Visiting Bath

Reynolds may or may not have painted this portrait of the grandmother of the Bath Holburne Museum's founder, tucked away high on one of the Museum's walls. The Museum's website records a cleaning in 1992, which included the removal of "a rosebud which had been added to the sitter's décolletage at some point".

The sitter was born Frances Ball in 1719, and brought up in Barbados. Aged 12, she was married off to a man 17 years her senior, and bore him - esides four other children - two sons. On her husband's early death, she married Admiral Holburne by whom she had more children, before dying in her early forties.

The younger son of the first marriage, Francis had a granddaughter, Frances, who in turn had a son Francis: his posthumous daughter, another Frances, has a great-granddaughter Ida Frances, who was looking up at her ancestor's portrait with me yesterday afternoon.

Understanding Islam

As a Summerfield Trustee, one of my proudest achievements was to establish the Summerfield Lecture within the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. Our first lecturer was the then little-known Will Hutton, trailing his seminal book, The State We're In. As grant givers, we wanted to be visible within the community so those in need of funds would know where to come, but more than this I felt we had a responsibility to explore big ideas - and where more appropriate to do this than within our own local festival of ideas?

The Summerfield Lecture seems to have morphed in recent years: last night's featured Fiona Reynolds, on the role of the National Trust: admirable speaker, but hardly cutting edge stuff. (Perhaps this is sour grapes - I am not now invited.)

Which yesterday was just as well, as another foundation, now well enmeshed in our Festival, provided an excellent alternative at the same hour: Coexist have sponsored a number of challenging events this year, including Mary Robinson's, in their quest for an expansion of what they term religious literacy. To the extent that hostility to faith-based ideas stems from ignorance, they must be on the right track.

Certainly "Understanding Islam" was a revelatory session - and (judging by the searching questions it elicited) not just for us. Why don't you hold things sacred? the Muslim world asks. Is the price of our intellectual freedom that nothing is sacred?

A London-based Imam, Shaykh Ahmad Saad al-Azhari recited (aided by his iPad) four separate passages from the Qur'an; each one was then translated by commentator Abdul-Rehman Malik, and expanded upon by both the Imam and Dr. Mona Siddiqui (her voice familiar from Thought for the day).

We learnt that for Islam, the God of Abraham is a secret God, longing to be known. So he gives love, but he is not, as for us Christians, love itself. We believe he has revealed himself in the person of Jesus: Jesus (for Muslims) is both the bridge and the gulf - immaculately conceived by Mary, yes, but though of divine spirit, the servant, not the son of God.

We were told this was just a taster session, but I've said it before: we need a follow up mechanism, so that those whose minds are fired up by Festival events can meet again to help one another further along their paths of discovery. Come on, organisers! Where is the Cheltenham Continuing Festival... of Ideas?

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Sir Joshua Reynolds' statue in the Royal Academy courtyard currently sports a floral sash, we noticed on Thursday (when going into the Summer Exhibition). It was a hard job, in getting a photograph, to avoid Sir Anthony Caro's huge "Promenade, 1996 - steel, painted grey/green": this to me was quite the most unattractive piece in the Exhibition, Tracey Emin's room notwithstanding.

Our friend Elise had rung on Tuesday to see if we might be able to help her out of a hole. Friends from Italy were at this late hour unable to come with them to Glyndebourne on Thursday. "And of course you will stay the night." (O the joys of retirement, I thought once more.) She then rang us again the following morning: "Could you by any chance be our flexible friends for the OAE concert tonight too?" And we knew from past experience that one doesn't pass up an opportunity to hear Andreas Scholl!

So it was that we returned home yesterday after two culture-packed days in the South-East...