Comtesse Greffulhe photographed by Nadar in Worth
Cumberbatch as Alan Turing
It is rare enough to see two good films in a row for me to mention “the Theory of everything ” with Eddie Redmayne and “Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch. You all know the story of pure genius Stephen Hawking by now. How he fell ill at Cambridge and lived already fifty years longer than the doctors had predicted to complete his « Brief history of time ».
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I don’t particularly like this slow cooking beef stew but so many people do that I thought I would give you the list of best restaurants for pot-au-feu published by Figaroscope last week.
The casino ladies are hilarious
The double bill of William Christie and Robert Carsen was just too tempting to miss. But impossible to get tickets, even two months ahead. Thank God for a good friend, a culture vulture like me, who thought of inviting me for my birthday to « Les Fêtes Vénitiennes », a baroque opera composed by André Campra in 1710.
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The swimming pool is 52 foot long and built in pierre de Bourgogne
I wonder if Lady Antonia Fraser will decide to leave Hotel Meurice to stay in this elegant new hotel, La Réserve, which has without question, the prettiest swimming pool in the Champs Elysées gardens. As she tells us in her new autobiography « My History » (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), she has always been a keen swimmer and cannot survive without her holidays in Cornwall and the weekly exercise !Read More
“Get out of here you and your filth” a dark pastel by Paula Rego
I fell in love with Dame Paula Rego’s paintings in 1988 when I saw her first retrospective at the Serpentine gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Everything about her art was perfect : the dark Portuguese characters, the firmness of her hand, the colourful backgrounds, the tragic fairy tales…Read More
One of Lesley Blanch’s drawings
Georgia de Chamberet has been an editor and a translator in London for many years. Since her godmother, the romantic writer and adventuress Lesley Blanch, died in 2007, Chamberet has never stopped looking for unpublished manuscripts and drawings in the numerous cases of documents she inherited from her. The result is this new book published by Virago in London « On the Wilder shores of love, A bohemian life ».Read More
Remarkable Lydia Wilson with Tim Piggot-Smith as Kate and Charles
I was lucky enough to be attending this London long running play by Mike Bartlett between two British historians, Rebecca Fraser, who is completing her new History book on characters from the Mayflower and Munro Price, author of the recent « Napoleon, The end of Glory ». After a lovely Dover sole and white wine at J Sheekey’s around the corner, we were in perfect form to watch this almost Shakespearian drama.Read More