning and mid-afternoon refreshments at the National Dining Rooms and travel by taxi between the venues. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
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Great Railway Termini Paddington, King’s Cross and St Pancras stations Tuesday 6 February 2018 (le 753) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp
Image: St Pancras Station, wood engraving (detail) c. 1880.
Two eyebrow-raising assertions: the railways were a Georgian invention, all the ingredients being in place before 1830; and the twenty-first century is witnessing a golden age of rail travel. The first is indisputable fact, if surprising to contemplate; the second is likely to provoke an unprintable retort from many a daily commuter. However, few would quibble with a statement that the greatest achievements of railway architecture and engineering are Victorian. But seeing and appreciating magnificent stations such as those studied today is to a large extent possible because of enlightened intervention in the last ten or twenty years. The adaptation and upgrading of ageing infrastructure to meet modern requirements has been a major achievement, but so has the restoration and cleaning of historic fabric. And the sensitive addition of new structures of the highest quality of design has been a triumph.
for the majesty of its unadorned functionality, but recent removal of twentieth-century clutter enables it to be better appreciated than for a century. And in 2012 the station acquired a magnificent new lattice steel foyer, the widest span in Europe apparently. The 240 ft span of the St Pancras train shed far surpassed any previous structure in the world and its conversion for use as the Eurostar terminus, completed 2007, created one of the most exciting sets of public spaces in Europe. The contiguous Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott is perhaps the best-known of all Victorian buildings. Start: 9.30am at Paddington Station. Finish: c. 4.45pm at St Pancras Station. Price: £190. This includes refreshments, lunch, travel by underground and special arrangements. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Largely the creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paddington is well preserved and in some ways the most appealing of London’s termini. King’s Cross has always been admired
Seven Churches & a Synagogue Some of London’s finest historic buildings Wednesday 7 February 2018 (le 764) Tuesday 5 June 2018 (le 899) Lecturer: Peter Howell
Image: St Bartholomew the Great, from Some London Churches,publ. 1911.
Wednesday 25 April 2018 (le 837) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp. As the most populous metropolis in the west until well into the twentieth century, and as capital of a nation notorious for its multitudinous shades of churchmanship, it is not surprising that London possesses the largest number of churches and the greatest variety of ecclesiastical architecture to be found in any single city. Subjectivity must play a role in selecting these seven, as do logistics, but it is fair to claim that they are among the best of their kind. This is an extraordinarily fascinating day, enriching aesthetically, historically and spiritually. There are two mediaeval buildings, the imposing Romanesque remnant of the abbey church of St Bartholomew the Great and the Knights Templars’ church. Wren’s ingenious domed church of St Stephen Walbrook, the faultless St Mary-le-Strand by Gibbs and St Mary Woolnoth by Hawksmoor are outstanding examples of the classical phase of architecture – as is the Bevis Marks Synagogue of 1699, one of the City’s little-known treasures. Butterfield’s All Saints Margaret Street is a seminal masterpiece of the Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Gothic Revival, of which the sublimely lovely St Cyprian’s, Clarence Gate, by Sir John Ninian Comper, is one of the last great examples. The speaker concentrates on the essentials, highlighting what is distinctive and significant about the architecture and decoration and pointing out only the most distinguished artworks and furnishings. Time at each building does not allow for detail that is of merely local interest. Thus the day provides immersion in the beauty of greater things. Start: 9.15am, St-Bartholomew-the-Great in the City (tube station: Barbican). Finish: c. 5.45pm, Baker Street Station. Fitness: Travel is by a combination of tube and taxi journeys and there is quite a lot of walking. Price: £205. This includes lunch (at Middle Temple Hall, the finest Elizabethan interior in London), refreshments, one admission charge and a donation to each church. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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The Genius of Titian National Gallery and Wallace Collection
Titian’s genius was recognised early in his career, and by the time of his death in his eighties (1576) the esteem in which he was held probably exceeded that attaching to any other living artist in previous history. Moreover, his star has never waned since, contrary to the usual pattern which sees even ‘great’ artists cast into the shadows for a while by the capricious wheel of taste. Such was his prestige that in his maturity rarely did even the grandest of Venetian nobility manage to commission a picture from him, even though Venice was his only long-term place of residence as an adult. Only the greatest elsewhere in Italy were so honoured – the Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino, and the Pope – and, beyond the peninsula, the most powerful rulers in Europe, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II of Spain. It follows that subsequently paintings by Titian were to be found only in the most illustrious princely collections or, when the balance of financial power shifted towards the mercantile and manufacturing nations, in the national galleries only of the most prosperous powers.
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Even leaving aside the 3 or 4 which are disputed, London’s National Gallery has 15 unquestioned Titians, a total exceeded only by the Prado in Madrid and the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. There is one other on public display in London, Perseus & Andromeda in the Wallace Collection (10–15 minutes away by taxi). Sheila Hale is author of the magisterial and much acclaimed Titian: His Life (2012), the first biographical study of the artist published since 1877. She brings to the day a lifetime’s study of Venice and of the Renaissance. Start: The National Gallery, 10.15am. Finish: Wallace Collection, c. 5.00pm (nearest underground stations Bond Street or Marble Arch). Price: £170, including morning and afternoon refreshments, donations to both collections and a taxi journey OR £195 with lunch. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
Caravaggio & Rembrandt A new naturalism
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Helen Langdon is author of what remains the best book on Caravaggio, and is one of MRT’s most admired lecturers.
Few individuals have had such a revolutionary impact on the history of art as Caravaggio (1571–1610). His short life was violent and intermittently spent as a fugitive, but the impact of his artistic innovations was felt throughout Europe and through the whole course of the seventeenth century.
Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing.
Image: ‘Self-portrait with Saskia’ 1636, after Rembrandt.
Thursday 22 February 2018 (le 763) Friday 27 April 2018 (le 838) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon
The National Gallery has three paintings by Caravaggio (sometimes one is on loan elsewhere), but the emphasis of this day is on putting the artist and his achievements in his Italian context and on exploring his influence beyond the peninsula. Among the other artists studied, therefore, are Rubens, Velάzquez, and, above all, Rembrandt (1606–1669).
Image: copper engraving 1787 by J. L. Delignon, after Titian’s ‘Perseus & Andromeda’ (detail).
Wednesday 14 February 2018 (le 754) Lecturer: Sheila Hale
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There are four sessions in the galleries of about an hour each. In between there are leisurely adjournments to The National Dining Rooms.
Finish: 5.15pm. Price: £195. This includes lunch at the National Restaurant and mid-morning and midafternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
The NG has one of the best collections of Rembrandt paintings in the world – the Dutchman never fell from favour among collectors, in sharp contrast with Caravaggio, who was practically forgotten in the nineteenth century. But they shared much, principally exploitation of the expressive and naturalistic potential of chiaroscuro (contrasting light and shade) to dramatic effect, and the use of humble models and realism rather than idealism to tell religious stories in a new and moving way. Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Archaeology at The Castle A weekend of talks & discussions in Taunton 16–18 February 2018 (me 757) From £700 per person
Professor Norman Hammond
Our now renowned series of symposia have so far featured historians, art historians, biographers, travel writers and politicians. This edition draws on the talents of eminent archaeologists. The twelve forty-minute talks will cover a huge variety of subject matter: from the Vikings to the Etruscans, from Palestine to Easter Island, from Roman Palaces to Greek Temples.
Tom Mayberry mbe
The speakers are respected scholars, have been involved in excavations worldwide and most have a book to their name, or several. We are also joined by Tom Mayberry, CEO of the South West Heritage Trust, responsible for the modernisation of The Museum of Somerset located 100 yards from the hotel. There is free time to visit the collections in between talks.
Practicalities
The venue is the perennially charming Castle Hotel in Taunton with a well equipped meeting room and an excellent restaurant.
Speakers Dr Paul Bahn Dr David Beresford Jones Dr Felicity Cobbing Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary Lucia Gahlin
Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Professor Antony Spawforth Nigel Spivey Jonathan Tubbs Gareth Williams
Prices, per person. Two sharing: standard double or twin £700; garden room £760. Single occupancy: single room (single bed) £700. Depending upon availability, we may be able to offer double rooms for sole use at around 10 weeks prior to the weekend at £750 – please let us know on your booking form if you would be interested in upgrading should the opportunity arise. Included: hotel accommodation for 2 nights; breakfasts and 2 dinners with wine; admission to the talks; drinks reception; refreshments during coffee and tea breaks; gratuities for hotel staff; a detailed programme booklet. ‘No dinners’ option: if you would prefer not to join the two evening meals there is a price reduction of £80 per person. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Taunton (the-castle-hotel.com): The Castle Hotel is renowned for its excellent service, for comforts
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum Belief and society
Ancient Egypt is perhaps best known for its mummies and pharaonic splendour, its monumental architecture and colossal statuary. One of the world’s most important collections of these antiquities is housed in London, at the British Museum. Its display of pharaonic might is second to none – Ramesses II casts his eyes downwards, a gaze which inspired Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. The tours of the Egyptian galleries during this late-afternoon visit focus on the beliefs and lives of the ordinary people. The itinerary takes advantage of the lesscrowded Friday ‘late’ at the British Museum and starts by exploring the formation of the Egyptian state around 3100 BC, and the changes this brought to the ancient people living in the Nile Valley. The material culture of this early period in Egypt’s history helps us understand the cultural, technological and political developments which changed Egypt forever; the social history of the Ancient Egyptian people,
The hotel’s 44 bedrooms are individually and charmingly decorated and well equipped. The largest – the Garden Rooms – are in the remains of the 12th-century castle overlooking the garden, and are the equivalent of Junior Suites, with a sitting area and separate dressing room. Doubles and twins are mainly of a good size and vary in outlook. Single rooms, while comfortable, are small and generally less well appointed with single beds – for this reason we do not charge a single supplement for them. The majority of rooms have a bath with a shower fitment. The hotel has a lift, though some bedrooms do then involve some step access. There are no bedrooms on the ground floor. The Music Room is on a mezzanine level, which can only be reached via a flight of stairs from the lobby – there is provision for wheelchair users (if you think you will need this, please let us know in advance). Group size: maximum 76 resident participants.
Talks only If you wish to participate in the talks only, without accommodation, tickets are priced at £40 per session or £150 for all four sessions combined. Refreshments during breaks are included, but not lunches or dinners.
Later start Image: Fragment of a wall painting from ‘Egyptian Pictures’ by Revd Samuel Manning c. 1875.
Friday 9 March 2018 (le 769) Lecturer: Lucia Gahlin
traditional and modern and for its superb catering. It has been owned and run by the Chapman family for over 60 years.
the transition from chiefdoms to a country united under one ruler. Time is spent in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, to wander between the statues of pharaohs and gods. Here is a treasure-trove of evidence for private religion and daily life, lesser-known aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. And in the Nebamun gallery fragments of painted plaster from the tomb of the 15th Century BC temple accountant, as fine as any known examples of ancient Egyptian art, are found displayed alongside an array of objects of daily use. Art and artifacts complement each other to create the fullest picture of ancient Egyptian society. Sessions are interspersed with refreshments in the Great Court restaurant. Start: 3.15pm at the British Museum. Finish: c. 8.15pm at the British Museum. Price: £185. This includes refreshments and a donation to the museum. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
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Handel in London Retracing the composer’s steps
The 26-year-old Handel scored a sensation in 1711 with his first London opera, Rinaldo. A year later he settled permanently in the English capital, already the largest city in the world. As a contemporary noted: ‘His return to London was hailed by the musical world as a national acquisition, and every measure was adopted to make his abode pleasant and permanent.’ Indeed it was. Handel immediately became the de facto resident composer of the Haymarket opera company and Queen Anne granted him an annual pension of £200, an arrangement continued by George I. Long before he took British citizenship in 1727 he was being acclaimed as Purcell’s undisputed successor as Britain’s national composer. The afternoon begins at Green Park with a short walk through Mayfair to the composer’s own parish church, St George’s in Hanover Square. From here to the Handel House Museum in Brook Street, where the composer lived from 1723 to his death, and which houses inter alia a superb collection of Handel-related paintings.
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of Handel’s debut opera, Rinaldo, with countertenor Iestyn Davies in the title role. This is a tale of love, war and witchcraft set at the time of the first crusade. The virtuoso cast is supported by a period-instrument orchestra, conducted by Harry Bicket.
Image: G.F. Handel, engraving 1741 (detail).
Tuesday 13 March 2018 (le 779) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore
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Start: 12.45pm at Green Park Underground Station Finish: c. 10.15pm at Barbican Centre. Price: £265. This includes refreshments, dinner, travel by Underground and taxi, special arrangements and top-category tickets in the circle for the evening performance costing £55. Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy Underground journeys and a considerable time on foot; standing and walking. The evening performance does not finish until c. 10.15pm. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
The Foundling Hospital holds the Gerald Coke Handel collection of manuscripts, music and books and the remarkable hall is where Handel’s own performances of the Messiah raised huge sums for the hospital. The day culminates in a concert performance
Paintings of the Passion at the National Gallery
Through the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Christ’s Passion, death and resurrection together constituted the most frequently depicted narrative in western art. By any standards, and to anyone of whatever faith or none, this is a compelling story of exceptional emotional potency. To painters of the period it offered unparalleled opportunities for story-telling – naturalistic detail, expression of mood and emotion, presentation of symbol and meaning. The National Gallery possesses dozens of paintings concerned with some episode of that tumultuous week in Jerusalem. The wide variety of artistic response resulted from differing regional and local traditions, the workshop where the painter learnt his trade and from his own skill, individuality and style. The patron’s demands were also significant. For artists as for everyone else, the principal source was the Bible; the events furnish the climactic passages of all four Gospels. But
attitudes and understanding were shaped also by apocryphal pseudo-Gospels, learned commentaries, stirring sermons, imaginative elaborations and pious meditations, launched into the world by theologians, preachers, mystics and literary writers.
Image: The National Gallery, engraving c. 1850.
Monday 26 March 2018 (le 796) Wednesday 28 March 2018 (le 797) Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley
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Study of these various ingredients can be richly rewarding, and equip travellers to derive much more from their encounters with these scenes not only as represented in Trafalgar Square but also in churches and museums throughout the western world. For a lengthy and dominant strand in the history of civilisation, Christ’s Passion and resurrection did indeed constitute, in Fulton Oursler’s resonant title, the greatest story ever told. Start: 10.15am at the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: c. 5.15pm at the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Price: £195. This includes lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments at the National Dining Rooms. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
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The Ever-Changing City Skyline Wren’s Cathedral to Rees’s Towers
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Tuesday 10 April 2018 (le 809) Tuesday 3 July 2018 (le 945) Lecturer: Professor Peter Rees CBE
Image: 30 St Mary Axe a.k.a. ‘The Gherkin’, photo ©Alex Van.
For twenty-eight years Peter Rees was the City of London’s chief planning officer, and since 2014 has been Professor of Places and City Planning at University College London. Charismatic, articulate and passionate about planning, he has done more to shape the City’s current appearance than any other single individual, and this is an exceptional opportunity to hear his story and to understand how and why London looks as it does. Starting at St Paul’s, we see some of the planning challenges posed by the ‘reframing’ of the Cathedral over the last decades. Paternoster Square was redeveloped following a tortuous process of consultation, royal intervention and redesign. After a visit to the roof-top space at Jean Nouvel’s 1 New Change, there is a surreptitious stroll through The Royal Exchange, the City’s centre of gossip, and an exploration of the hidden alleyways between Cornhill and Lombard Street. Here banking was born, and City pubs still fulfil a vital business role. From the mid-1980s, and boosted by the ‘Big Bang’, the Square Mile became larger,
Hampstead in the 1930s A walking tour and visits Wednesday 9 May 2018 (le 849) Wednesday 3 October 2018 (lf 203) Lecturer: Monica Bohm-Duchen As the abundance of wall plaques in the area demonstrates, visual artists have been drawn to the physical and cultural attractions of Hampstead since the late eighteenth century. This London day, however, concentrates on artistic life in Hampstead in the 1930s, the period in which it occupied a unique place in the story of British art and architecture. This was in large measure due to the number of talented émigrés from Nazi-dominated Europe who found refuge here, and the British individuals who welcomed and worked alongside them. A private view of selected items from the era at Hampstead museum’s collection at Burgh House, and an introductory lecture, set the scene. It was during the 1930s that such residents as Paul Nash, Roland Penrose and Henry Moore made the area the hub of avantgarde activities in the UK. Both the abstract and surrealist camps were well represented and modernist architects Wells Coates and Maxwell Fry also lived here during this period. A walk through Frognal is testament to their influence and work, and there is a visit to Hungarian-born
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swallowing parts of neighbouring boroughs. Broadgate is a fine example of a late 20thcentury business quarter with ground-scraper buildings accommodating large dealing floors for international banks and fine publicly-accessible spaces providing the social opportunities which are conducive to business activity. Only 25 years later, the development is being refurbished and some buildings replaced. Having grown outwards in the 80s and 90s, the City is now growing upwards, with a cluster of office towers sited to maximise their proximity to an abundance of public transport while minimising their impact upon the London skyline. A Gherkin sits alongside a CheeseGrater, and the Walkie-Talkie provides a high-level opportunity to contemplate the everchanging City below. Start: 10.30am, St Paul’s tube station. Finish: c. 7.00pm, The Walkie-Talkie, 20 Fenchurch Street EC3. Price: £220. This includes lunch, refreshments and one taxi journey. Fitness: most of the day is spent outside and on foot, both standing and walking. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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Erno Goldfinger’s pioneering home at nearby 2 Willow Road. By special arrangement, we visit the former garage of the Isokon building in Lawn Road which has been converted into a small gallery devoted to the colourful history of these flats whose tenants included Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, as well as Agatha Christie and a significant number of Communist spies. The Mall Studios were home to what Herbert Read described as a ‘gentle nest of artists’, among them Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. For a brief but significant spell, Piet Mondrian lived just around the corner.
Fitness: there is a fair amount of walking on steep streets and you are on your feet most of the day at the sites visited. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine this day with: The London Squares Walk Saturday 12 May.
The day is led by lecturer, writer and curator specialising in 20th century art, Monica Bohm-Duchen who was born in Hampstead and has lived there most of her life. Start: 10.00am at Hampstead Underground Station Finish: c. 5.30pm in central Hampstead just a short walk from Hampstead Underground Station. Price: £215. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch, admission charges and donations, one taxi journey.
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Charles I: King and Collector Lectures and exhibition at the RA
Tuesday 27 March 2018 (le 798) Dr Per Rumberg, Dr Desmond ShaweTaylor and Leanda de Lisle A day at Burlington House, at the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Academy of Arts Three morning lectures, by Per Rumberg, Leanda de Lisle & Desmond Shawe-Taylor Afternoon at Charles I: King and Collector, a major exhibition at the RA Lunch at a nearby restaurant In 2018, on the occasion of its 250th anniversary, the Royal Academy of Arts is organising a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition on the legendary art collection of King Charles I. During his reign, he acquired works by some of the finest artists of the past – Titian, Holbein, Mantegna – and commissioned leading contemporaries such as Van Dyck and Rubens.
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Following the King’s execution in 1649, his collection was sold off and scattered across Europe. While many works were recovered at the Restoration, others now form the core of museums such as the Louvre and the Prado. Organised in partnership with Royal Collection Trust, Charles I: King and Collector will reunite these astounding treasures. On the occasion of this landmark event, MRT is holding a study day with lectures by three outstanding experts followed by lunch and a visit to the exhibition. Two of the speakers are the exhibition’s curators, Dr Per Rumberg, Curator at the Royal Academy, and Dr Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures; the third is historian Leanda de Lisle, author of the forthcoming book White King: Charles I – Traitor, Murderer, Martyr. The talks take place in the Society of Antiquaries, one of the five Learned Societies based at Burlington House.
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Admission to the exhibition is by pre-booked ticket only and entry will be staggered across two time slots to ensure everyone has a comparatively unimpeded view of the array of miniatures, drawings, paintings, sculptures and an extraordinary set of tapestries that will be on display. Audio guides are included, and the speakers will be on hand to respond to questions. Start: 10.10am, Society of Antiquaries. Doors open for the lecture at 9.50am. Finish: you enter the exhibition between 2.30pm and c. 3.00pm; you stay as long as you want, but the exhibition closes at 6.00pm. Price: £195, £179 for RA members. This includes morning refreshments, lunch and admission to the RA exhibition. Group size: maximum 80 participants.
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The London Backstreet Walk From Hyde Park to The Tower Wednesday 16 May 2018 (le 859) Wednesday 25 July 2018 (le 967) Lecturer: Barnaby Rogerson Thursday 26 April 2018 (le 831) Lecturer: Sophie Campbell Tuesday 19 June 2018 (le 921) Lecturer: Dr Geoffrey Tyack This walk is predicated on two beliefs. The first, platitudinous if rarely put to the test, is that the centre of London is not so large that people of ordinary fitness couldn’t walk everywhere. The second would perhaps be greeted in some quarters with scepticism: that one can traverse the capital from Hyde Park Corner to the Tower of London without walking along main roads for more than a couple of hundred yards in total. Image: Lincoln’s Inn, watercolour. c. 1910.
This is London seen from parks, gardens, alleys, backstreets and pedestrian zones. As the crow flies, it is exactly 3⅓ miles, but as avoiding traffic requires some circuitous deviations the distance walked is 8 or 9 miles. The route – which is far from obvious, as may be understood – is laced with delights and surprises. Many famous buildings are passed or glimpsed, but largely the interest lies in unexpected clusters of pre-20th-century architecture, picturesque vistas and intriguing
alleys, patches of parkland and well-tended gardens, recent architectural behemoths and mediaeval street patterns. Some special arrangements have been made to enter a few buildings en route. Champagne at the Savoy and lunch in the grandest Elizabethan hall in England are among the treats. But the main point of the day is to provide the satisfaction of accomplishing a unique and fascinating journey through the heart of the most vibrant, varied and fascinating city in Europe. Start: 9.00am, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Arch. Finish: c. 5.40pm at Tower Hill Station. Price: £205. This includes refreshments and lunch, admission charges and donations. Fitness: This is a serious hike, so please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time and have the stamina for 9 miles (though there are 4 refreshment breaks). The terrain is fairly flat but there are steps (one flight has 57). Stout shoes are of course advisable – but no trainers please: they are specifically forbidden at the lunch venue. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
The London Squares Walk London’s greatest glory
Image: Below: Belgrave Square, Pimlico, engraving (detail) c. 1830.
Saturday 12 May 2018 (le 857) Lecturer: Martin Randall The basic form of London’s squares – rows of similar houses around a regular open space – is neither unique nor original to the city, but their sheer profusion is quite unparalleled elsewhere. Together with circuses, crescents and associated streets and mews, squares constitute London’s most distinctive and pleasing architectural characteristic. While the uniformity of the enclosing terraces provides much of the delight, equally engaging are the subtle differences between one house and its neighbours, or between one whole side and another. Many of the squares on this walk have ‘palace fronts’, terraces which were planned as if they were a single, very grand building, with architectural emphasis on the centre and ends. The squares selected for this walk are almost entirely intact and in an excellent state of preservation – one amazing feature of the London square phenomenon generally. Most of the pioneers in Bloomsbury and the West End have been much rebuilt; this itinerary gives priority to completeness, condition and beauty, resulting in a study of the final, triumphant Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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phase from very late Georgian to fairly late Victorian. During this period there was unprecedented variety and architectural quality, and economics and aesthetics aligned to achieve cityscape as fine as anywhere in the world. Not the least pleasing feature is the planting in the middle of the square, forming mature and well-tended landscaped gardens. The seemingly anachronistic system of ownership of tracts of London by aristocratic or charitable estates serves very well for upkeep. Start: Belgrave Square, 9.45am (nearest tube: Hyde Park Corner). Finish: Gloucester Road Station, c. 5.30pm. Price: £190. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch. Group size: maximum 18 participants. Fitness: The distance covered is c. 5½ miles, but you are on your feet for most of the day while looking and listening. Please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. Combine the day with: Walking the Cotswolds 14–21 May 2018, or Walking Hadrian’s Wall 14–20 May 2018 Te l e p h o n e 0 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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The South Bank Walk Famous & forgotten sites
Thursday 12 July 2018 (le 958) Lecturer: Dr Jeffrey Millert The south side of the river between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge now plays host to some of London’s most prominent art museums, concert halls and theatres; restaurants, cafés, bars and food stalls are found in abundance; luxury apartments, starchitect office buildings and hotels proliferate. At times there is severe congestion on the Thameside walk. Even twenty years ago very few could have envisaged such a future for what was still a largely depressed and partly derelict strip of central London. Long after cultural colonisation commenced with the Royal Festival Hall (1951), generations of Jeremiahs warned against moving arts institutions to the South Bank. But the temptations of derelict land, abandoned industrial buildings and, in one striking instance, historical precedent (Shakespeare’s Globe) led to an arts quartier of world importance. A tipping point was reached: Southwark became one of Europe’s biggest citycentre regeneration projects. Some of this provides some of the interest of this day. Much of the walk’s fascination, however, lies in what has been untouched by this gentrification a few hundred yards inland, where
there remain enthralling vistas of Victorian warehousing and industry, intersecting viaducts, strangely well-preserved Georgian terraces and outstanding items like Southwark Cathedral, the world’s oldest operating theatre, London’s first railway station and its most beautiful recent tube station.
Image: View of City of Westminster
Thursday 17 May 2018 (le 863) Friday 24 August 2018 (le 988) Lecturer: Sophie Campbell
There are lively markets and the last of the great coaching inns, and a couple of the most famous of contemporary buildings, City Hall and The Shard, western Europe’s tallest building. At the end of the day the tour ascends to The Shard’s Viewing Gallery on the 68th-72nd floors to look down on the day’s itinerary, and hugely more besides. Start: 9.30am, Waterloo Station. Finish: London Bridge Station c. 6.30pm. Price: £220. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 18 participants. Fitness: The distance covered is c. 5 miles, but you are on your feet for most of the day while looking and listening. Please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. Stout shoes are of course advisable. Combine the May day with: Occupation in the Channel Islands, 20–24 May 2018. Combine the July day with: The London Choral Day, 10 July 2018.
Monday 21 May 2018 (le 853) Monday 3 September 2018 (lf 118) Lecturer: Dr Neil Younger Tudor architecture, culture and politics are studied through two of the finest buildings of the era, and Tudor people through the two best assemblies of images. The day begins at Westminster Abbey in the Henry VII Chapel, not only the most glorious ecclesiastical Tudor building but burial place of most of the Tudor monarchs. The theme of commemoration continues at the National Portrait Gallery, broadening to include courtiers. Hampton Court began as the country palace of Cardinal Wolsey, one of the richest and most powerful individuals in Europe, before being sequestered by Henry VIII. Partially rebuilt and extended for William and Mary, it nevertheless retains some outstanding 16th-century interiors and works of art – great hall, chapel, private apartments, kitchens, tapestries and paintings.
Image: Hampton Court, Ann Boleyn’s Gateway, watercolour by E.W. Haslehurst, publ. c. 1910.
The Tudors Hampton Court, tombs & portraits Tudor politics, government and court culture. He is the author of War and Politics in the Elizabethan Counties and is currently working on a biography of the Elizabethan courtier Sir Christopher Hatton. Start: 9.25am, Westminster Abbey (west door). Finish: c. 6.30pm at Waterloo Station. Price: £215. This includes lunch, morning refreshments, admission charges and transport. Transport: taxis within London, return national rail between Waterloo Station and Hampton Court. Fitness: there are walks of up to 20 minutes between station and palace at Hampton Court, and a lot of standing in galleries and buildings. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
The lecturer Dr Neil Younger is a specialist in Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Arts & Crafts Art, architecture and decoration from Bexleyheath to Chiswick Arts & Crafts emancipated the designer to the status of artist, strove to give everyone access to beauty and, despite a persistent and rose-tinted view of the Middle Ages, achieved liberation from historic styles while incorporating exotic influences. Along the way it entwined with Art Nouveau, held hands with the Aesthetic Movement and, according to a view which superficially seems perverse, gave birth to international modernism.
For a long while Arts & Crafts was the acceptable face of Victorian art. Sales of William Morris wallpaper boomed while many major Victorian buildings succumbed to the wrecker’s ball. Fortunately, loathing of all things Victorian has now largely evaporated, but creations which fit into the Arts & Crafts category – not so much a style as a basket of ideas and attitudes – still stand out as exceptionally appealing and intriguing. The day provides a splendid survey of this dissident and even subversive phenomenon, with excellent examples in many media. It begins with the 1859 Red House at Bexleyheath – as did the movement – designed by Philip Webb for the Morris family. Other places seen, inter alia, are a Chelsea church (Holy Trinity Sloane Street), a dining room in South Kensington (in the V&A, for which it was made) and a Hammersmith home (Emery Walker’s).
Start: 9.00am, at Tower Place East, London EC3. Finish: c. 6.20pm, Hammersmith Station. For its instigators, the movement was as much about politics and economics as a matter of aesthetic preference. They championed craftsmanship and craftsmen and excoriated industrialisation and machine-made artefacts; most added a dollop of Utopian socialism though with varying degrees of commitment. A.W. Pugin was the precursor, Ruskin its prophet and Morris the high priest.
Price: £230 in 2017, £240 in 2018. This includes transport by coach and Underground, lunch at the V&A, morning and afternoon refreshments. Fitness: Travel is by private coach but there is some standing and walking and one tube journey. Group size: maximum 15 participants. Combine the day with: Music in the Cotswolds, 21–24 May 2018.
London Gardens Walk The City & its borders
Image: London, Charterhouse, wood engraving c. 1880 in Old & New LondonVol.II
Tuesday 19 June 2018 (le 912) Wednesday 22 August 2018 (le 986) Lecturer: Louisa Allen It may surprise people to learn that London is one of the greenest cities in Europe. Forty percent of its area is dedicated to readily accessible parks and public spaces, and while the great parks are known and loved by Londoners and visitors alike, few people know of the many small and remarkable spaces that are dotted through the city. With a history spanning five centuries, this walk encompasses old and new gardens and public spaces, some by special arrangement, to see the best of this small pocket of London’s lesserknown gems. Several of these have been created in the bombed-out remains of Wren churches, including the award-winning St Dunstan’s in the East whose dramatic ruins have been engulfed in a wide range of wall shrubs and climbers to create a beautiful garden with a haunting atmosphere.
success of his landscaping around the Olympic Park. And renowned Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf has been responsible for a new park on the South Bank at Potter’s Field which abuts one of the finest pieces of landscape architecture undertaken in London in recent years. Start: City Hall, SE1 2AA, 9.15am, (nearest Underground station is London Bridge). Finish: Nomura International, EC4R 3AB at approximately 6.00pm, (nearest Underground station is Monument). Price: £215. This includes special entrances, lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments and one Underground journey. Fitness: The distance covered is c. 5 miles and you are on your feet for most of the day while looking and listening. Please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. Stout shoes are of course advisable. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Postman’s Park, beloved as a lunchtime venue for City workers is another small space with a story; the newly re-opened Salters’ Hall gardens and Barber Surgeon’s also lie on our path. Lunch is at the former Carthusian monastery, The Charterhouse with its country garden just beyond the City boundary. In contrast, the dramatic Brutalist architecture of the Barbican housing estate has been updated with an innovative planting scheme developed by Professor Nigel Dunnett, following the Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Image: Pen Drawing of illuminated letter by William Morris, by Joseph Pennell 1889.
Friday 25 May 2018 (le 877) Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury
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London Choral Day
Three choirs & three churches in Chelsea
Our London Choral Days showcase outstanding choral ensembles in a selection of the most beautiful buildings in and around the capital. They take the form of a day-long sequence of performances, refreshments and talks in venues which are within walking distance of each other. The day has been conceived not as three discrete concerts but as an integrated sequence, a single great musical experience in which the individual parts illumine and enlarge upon what has gone before. Moreover, there is some connection between the venues and the music performed in them. This may be chronological – music of the same period as the building – or associational, a specific historical link between music and church. Before being engulfed by ‘the Great Wen’ in the nineteenth century, Chelsea was one of the more substantial of the largely agricultural communities a few miles from the capital. Half London’s fruit and vegetables used to come from Chelsea. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, market gardens and pleasure gardens were steadily covered by terraces ranging from artisan cottages to vast houses by Richard Norman Shaw. Chelsea remains one of the most attractive areas of inner London.
Chelsea Old Church The parish church, dedicated to All Saints but generally known as Chelsea Old Church, developed over several centuries and was largely mediaeval and 17th-century until it took a direct hit in 1941. Painstaking restoration results in visitors assuming it had suffered damage without realising the extent of destruction. Its additive, irregular fabric and accretion of monuments and furnishings make it a rarity in the metropolitan area for its retention of the appearance and atmosphere of a country parish church. Some of England’s earliest Renaissance detailing can be found in the chapel built for Thomas More (Sir or St according to taste), though the Tower of London came to be his final resting place. We are delighted to welcome back the Orlando Consort, internationally known for their ground-breaking performances and recordings of mediaeval and Renaissance music. Their programme of late 15th and early 16th-century music focuses on two Chelsea connections: Thomas More and gardens. In his book Utopia, More describes the Renaissance style of ‘Musica Reservata’, seeing it as a return to the ancient ideal of music in which text takes precedence, eschewing complex counterpoint and structure. The programme includes floral
the Arts & Crafts movement’. It is a place of staggering beauty, so it beggars belief that in the 1970s it was closed and scheduled for demolition (it now regularly achieves a threefigure Sunday congregation). Begun in 1888 and consecrated in 1892, though embellishment continued well into the next century, it was paid for by Earl Cadogan, the landlord of much of this part of Chelsea, and designed by John Dando Sedding. Many of the leading artists and craftsmen of the time, including William Morris and Edward BurneJones, contributed a diverse range of artworks. madrigals by Sermisy, Arcadelt, Crecquillon and Lupi, together with Robert Fayrfax’s beautiful benedicite, What Dreamed I, a piece known to be directly connected to More himself.
Royal Hospital Chelsea The Royal Hospital in Chelsea was founded by Charles II for retired soldiers – a function it retains to the present day as home to the Chelsea Pensioners. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect, and the red brick ranges around grassed courts and grounds which reach down to the Thames form one of the most appealing of London’s historic precincts. The scale is regal, but the architecture restrained to the point of being almost domestic in feel. Capacious, serene and filled with light, and ornamented with a light dusting of carved wood and stucco, the chapel is perhaps the noblest of Wren’s churches, St Paul’s aside. It is embellished with one of the finest (if least seen) paintings in London, The Resurrection by Sebastiano Ricci in the apse vault. The short life of Henry Purcell, England’s greatest native composer (and a Londoner), overlapped with that of the chapel (consecrated 1692) by three years. Strangely little is known of his life, but it is inconceivable that he did not visit Chelsea Hospital and hear some of his works here. The other composers in today’s programme are English contemporaries of Purcell or from earlier in the century – Tomkins, Gibbons, William Croft and Pelham Humfrey. The chapel’s superb professional choir has taken wing under the directorship of the multitalented William Vann, who conducts today’s concert.
Holy Trinity Sloane Square A Gesamtkunstwerk of architecture, sculpture, metalwork, painting and stained glass – and, for you, music – John Betjemen dubbed the church of Holy Trinity ‘the Cathedral of
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Holy Trinity Choir is the church’s professional ensemble directed by Oliver Lallemant. John Ireland, organist c. 1897, described the church as having the ‘reputation of the best musical service in London’. This programme is conceived as a celebration of this great church, a musical transition through the old and new, combining the temporal with the secular, woven around select movements from two masses by Tomás Luis de Victoria and Vaughan Williams. Other composers are John Wilbye (1574–1638), Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856), William Harris (1883–1973), Holst, Ireland, Parry and Grainger.
Practicalities Start: 11.30am at Chelsea Old Church, SW3 5DQ. Doors open at 11.20am, though the adjacent church hall will be serving refreshments from 10.45am. At the junction of Cheyne Walk beside the Thames and Old Church Street, it is about 20 minutes on foot from Sloane Square Station (District and Circle Lines) and a little more from South Kensington Station (District, Circle and Piccadilly Lines). Black cabs should be plentiful. Finish: c. 6.00pm, Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, SW1X 9BZ. Sloane Square Station is 2–3 minutes away. Walking: For those who do not choose the vehicular option, there are walks at a leisurely pace of, at most 20 minutes, (waiting at pedestrian crossings included). There is the option of signing up in advance for taxis to avoid the two longer walks at a cost of £20 per person. Price: £195, £215 with transport by taxi as specified above. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments as well as exclusive admission to the three concerts and short talks by architectural historian Professor Gavin Stamp. Lunch and refreshments: Lunch in good neighbourhood restaurants; the audience is split into three. Refreshments are served on arrival at Chelsea Old Church in the church hall, and in the afternoon between the concerts. Audience size: c. 100–160. Te l e p h o n e 0 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
Image: Royal Hospital Chelsea, engraving
Tuesday 10 July 2018 (le 957) Price: from £195
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Chamber Music Retreats In Somerset and Suffolk – Spring 2018
A music retreat arranged by Martin Randall Music Management is a very special experience. There is the pleasure, first, of hearing music performed by artists of the highest calibre, who are all among the very best in their fields. Second, the music is performed in an intimate setting, a hall little bigger than a large drawing room – just the sort of size which composers used to have in mind for chamber music. The audience is rarely more than 100, and consists mainly of those who stay throughout and attend all concerts. Third, our music retreats take place in excellent hotels. The Castle Hotel in Taunton and The Swan in Lavenham are among the most agreeable and comfortable hotels in England. We usually have exclusive use, and there is the opportunity for artists and audience to mingle. While these events are undeniably indulgent and leisurely retreats, they are also intended to stimulate the mind and delight the aesthetic sensibilities. Within an over-arching theme, the music is carefully chosen and programmed to provide an illuminating sequence – while each concert is satisfyingly self-sufficient. Pre-concert talks are also included, by a musicologist or by the musicians themselves. Prices include accommodation, most meals, admittance to the concerts and talks, and much else besides. Individual concert tickets are also available to purchase, for those who live locally.
The Schubert Ensemble Piano Quartets: Classical and Romantic 26–28 January 2018 (me 749) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Musically-illustrated talks by the musicians William Howard (piano); Simon Blendis (violin); Douglas Paterson (viola); Jane Salmon (cello). The Schubert Ensemble is one of the world’s leading exponents of music for piano and strings – this is one of the last opportunities to watch them perform before they retire as an ensemble at the end of June 2018. Their programme concentrates on piano quartet repertoire; Dvořák and Brahms feature prominently, as well as music by Mozart, Chausson, Schumann and Fauré. Musicially-embellished talks are given by the ensemble themselves.
Illustration: ‘The Fugue’, lithograph 1861 by Edouard Ender.
Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
The Mandelring Quartet Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven
The Chilingirian Quartet Haydn and Mozart: String Quartets and Quintets
9–11 March 2018 (me 771) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: Richard Wigmore
13–15 April 2018 (me 811) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: Richard Wigmore
Sebastian Schmidt (violin); Nanette Schmidt (violin); Andreas Willwohl (viola); Bernhard Schmidt (cello).
Levon Chilingian (violin); Ronald Birks (violin); Susie Mészáros (viola); Stephen Orton (cello); guest player, Prunella Pacey (viola).
The Mandelring Quartet return to Taunton to perform a programme of string quartets by Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven.
The Chilingirian Quartet has performed many times at The Castle Hotel – this will be their thirteenth appearance since 1978.
As with several of these music retreats, preconcert talks are given by musicologist, writer and broadcaster Richard Wigmore.
A programme of string quartets and quintets by Mozart and Haydn.
The Phoenix Piano Trio The ‘English Impressionist’: John Ireland and his influences
The Elias String Quartet After Beethoven
4–6 May 2018 (me 844) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: to be confirmed Jonathan Stone (violin); Christian Elliott (cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano). The Phoenix Piano Trio perform works by composers who became dominant influences on John Ireland.
4–6 June 2018 (me 895) The Swan Hotel & Spa, Lavenham 3 days • 4 concerts • From £710 Speaker: Richard Wigmore Sara Bitlloch (violin); Donald Grant (violin); Martin Saving (viola); Marie Bitlloch (cello). The superb Elias Quartet perform a weekend of music by Beethoven and those who were influenced by him. Takes place from a Monday to Wednesday.
The weekend culminates in a performance of Ireland’s Piano Trio No.3 in E.
Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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