Month: September 2017

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Have we done our best creative work by 30?

Age Shall Weary Us

martin roberts
The Author under 30. Considering his best creative work.

Last year I met the parents of the friend of one my step-children. He was a retired Naval Officer, she a semi-retired nurse. As we stood in the kitchen exchanging small talk over a cup of coffee I was struck how like the archetype of parents they were. Then another thought struck me; wasn’t I an archetypal parent as well? After all, give or take a year we were the same age, I had children too, we discussed the iniquity of university tuition fees, we shared concerns about our children’s future in the ‘current climate’, we worried how they would ever afford to buy a house and laughed about them looking after us in our old age. Damn! Despite of how I perceived myself I was looking into a mirror – I am not 17, I’m 57. Continue reading “Have we done our best creative work by 30?”

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The Madonna of Sant’Agostino

The Madonna of Sant'Agostino

Orinzia asked for the bench to be moved. When she walked out onto the terrace that morning she had noticed that the plumbago, now in full bloom, was not only covering the back and a large part of the seat with its outstretched tendrils of delicate mauve blooms, but that its advance was obscuring the view across the gardens and out over the city. Although it might have been easier to have the gardener cut it back, it seemed a much better solution to move the bench. That way the view, which was always there, would be available to anyone choosing to sit on that part of the terrace and the plumbago, whose life was limited, would also be preserved. Continue reading “The Madonna of Sant’Agostino”

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Sutherland’s Churchill

In a recent clear out of the Nicholson family attic the following letter between the artist Graham Sutherland, fellow artist and friend Edward Nicholson came to light.  Its contents throw new light on an age-old artistic scandal.

Hotel Negresco
Nice

September 1966

My Dear Nicholson

Katharine and I have come to Cannes for a few days. The season is over and we shall not be much bothered by the kind of crowd who haunt the town from June to August. There are a few Americans left as, having much money and even more time, they now cannot seem to be parted from the continent that they all worked hard to leave. I suppose, as the prodigal children, they enjoy parading their wealth to us poor souls who were left behind, even if they secretly know it all to be such vulgar hauteur. The Negresco1 is full of them and it grieves me so to see the French, normally so dignified (if not a little haughty themselves), bowing and scraping to gather tips left by farmers from Iowa and Texan cattle barons. But such is the way of things. Continue reading “Sutherland’s Churchill”

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War for the Playstation generation?

It may seem a little churlish to want to assess Ernst Jünger’s classic First World War memoires ‘Storm of Steel’ nearly a hundred years after the fact but, as this is a book for all time, then it surely deserves continuous review, not least because, as I read it I began to wonder if it could actually be true. The fact Jünger rewrote the book at least four times during his lifetime, the more to suit a contemporary audience, must surely cast doubt on its veracity. But, in fairness, I don’t really doubt his account for no better reason than most of it (and I mean most) can be corroborated from official records and contemporary eye-witnesses. However, as the chapters roll by one has uneasy sense of unlikelihood of it all – Jünger as Captain Hurricane, Flash Thompson, Nick Fury and GI Joe; life imitating art had the art yet been created. Continue reading “War for the Playstation generation?”