topics
,,theh
This page allows you to find different blog postings and photo albums grouped by topic; just click on an entry.
TRAVEL
2016 Malta
2015 To Inchydoney, Ireland, again.
2015 Stay in Bath (Tony Birks-Hay’s final show)
2014 Swimming in the Red Sea in December.
2014 A lovely museum in Antalya, Turkey.
2013 The Salamis Bay Conti Hotel in North Cyprus.
2013 The Wren Library in Trinity College, Cambridge.
2013 Getting around in Turkey and here.
2013 Revisiting Venice.
2013 Visiting the mausoleum of Roumi, the Sufi mystic, in Konya.
2012 The Pain in Spain.
2012 Talking to Mrs Linley Sambourne.
2012 To St John’s College, Cambridge.
2012 To the Inchydoney isthmus, in west Cork.
2012 In the French Alps. (Photos)
2011 Visiting the Greek island of Castellorizo while staying in Turkey.
2011 Staying with friends in a spa town south of Granada.
2011 Hot springs in Baden Baden (so clean they named it twice).
2010 Visiting my daughter in Valencia.
Valencia: Spain’s secret city.
2010 Cemetery at Saignon, in Provence (photo album)
2008 Cuba: 50s cars (photo album)
2008 Cuba: slogans (photo album)
2005 Turkey (photo album)
2000 When Jane visited me in the Botanical Gardens.
2000 An amazing place to live in Berlin.
1997 Central Europe: Vienna, Budapest & Prague
1995 Miracle Manor, Reposo Way, Desert Hot Springs, California.
1995 Miracle Manor (photo album)
1990 Paris: the Canal Saint Martin.
1990 Dublin; on the James Joyce trail. (photos)
1979 Visiting Greek islands with Jane
1966 Driving between Algeria and France
1965 Summer in Manhattan
1966 A posh wedding in Algeria.
1964 Travelling to Spain by Lambretta
CAMBRIDGE
Wren Library, Trinity College.
“On the Road”, a beat at Cambridge in the late 50s.
Gillray’s The Rake’s Progress at the University.
Gillray’s The Rake’s Progress at the University. (photos)
Cambridge photos (mainly St John’s College)
“If yer scuff yer feet ye’ll get beasties!”
THE ARTS (books, theatre, ballet, film, music etc)
books and poetry
Visiting the Pepys library in Cambridge.
Young winner of the 2017 Betjeman poetry prize, ‘Lament for Syria’
The Other Side of You by Sally Vickers.
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Robert Irwin’s Memoirs of a Dervish.
Poems inspired by Titian’s ‘Metamorphoses’ paintings.
Musée des Beaux Arts, Auden’s poem about Breughel’s Fall of Icarus.
Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (1)
Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2)
Worldly Goods: Lisa Jardine’s ‘New History of the Renaissance’.
Maigret likes a drink (or two).
How to get free classic books (on your Kindle).
A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
A Mouthful of Air: Anthony Burgess on language and languages.
My Name is Red, a novel by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.
The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund De Waal’s family memoir.
Travels through France and Italy by Tobias Smollet.
Baedeker’s Italy: from the Alps to Naples. 1909 edition.
theatre
When the audience become performers.
When the audience become performers (2)
Mark Rylance as Richard III at the Globe.
Having tea with Harold Pinter.
UFA-revue, Theater des Westens, Berlin.
music
Cardiff Singer of the World 2015
An extraordinary production of a Mozart opera in Berlin.
A brilliant young cellist becomes the BBC Musician of the Year.
Chinese Opera in Algeria during the Cultural Revolution.
J.S.Bach’s St Matthew Passion, directed by Jonathan Miller.
dance
The Winter’s Tale. The Royal Ballet at the cinema.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.
film
The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking.
The Winter’s Tale. The Royal Ballet at the cinema.
Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges.
Watching films for free just after the war.
Problems of finding unusual films in multiplexes.
Locations for Vertigo, just voted greatest film of all time.
Georges Méliès, the great French director of the silent era.
Hotel du Nord by Marcel Carné.
Francois Truffaut, the Antoine Doinel films.
Why do people think The Artist is a great film?
painting
Our friend Tony-Birks Hay, painter and sculptor, 1937-2014
Tony’s paintings: a final exhibition in Bath.
Metamorphosis, the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery.
The paintings of Vittore Carpaccio in Venice.
Photos of the three ‘Diana’ Titians.
Four versions of Boy Building a House of Cards by Chardin
Photos of the Chardin paintings.
‘Worldly goods’ as seen in paintings of the Renaissance.
The Little Oyster Eater by Jan Steen, the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Children in interiors by Pieter de Hooch and his contemporaries.
The Rake’s Progress at the University (1806) by James Gillray
Musée des Beaux Arts, Auden’s poem about Breughel’s Fall of Icarus.
decorative arts
Jewellery from Kabylia, in eastern Algeria.
ceramics
Jane’s sculptures of women in dance and yoga poses.
LANGUAGE & LANGUAGE LEARNING
Language learning: the school years. (French, German & Spanish).
Language learning: the adult years. (From Dutch to Mondegreens).
Children learning to speak (1) : my daughters and granddaughter.
Children learning to speak (2) : Amelie’s use of French.
Children learning to speak (3) : imagination & co-operation
Children learning to speak (4) : ‘Hey Grandpa, give me a high five!’
A Mouthful of Air: Anthony Burgess on language and languages.
Hurdy gurdy, head over heels and hip hop. Doublets in English.
Softly softly. More about doubling up.
All Greek (or possibly Turkish) to me.
Smatterings (1). Why speaking a language too fluently can be a problem.
Smatterings (2). Report on a conference about “Why Languages Matter”.
A poem to exemplify rules of word stress in English.
Polyglots. People speaking many languages.
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Amelie spend the weekend with us at the cottage (2014).
Watching Wimbledon with my grand-daughter (2013).
Jane becomes a tennis champion!
Celine doing yoga while heavily pregnant.
A shipboard romance. How my parents met in 1936, I think.
More about A shipboard romance.
Photos of my parents from 1936.
Yes, my parents did get married in Alexandria in December 1936.
The Cruel Sea. My father’s war: Crossing the Atlantic 1941-3.
In southern Iraq; spring of 1951 (part 1).
In southern Iraq: spring of 1951 (part 2).
A barman in Cannes in 1962 (the summer Celine was born).
Photos from Tlemcen, Algeria (1965-7).
Photos from New York City in 1965.
The Odds and Sods Club: a school reunion after 50+ years.
Jane and I; photos of our wedding day in 1983.
Me Jane: a 1950s childhood. chapter one (aged 4). Revised.
Me Jane, chapter 9. Jane aged 8-9. (First version)
Our friends, from Algeria in 1968 to Spain in 2011.
Sports, sights & spooks in Valencia, 2010.
Valencia people: photos of Celine, Lucas, Carlos et al.
Memories of and tributes to my cousin Justin Rees.
Photos of Amelie (aged nearly 1 & nearly 3) with fond grandfather.
Peter Ridley Batt (1919-2011). Jane’s favourite uncle.
A widowed friend’s happy remarriage (tho’ not to Humphrey Bogart).
OUT OF THE PAST
1944 Learning to write, on a slate and afterwards.
1945 - School reunion evokes memories from primary school onwards.
1948-9 First of two worst winters in my lifetime.
1949 - First visits to France and Germany.
1950s Playing at soldiers and sailors.
1957- Lavatories and dress code at St John’s College, Cambridge.
1957 Working with West Indians.
1958- A discotheque near the Place Saint Michel.
1958 ‘If you scuff yer feet ye’ll get beasties!’. Pretending to be soldiers.
1950s ‘Bless me Father for I have sinned’
1962- Learning guitar in Guernsey
1962- Teaching in Guernsey
1962- My first marriage, and moving to Guernsey
1962. A chance encounter with Arab food in London.
1966. A splendid wedding in Tlemcen, Algeria.
1968 A Berber wedding in a village in Kabylia.
1969 Good Cop, Bad Cop in Algiers.
1979. Miami Beach before it was tarted up.
1981. The day I discovered sushi (and Charles & Diana were married).
OUR WORK
Michael
Why are publishers so timid? Problems of getting past the marketing guys.
Rhymes and Rhythm. 2010 revised update of my English Language book.
Don’t Ration my Passion. Songs of WW2.
“Who’s Who”, a word stress poem from Rhymes and Rhythm.
“Silly Similes”, a nonsense poem from Rhymes and Rhythm.
Jane
Women in Wartime by Jane and me.
The Egyptian Princess (2014). Paperback and e-book.
Under Buckingham Palace (2013). Paperback and e-book
Below the Green Pond (1982): reviews in TES and TLS.
Below the Green Pond (1982): illustrations for possible new edition.
A Stitch in Time: Volume 2 (2011)
A Stitch in Time: Volume 2 (2011) (photos of knitwear from the 30s to the 50s)
The Female Form. Photos of Jane’s Statues and Sexpots.
Bucks Open Studios 2011. Jane’s work and that of her fellow artists.
Yoga and Dance. Female figures in semi-porcelain with a porcelain glaze.
Female Forms: mainly life drawings.
Bucks Open Studios 2010. Jane’s work and that of her fellow artists.
Population Explosion. Ceramic forms.
Dancers in Motion. (Drawings of Royal Ballet dress rehearsals)
Me Jane: a 1950s childhood. Chapter one.
(For more about Jane and her work, go to janewaller.co.uk )
CHEQUERS
My former neighbour, Gordon Brown.
Hello, I’m from Germany. (Angela Merkel greets a local peasant).
Visiting the neighbours. (David & Samantha)
IN AND AROUND THE COTTAGE
Woodland plants in springtime. Photos
Foxie Foxie comes to our garden.
The young vixen who visits us.
Cottage photos, all year round.
Cottage fauna: photos of animals from the desirable to the unbearable.
Snow at Christmas (December 2010).
One pub saved, one pub closed.
We’ve actually bought or local pub! (2012)
West Wycombe: childhood and onwards.
Photographs of us visiting West Wycombe.
TENNIS
Watching the Murray brothers in Valencia in November 2010
Jane wins Kennedy Cup mixed doubles with 17yr old lad as partner.
Photo of Jane holding cup and almost fainting with surprise.
Watching much of 2012 Murray-Federer Wimbledon final at my old college.
Watching the famous 2013 Wimbledon final with 4-year-old Amelie.
Playing tennis in northern Cyprus in February 2014.
My two heroines from the 2015 French Open.
The magic of Murray at Queens, 2015 (plus Dustin Brown at Wimbledon).
