Malleable

Sculptor Anne Boning is a new name to us: we met her this morning up at Farmcote, where she is exhibiting (alongside Sarah Loveday and Diana Green) as part of the Winchcombe Festival. Caroline bought one of her extremely tactile stone pieces.

I write this having just returned from seeing King Lear. Perhaps three major Shakespeare plays within the space of six days is one too many: anyway, this evening felt like a long one. As Michael Billington wrote in his review, "There are times when I feel that Lear is a play that has to be endured as much as enjoyed." No question, Simon Russell Beale invests the name part with all his very considerable skill, but his performance seemed from first to last relentless. "A very foolish, fond old man"? In this modern dress production's quest for character, the poetry seemed somehow to have gone missing.

Glorious Gloucester

Clutching my wonderful bus pass and a sandwich, I set off for Gloucester yesterday with a view to exploring the County Records Office. That will have to wait till another day.

I was sidetracked by the Cathedral: just before I left home, Sarah Loveday had arrived, and said I should drop by the Cloisters to look at Diana Green's Creation & Fall etchings, which are on temporary display. So I did (and admired them); which led to an amble round the Ambulatory and into the Lady Chapel. I realised that, in spite of many previous visits, I was looking at much of what I saw for the first time.

An hour or more had passed when a Steward walked by. "Was I joining the Tower Tour, starting in five minutes?" "No," I said, but then thought, "Why not?" The tower of the Cathedral is visible on almost any walk around Cheltenham, but I had never climbed up it.

The guide on duty - it happened to be a friend of ours, Sue Hamilton - does not it seems share my fear of heights. Intrepidly she led us 175 steps up to Great Peter (which strikes the hours), into the adjacent Ringing Chamber, and up again past the ring of twelve bells. Finally, we emerged onto the roof, and there we were, in driving rain, 225 feet above the Cathedral floor.

The view is of course amazing, even on a day like yesterday. When taking the photograph above - there are some more in a web sequence beginning here - I was pointing the camera West over the nave. In mediaeval times, the River Severn would have been visible flowing from right to left in the top of the picture. The West walk of the Cloister is visible at the bottom right, and beyond it the half-timbered building is where Richard II is thought to have held his Parliament of 1378.

To its left is the former Deanery. Caroline's great-great-grandfather Dean Edward Rice, who held office for 36 years, would have lived there with his 12 children: he kept chickens in the Cloister garden, according to Tamara Talbot Rice's autobiography. Sue Hamilton said there were still chickens kept in a roof garden somewhere in the Cathedral Close: I didn't spot them.

At that height, you cannot help thinking about the faith of the monks who organized such a tower to be built 550 years ago. On the bus, I was reading a newspaper article by a professor of philosophy under the headline "The rise of Milliband brings at last the prospect of an atheist prime minister." God save us!

20th meeting of the book group

A week ago, my book group met in Wells. A long way to go for a book discussion? We are six in number, and one of us has defected from Gloucestershire to Somerset. So we were invited to catch up with him at his new house, near the centre of Wells.

I had been there on weekends when my parents came to visit me at All Hallows; so my last acquaintance with Wells was 52 years ago. I hardly remembered it at all. Simon led us around the Cathedral and precincts: a magical tour, ending in an old prebendary's house, called - why? - The Rib, with the most mysteriously beautiful mediaeval interior.

The book for discussion? Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. The score? Two of us liked it, two didn't. I didn't (much). 300-odd pages with no dialogue: an impressive attempt at historical reconstruction, but a bit charmless I thought. More interesting as an insight into the author, than the subject.