A visual arts day

Caroline, as a member of the Friends of our art gallery and museum, was able to book us onto their bus trip into Herefordshire yesterday. We wiggled our way to Kilpeck, so we could wonder again at the 12th Century sculpture on its gem of a church, before spending a happy hour or two in Roy Strong's nearby garden. You might say, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

But for all it's being over the top, the garden created over the past four decades at The Lasket is a staggering achievement, a carefully-constructed three-dimensional work of art. The wilderness of an orchard where cats are buried isn't typical - there is something surreal about it.

This particular cat was, Sir Roy told us, named, not for the poet, but for William Larkin, the Jacobean painter: from the time I was a guide at Charlecote Park, I remember his portrait on copper of one of the Lucys, hanging in the Great Hall, a rarity.

Richard II

"In a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next," says York in Richard II. Currently, however, eyes (not only of men) are far from idly bent on David Tennant's performance as the King: we have tickets for the live relay in a fortnight, the first such from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. There are queues for returns at the box office, and that will no doubt also be the case at Cineworld.

On Radio 4's Today programme, Maroussia Frank and David have just been talking to Rebecca Jones about the large ring David is wearing as Richard. Maroussia had inherited it from her husband Ian Richardson, who wore it in the iconic 1974 John Barton production, where he alternated with Richard Pasco in the roles of king and usurper: she felt it appropriate that a second Scottish RSC "Richard" should have it, especially - no doubt - bearing in mind that Ian's ashes are interred beneath that very stage on which David Tennant ("son" of Richardson, as it were) has next entered.

As a car-less tour guide at Charlecote Park in the early Summer of 1962, I made it my business to be especially nice to the last party I was taking round in case I could cadge a lift from one of them, back to Stratford. From there, it was usually easy to hitchhike home. One sunny afternoon, some actors were in this final posse, and I ended up with one of them in his Austin A30.

From a stage photograph I spied in the glove compartment, I realised it was Ian Richardson: though I had seen him several times in plays at Stratford, I would hardly have recognised him. "That was a bit of a matinée performance you gave us, I thought." He spoke in a soft, Scottish accent, quite different from his evil-sounding Don John or high-pitched Oberon. ("I had great difficulty persuading Peter Hall that I was right for this part," he told me: Titania was Judi Dench, Helena, Diana Rigg, etc. etc.)

I had asked for a lift to Stratford, but having explained that I lived at Arrow, Ian offered to take me the extra eight miles home. "Would you like to come in?" my father asked him, when we arrived. "Why not?" he replied. After two gins, my parents apologised, "but we are all now due to go for a drink up at Oversley Castle... perhaps you would like to come too?" "Why, yes," was the eager response, and so it was that we had the pleasure of Ian's company for the evening: as it progressed, so his tongue loosened.

I went back stage a few times after seeing him perform subsequently, the final occasion - shortly before his too early death - being after a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets in our Town Hall. Never, of course, did I quite manage to recapture the easy atmosphere of that Summer evening.

My photograph was taken in Bristol Cathedral on Monday: there are a number of fragments of mediaeval glass preserved there. "Within the hollow crown, that rounds the mortal temples of a king, keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp." One might almost suppose that Shakespeare wrote these lines having visited Bristol and seen this curious image.

Ten days in May

Arden Grant, our New Zealander handyman, has been here of late, most recently fixing kerb stones against the front lawn, and - as in my photograph - repinning the Rambling Rector to the side wall: it collapsed a while ago, and has grown too top heavy just to tie back to the original wires. (That's the trouble with Rambling Rector: I must be less kind when pruning this Autumn.) To illustrate the breadth of Arden's talents, he's also - last week - made over Leo's old room, replacing the basin in a new position, fitting a shelf alongside it and blanking off one of the lights above, taken away the built-in cupboard, inserted a new skirting board, repapered the wall behind where the cupboard was and painted the room's walls and ceilings - oh, and fitted a new piece of carpet to match the existing. A man for all seasons. And it's been hot, working inside: this last part of May has seen us basking in something of a heatwave, but it is all about to change - just in time for the Jubilee weekend of course.

I can't remember what the weather was like at this time 50 years ago, but I do recall the première of Britten's War Requiem taking place on my birthday in the new Coventry Cathedral. I was working as a guide at Charlecote Park: the Curator, Dick Routh, had a ticket. And last night it was performed there again, by the same orchestra, the CBSO, under its brilliant conductor Andris Nelsons. I Listened Again, and was bowled over.