St David's Day

Today dawned with evidence of a sharp frost on the car windscreen, the first for ages. Last night was clear, but we failed to look out for the aurora borealis as we left Whittington, having had supper there. The Press has recently published a beautiful volume of super-size posters: I enjoyed poring over them as Caroline was upstairs looking at materials.

I took this photograph of today's Saint (the window is by Kempe) in St David's Church, Moreton-in-Marsh last week.

Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

South Banking

In Ring terms, yesterday and today are holidays, and I'm enjoying a little London leisure. The night-time rain has cooled things down, so making it more comfortable to cycle around. Southwark Cathedral hosts an inter-faith exhibition this week, put on by our good friend Sarah. That made something to aim for: it was an added bonus to find a steward who knew all about the Cathedral's stained glass. Much of it is C.E. Kempe, and indeed there's a memorial to him in the South transept. I admired the colourful Henry Holiday window at the West end also (complete with a panel which seems to depict the Rhinemaidens: you can't get away from it!). The Cathedral, wedged in between railway lines, is now of course dwarfed by the Shard.

From London Bridge, I pushed/rode my bike three miles upstream along the Thames path: from the dry dock that's home to Drake's Golden Hind (such a tiny vessel to have circumnavigated the globe all those 400+ years ago!) to the brand new St George's Wharf development at Vauxhall. Most of the way was thronged with people enjoying themselves: drinking mainly, but also playing on the shore or on the artificial beach outside the Festival Hall; learning from the brilliant garden exhibition by Hungerford Bridge; watching jugglers, acrobats and limbo dancers; browsing the book stalls by the Film Theatre; queuing for the Eye; photographing each other against the river backdrop, and proselytising - my ear was bent for ten minutes by a young man from South China, who worshipped at All Souls Langham Place and made it his - or rather the Lord's - business to accost people sitting in the pleasant gardens outside Tate Modern on his way home from work every evening (so he told me).

You don't get the feeling that Austerity Britain means much here.

Severn walk (2)

A couple of months ago, I walked for the first time along the East bank of the Severn: this morning, I walked a new (to me) stretch of the West bank - Southwards from Westbury to Newnham - dodging the showers.

Looking downstream at the point where the path from Westbury church meets the riverbank, I took this photograph of Newnham. When you get there, it has a bit of the look of a seaside town: standing on its high bluff overlooking the river, it must certainly seem as cool, when the wind is anywhere near the East. Some fine architecture indicates the importance of the town in times past, though who wants to live in a beautiful house if it fronts onto a busy road? Nor does it make much difference that the more or less continuous traffic on the A48 runs predominantly Southwards - into Wales: you only pay the Severn bridge toll going East-West, so this Gloucester-Chepstow detour avoids it.

Both SS Peter & Paul, Westbury and St Peter's Newnham have quite good Kempe glass - the latter's being the more interesting: a splendid Anna, and a Tabitha. But Newnham's 12th Century font is the real star of the show - that and the beautiful Peace Garden at the Eastern extremity of the churchyard. You enter as through the portal of a Shinto shrine, the injunction to bow your head being a little unnecessary for me.

"Travelling Light"

We were attracted to the latest National Theatre cinema relay by the presence in the cast of Anthony Sher. Nicholas Wright's play title reflects the imagined passage of a Lumière camera from deep in Eastern Europe to the West coast of America, transported by our hero, the orphaned son of a forgotten Jewish cinema pioneer. Sonny and Sher both, however, disappointed last night: Damien Molony looks good, but his wooden acting in the final scenes was exposed by the close ups. Sher's magnetism, so attractive when first we went to see him at Stratford, has now it seems worn off. But worst of all Travelling Light, for all its large cast and Hytner's elaborate production, has none of that true lightness The Artist has, a film echoing a similar era but with more finesse and magical delight.

Nor would Travelling Light work as a film: indeed, the best parts of the evening were the alienation effect of seeing a film of a play about a film, and the discussion at the end - in which (as Emma Freud pointed out) the author was the only gentile.

The stained glass - photographed in 2008 (in Oxford's Christ Church Cathedral) - looks like Kempe: another young Jewish boy on the run.

"A celebration of Shropshire agriculture"

Paul Dobraszczyk, Andy Wigley, James Bowen, Douglas Grounds, Pamela Sambrook and I were the speakers at this rather interesting day meeting, organised by the Shropshire and Marches Georgian Group. I spoke first, about The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer: it must have been pretty well-received, as I only came back with one copy of the book left unsold. We stayed with friends a little way South of Culmington Village Hall, where the event took place: as we were going to be rather early arriving, we made a minor detour up the lane from the A49 in Bromfield, to take a look at King's Head Farm. The Diarist lived there throughout the 1850s, and indeed my great-grandfather was born there. The place looks a bit desolate today. Culmington village is a surprise: at first you think it must be all along the main road, but tucked away to the East are a number of black and white houses and farm buildings, together with a curious church (All Saints), with Saxon origins clearly visible and a Kempe-like St Michael in one of the South Nave windows. We left before the end, to travel home mainly by daylight, and were rewarded by a remarkable sunset over Ludlow.