I came across this little book in my library as I was going through things to keep, to give away or even throw away.

Its introduction says it all. It says what the UK has given away, indeed thrown away.

Does it matter that such a big fuss is being made about the UK signing a treaty to join an Indo-Pacific trade group? New data apparently shows it to be a major economic benefit.

The Far East is certainly an economically booming part of the world. It can produce more goods at a cheaper price than most other parts of our planet at an often technologically advanced level. Will the UK be able to match this productivity or, instead, be disparagingly smiled at?

Although Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has formally and optimistically signed the treaty to accede to the CPTPP trade group in New Zealand will this really be more than a drop in the bathwater which the UK has thrown away together with the baby in that infamously conned referendum of 2016?

Nothing is certain except the geographical fact that the European continent is just across the waters while huge oceans separate this island kingdom from the Far East. Transport and accessibility are increasingly important for commerce in a world beset by fuel and climate considerations.

I have met few people in London who consider Brexit other than a catastrophe: economically, culturally, politically. Even family relatives who had never been on a demonstration before took to the streets against Leave, not once but twice, because they knew they were being duped. On the other hand I am aware that the majority of those who voted to leave in 2016 lived well away from the Great Wen in areas rightly decrying the concentration of government funds in and around London and believing that all would change for the better upon leaving.

Political self-harm can take various forms: Weimar in 1933, Crimea in 1853, Mars La Tour in 1870 and so forth. Little did too few people realise it would take yet another form on 23^rd June 2016 in a country which only four years previously had welcomed Europe and the world to the Olympics, a country which had through the vision of its post-war leaders, in particular Tories Churchill and Heath, actually been prime movers in laying the foundations of the European Union.

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A museum of music reproducing instruments sits in a modern block by the Thames at Brentford, London. It’s the Musical Museum and within its confines are orchestrions, barrel organs, player pianos, violanos, gramophones and even a mighty Wurlitzer.

This fascinating collection of pre-digital music reproductive apparatus was founded in 1963 by Frank Holland who discovered a nearby disused church to house it. We remember visiting the museum many years ago in its former cramped ex-ecclesiastical setting. In 2008 it found a new home in the more spacious purpose built building nearby, gaining in presentation what it lost in quaintness.

Before attending the museum’s concert last night we were able to take a quick look at its contents. The His Master’s Voice terrier and other delightful animals especially grabbed our attention.

I was reminded that an old school-friend who played the bassoon in the school orchestra and later in life became the world authority on the Pianola – Rex Lawson – had worked at the Musical Museum.

What was played at the concert? Perhaps the most sublime music ever composed: a late Beethoven quartet. Op 130 is characterized by an alternative ending, the last piece the now totally deaf composer wrote. A restless first movement, a sprightly scherzo encored at the quartet’s first performance in 1827 a couple of months after the great man had died, an elegant andante, a child-like German dance, a transcendent cavatina, the term given to a simple song but here applied to a paradisiacal prayer which drew tears from Beethoven and, indeed, from anyone of sensibility who listens to it; five wonderfully teeming movements finaled by what? That was the question to be discussed in this concert.

Beethoven’s original finale was deemed too long, too complex by his publishers in the first quartet to have six movements (instead of the usual four). So Ludwig replaced it with a brilliantly playful one with absolutely no hint in its mood that its creator would soon expire.

The first half of the concert, which was preceded by an illuminating talk on the work, consisted of a performance of this revised version played by the Maiastra quartet. I’d never heard of these artistes before but by the end of their playing I had become completely convinced of their excellence. Intonation, dynamics, expression, balance were all A1. Knowing renderings of this heavenly piece by other quartets I could not have wished for better. Incidentally a Maiastra is a mythical golden bird from Rumania which can tell fortune and cure the blind. Brancusi, another Rumanian, did a wonderful set of sculptures representing the Maiastra.

The second half of this concert consisted of the first five movements played again but this time followed by the original finale, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most way-out chamber music ever created. None other than the Grosse Fuge, the ‘Great Fugue’. With more bars than the previous five movements put together this master-work develops a familiar fugue subject in six sections going from colossal rhythmic complexity to the most humourous banter ever elicited from such a severe form as the fugue.

The energy this music generated was awesome. Exhilarating exhaustion in the notes with equal energy in the playing. To play op. 130 twice over in an evening and conclude with the most difficult, both to hear and to play, chamber music creation of all time was a remarkable achievement. It was also a great idea! Not only did we get the full versions of this quartet but also we were able, through the repetition of five of its movements, to more fully appreciate the way this marvellous music was put together.

We have only been twice to attend concerts at the Musical Museum. The first was to hear that doyen of dance bands for our time, Alex Mendham. The second was last night’s Maiastra Beethoven quartet performance. No two sorts of music could be more different from each other. Yet in both cases they were united by the highest quality of playing from their respective artistes.

It’s fantastic that in an era where methods of music reproducing have evolved well beyond much of that displayed in the Brentford museum we are able to attend live music played supremely. And all this for free (donations gratefully received of course).

Gormley’s simple, expressionless metal man greets us but we are not allowed to approach him, let alone touch his hand. In the next room Sassetta illustrates with almost Disnean colours episodes from the man’s life. Is this the same man? The same one we meet in the following room before the Egyptian Sultan painted by Fra Angelico?

The same that accepts a meek paw from a tamed wolf?

The same that has his hands pierced by rays emitted from a fiery, soaring cherub?

The extasy of this man unfolds with paintings by El Greco, Rubens, Zurbaran and, especially, Caravaggio in his almost Pre-Raphaelite narration.

The same that invented the Christmas Crib?

I could not believe at first such a valuable series had been assembled, some from America, in honour of this extraordinary being.

This man embraces the life of Christ and marries poverty. He loves nature and preaches to the birds. Yes, my namesake. A name signifying a French troubadour background and a free spirit. A nickname from his dad who later disowned him.Or was it he who disowned the dad?

This National Gallery exhibition is remarkably revealing of this simple yet complex saint. I remain confused at how a youth-about-town could give up chic clothing for sackcloth and chord, (present here as one of his relics),

how he could exchange marriage with a lovely girl for a marriage with poverty, how he could then tell that lovely girl to found a second Franciscan order based not just on poverty but on exclusion from the world.

Francis did not exclude the world. He embraced it and would have kissed the Sun and the moon as brothers and sisters if he could. Instead the saint from Assisi wrote a gorgeous canticle which is the first poem to be written in Italian and, moreover, is the foundation of green movements today.

His order recognized by the Pope, Francis did not seek to found another sect but aimed at returning Christianity to a true imitation of Christ. When the Pope allowed him to be tonsured Francis was overjoyed for this meant that the Church, which he so wanted to repair in brick, stone and spirit, accepted his friar’s rule.

I could not have accepted priestly tonsuring (which was only abandoned in 1974) and as for stigmata? Why does so much pain and poverty have to be associated with sainthood? Must all saints be martyred souls? Ok no pain without gain but even Zeffirelli mentioning his film (also shown here) on Francis confessed that he was disgusted by the man’s personal disregard for appearance and cleanliness.

These thoughts crossed my mind as I wandered through this amazingly comprehensive exhibition on someone who changed so much of our thinking on spiritual matters. Ranging from early mediaeval paintings (including one from Pistoia which is an almost direct copy of the earliest known portrait I know of Francis in his church at Pescia)

to strip cartoon comics accounts of his life

I felt truly touched by what I saw and was so glad to be there – and that through utter coincidence, since I had no knowledge of this event before flying to London from the country of the saint’s birth.

Here are some more of the ‘vignettes’ from the life of Saint Francis on show at the exhibition. (Ps the Giotto Frescoes are giant wallpapered photos.)

The ‘Big City’ exhibition at the City of London’s Guildhall Art Gallery is precisely that: the paintings are big in size like the city they describe, the unique ‘Great Wen’ (the disparaging term coined for London by William Cobbett and signifying a sebaceous cyst).

Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present times the paintings are not only a visual feast but are also a valuable documentation of London’s ritual significance, its ever-changing appearance and evolving skyline.

The view from Greenwich Hill shows the then newly built Queen’s House in the sylvan setting of the Royal park. Built by Inigo Jones, who had just returned from an apprenticeship spent in Italy (where he designed Livorno’s cathedral), it is England’s first renaissance palace and sets the seal on the city as one gifted by many open spaces.

The Queen’s house must have looked strange in London’s essentially mediaeval and Tudor architectural setting Much of the largely timber-framed housing was burnt to cinders in the Great Fire of 1666. This contemporary Dutch painting shows the dramatic scene of a city in flames, an event which would not be repeated until the Blitz of the Second World War.

The Great Fire gave Sir Christopher Wren a chance to rebuilt his city in a new classical style. The churches he designed and his greatest monument, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, are certainly Italianate. However, the architect’s project to re-plan the city with straight avenues and squares, according to Alberti’s idea of the ideal city, fell flat when landholders’ right to hold firm to their property prevented the daring plan from being achieved. So today we have in the City magnificent buildings without proper vistas, obscured facades, churches built ingeniously to fit awkward sites and, until recent road implementations and population dispersal to the suburbs, an overcrowded and traffic-choked place.

What, however, would today strike an inhabitant of Wren’s London is the change in the City’s skyline. The spires and domes of a previous century so lovingly depicted in Canaletto’s portrait of London have today been suffocated by a surfeit of skyscrapers and high-rise. Saint Paul’s dome struggles to make its mark among the contemporary megaliths of banking and commerce and the spires of the churches have to be picked out against mammoth blocks.

After the damage caused by London’s second great fire, the incessant bombing it had to suffer during the last war, a concerted effort was made to clear the city’s slums and redevelop areas like the deprived East End. Echoing contemporary architecture of Le Corbusier and continental apartment living, high rises appeared in London’s housing estates. Brick gave way to reinforced concrete and ‘high’ ideas entered planners’ heads. These flats were to be a model for future living in London. They would offer hygienic conditions, facilities and room for a population which had rarely had a bathroom.

Unfortunately the ideals fell short of the reality. Blocks of flats might have worked in European cities like Berlin and Milan where there was an existing tradition of apartment living. However, in a country used to terraced housing and semi-detached dwellings it failed to work. The absence of proper concierges, the degradation caused by a combination of concrete rot, vandalism, lack of community centres and drug abuse soon turned the ideal city into the infernal city.

This painting shows the contrast between the new monsters and traditional terraced housing.

Regrettably much which have been refurbished was senselessly demolished to make way for what had by now become a dystopia.

The corner vignette of a characteristic Italian mediaeval hill town in the above painting is a cunning aside perhaps commenting on what truly represents a living community and what doesn’t.

Does all this mean the end of the high rise? Not at all. High rises are back in London in the guise of ‘executive apartments’. The decline of traditional families and the rise of young individual ‘yuppies’ has created a demand for more living units. New flats appear to have learnt from the mistakes of their predecessors and London is again changing its skyline with a rising generation of perhaps friendlier monsters.

Unlike many other world cities London is an ‘organic’ organisation Few grand processional avenues exist here and few monumental complexes have their place. True, London does have its Mall and Greenwich has a magnificent set of regal buildings but the character of this city is to be found in its multiplicity of terraced streets and semi-detached avenues.

It would be difficult to restore London’s Renaissance skyline where the dome of Saint Paul’s dominated. However, the city is now acclaimed for being one of the greenest in the world. Indeed, the amount of open space contained within its conurbation has earned it the title of ‘Garden City’.

Moreover, the ability of so many different communities and ethnic groups to live side by side with each other in largely mutual respect and avoiding the terrible conflicts which afflict so many other places in the world has created a new ideal city in London. ‘Ideal’ here is not overwhelmingly neoclassical architecture or low-rise such as one finds in Rome’s centre. It is not a wonderful climate or supreme architecture. Nor is it fast communications or an abundance of fly-overs. It is simply the ability of a city to hold together an incredibly varied population with amazingly different cultures, who speak over three hundred different languages, who come from such varied backgrounds. How this is achieved must remain one of the great miracles and secrets of this astonishing city which is so envied by many of the world’s other great conurbations.

As the paintings in this exhibition so ably depict London is indeed ‘The Big City’ in the fullest sense of the word ‘Big’.

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Art history is full of stories of painters who in their lifetime were famous and feted but who after their death vanished into obscurity. At the same time it is replete with artists who during their lifetime never sold a single painting but who after their death became internationally known as some of the finest of all time. We can all recognize the second type of artist; Van Gogh and Modigliani are just two poignant examples. But the first type? Until the resurgence of interest in them painters like Edward Poynter, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Bouchereau, Frith, Millais and George Frederic Watts were considered almost as curiosities or, at best academic and tedious. Impressionism, post impressionism, surrealism, vorticism and all the others ‘isms’ that developed in the twentieth century cast them aside and their works, once so highly praised, were consigned to the dusty store rooms of provincial museums or sold for a pittance at some local charity auction.

It seems almost unbelievable that one of the greatest Victorian paintings, now redeemed from oblivion by post-modernist taste, Lord Leighton’s ‘Flaming June’, failed to achieve its reserve price of £100 at a 1960’s auction. Later bought by the Museo Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico which stated that the picture was all it could afford to buy when setting up the island’s first art gallery Leighton’s masterpiece is now considered to be one of the greatest of all nineteenth century paintings and has achieved truly iconic status.

Although it’s doubtful that ‘Flaming June’ will ever return to Lord Leighton’s house the museum has managed to keep the original sketch the artist made for this immortal picture.

We were again privileged to visit Sir Frederick Leighton’s studio house near Holland Park yesterday in the company of an old schoolfriend yesterday.

Previous visits, with more extended information on the artist, are mentioned in my posts at

Now reopened after a through restoration bringing it back as far as possible to the original appearance when the artist died in 1896 and now furnished with new visitor facilities including a gallery, cafe and lift Leighton’s house was one of the first specifically built for an artist in this London district, Indeed, it was the artist’s presence there that encouraged others to come to the area and to form a stimulating creative village.

Over thirty years the house was extended to include an enlarged studio space and an exotic Arabian hall built to accommodate Leighton’s collection of Middle Eastern tiles. To visit it now is to overwhelmingly experience a High Victorian painter’s artistic and social ambience .

It is also a place to engage in contemporary art with current displays. Iranian artist Harzad Ghaffari’s exhibition ‘Journey to Oneness’ explores themes of love related to the poetry of Rumi and her large canvases use eastern calligraphy in a vibrant manner.

Ghaffari also painted the mural encircling the new spiral staircase linking the upper floor with the cafe in the recently developed wing.

Several historic houses and art galleries in London have had refurbishments in the past decades. Some of these have been a little disappointing for various reasons. However, in the case of Lord Leighton’s ?House of Art’ it has been very well done and the return of much that was unfortunately dispersed when the artist died has been brought back to its elegantly seductive interiors. Yet in the midst of all this splendour this deservedly reappraised painter remained a bachelor and slept in a single simple bed in a sparsely furnished room. That for me shows that Lord Leighton, apart from his fashionable soirées and doting admirers, remained a true artist with utter dedication to and thorough preparation.

The plan was to visit Hampton Court Gardens on one of the days where there is free entrance. However, by the time we got there the gardens were already closed which I thought a pity as these are long June days when daylight spreads until 9pm. No problem. We alighted at a riverside entrance to the nearby Bushy Park and decided to walk across to its northern gates near Teddington.

Our walk in the late afternoon under the auburn rays of the summer sun was most pleasant. After crossing an area of wild meadows we entered a woodland walk of absolute calm and beauty.

The variety of trees and the necklace of ponds, lakes and streams was enchanting and the fauna ranged from the standard grey squirrels (which are unfortunately considered as pests in the UK since they have taken over from red squirrels in so many areas and can also damage trees) to a panoply of water fowls and even a smattering of baby rabbits. The park, originally set up as Henry VIII’s hunting ground, contains a herd of deer but we were unlucky in not coming across any of the finely antlered beasts.

We eventually reached Chestnut avenue which is the ceremonial way to Hampton Court palace. It is quite majestic in scale and was laid out by Wren as Charles II’s answer to Versailles’s own grand avenues.

We must return for more walks in Bushy Park. It’s the second largest of the Royal Parks (the largest is, of course, Richmond) and contains a Diana fountain (dedicated to the goddess and not the Princess though some would suggest they are the same).

By way of buses (the best way to get a feel for London’s vast extent – forget tubes…if one has time) we reached home at a late hour…and it was still light!

Deep in the heart of London within the Inner Temple is a church that directly connects with Jerusalem’s holy places.

Temple church’s original 12th century Romanesque nave is circular as is Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre and it was built by the once powerful Knights Templars who protected pilgrims’ routes to Palestine. Several of these lie entombed on the floor of the church.

Later a more conventional nave with two aisles was added and the circular part converted into a narthex.

In the churchyard there is a column crowned by a Knight Templar presiding over the inns of court which occupy this area since the sixteenth century.

Temple church is one of only four mediaeval round churches in England.

The others are St John at Little Maplestead, Holy Sepulchre in Northampton and Cambridge’s Holy Sepulchre.

Temple church has a great musical tradition and the splendid organ has been well-restored. We returned to the church for a concert last Wednesday. Included in the programme was a piece by a former organist Thalben-Ball famous for his 1927 recording with the choir of Mendelssohn’s ‘O for the wings of a Dove’.

Before the concert we chanced upon a veritable cornucopia of vegetables in a little garden on the church’s north flank. Including several varieties of salads like rocket and Italian bietola it came as a pleasant surprise and reminded us that we too have a kitchen garden to return to after our stay in London.

Eight years have passed since my post (which may be read at https://wp.me/p4KnVs-3Fo) on one of London’s more secretive Jacobean mansions, Boston Manor. Situated in West London in an area where several other aristocratic mansions are to be found like Gunnersbury and Chiswick House, Boston Manor celebrates its four hundredth anniversary this year.

In 1623 the Clitheroe family built one of the earliest English houses in the Renaissance style. They also decorated the interior with a then new-fangled item, wallpaper!

Boston Manor continues to be surrounded by beautiful grounds despite the efforts of the nearby M4 to interrupt its peace.

Through the centuries the Manor has seen its ups and downs. At the time of our 2015 visit, although it seemed to be in an acceptable condition, the house was, in fact, on the historic buildings at risk register. Fortunately National Lottery funds became available and from 2018 until last Friday when it was officially opened to the public by the mayor the mansion was under the wraps of an extensive restoration project.

What did this project consist of?

First and paramount was making the whole structure safe again. Parts of the house had only been prevented from falling down by scaffolding! Second was the restoration of the interior to the state it would have presented when first built. This meant research into the original colour scheme for the elaborate strap work ceilings of the state room and master bedroom and the manner in which the walls and furnishing were decorated. Gone now is the multi-coloured ceiling scheme of the Victorian era. Gone also are the dingy hangings of the walls. In their place is pure white strap work and uplifting blue wall hangings (a colour again chosen by discovering threads of the original material).

Is the result of all this labour successful? Certainly, if one goes for Jacobean authenticity. Those marvellous ceilings were, surprisingly, kept white. However, under the later multi-coloured scheme the images and wording of these ceilings were rather easier to decipher because they stood out rather more clearly. Indeed, when we visited in 2015 a large mirror in the centre of the room reflected them, avoiding neck-ache.

The stairs with their pageantry of lions and fine woodwork certainly come out better with the restored scheme and the house’s entrance screen is quite splendid.

A third element of the restoration involved visitor facilities. There are now, with more rooms opened out to accommodate them, displays illustrating the evolution of Boston Manor, a lift giving full accessibility and a cafe offering classic English tea.

We asked a long-serving attendant at the house her opinion of the restoration. With considerable tact she answered that she missed what she termed the ‘cosiness’ of the former arrangement. Indeed we do miss it as well. Nostalgia and thought of those who accompanied us then but sadly are no longer with us, must play a part. We were, however, in agreement that the restoration was very well done and that, most importantly, the house had now been taken off the buildings at risk register and saved for future generations to enjoy.

Reflecting on the time my wife was still able to take her mother to visit this exquisitely unknown place in London I enjoyed a lovely walk in the manor’s grounds noting that these too were being restored to their natural beauty. The various animals populating them appeared to be in agreement too.

What best way to start our first full day in London than take a ride on the Queen Elizabeth line? Using a mixture of older overland lines and new tunnels this latest addition to London’s urban transportation network runs from Reading, Berkshire,in the west to Shenstone, Essex, in the East. We took the sleekly aerodynamic train with characteristic London-transport-style patterned seats to Brentwood which is one stop before Shenstone.

Why Brentwood? It was to see Greater London’s newest cathedral, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Mary and St Helen.

Originally a parish church dating from 1861, St Mary and St Helen was raised to cathedral status in 1917. For years the relatively small church had to act as the cathedral for the diocese of Brentwood until, between 1989 and 1991, it was much enlarged by architect Quinlan Terry. What this transformation meant was that the old north aisle wall was demolished to accommodate an adjoining new extension, almost square in shape and built in Italianate renaissance style full of arches with the Stations of the Cross set as medallions between them. The pointed Gothic arches form an entrance to Florentine-type arches The dark, womb-like atmosphere of the pseudo-mediaeval church is changed into a luminous joyousness of a space reminiscent of fifteenth century Italian palace courtyards built by enlightened despots.

Has it been a successful exercise? I think so. I am aware, however, of considerable criticism of the architect as a glorified pastiche-maker, indeed, a ‘pasticcio’ maker. The neoclassical approach to architecture goes against most tenets held by modern architects. It is anathema to the current post-structuralist approach to building ‘for our times’. However, the ideal city and the correct way to compose structures still remains for many encapsulated in the architectural treatises of Alberti and neo-platonic theory. For me some of the most likeable buildings in London include Quinlan Terry’s Richmond riverfront and no 46 Tottenham Court Road.

Time will tell. Victorian terraces considered as slums in the 1960’s are now highly ‘des. res’ while new maisonettes of the same decade are increasingly regarded as a poor choice when selecting a home. These changing fashions for changing times are reflected in the prices set in the housing marketplace.

There may be elements of pastiche in the semi-circular portico on Brentwood cathedral’s main facade which looks more ‘Wrenaisance’ than renaissance. It is, indeed, based on an aisle entrance portico at Saint Paul’s cathedral. However, the whole ensemble of cathedral and the buildings which surround it in the ‘close’ seems to me very satisfactory. I especially like the accommodation of classical and Gothic styles with each other. For example, the way the Renaissance merges into Gothic in the cathedral interior by means of crowning early English Gothic stone piers with Tuscan order marble is genial.

When I consider Brentwood cathedral with Bristol’s Roman Catholic cathedral (which I will hesitate to describe here) then my liking for Brentwood’s choice is immensely strengthened.

So I’m not going to side with neoclassical style critics on Brentwood cathedral. Inaugurated by Cardinal Basil Hume in 1991 (I remember attending a homage to this very special man shortly before his funeral), with money given by donors (who wished to remain anonymous) and listed as Grade 2 starred, since 2022, Brentwood cathedral is that rare beast: a much-loved contemporary building.

A friend who teaches philosophy at a Lucca secondary school (Yes in Italy philosophy is a standard subject in schools) declared to me that he thought the presence of Death is a scandal. We have accepted resignedly that there can be no life without death, no beginning without an end. However, there are even greater scandals than just the idea of Death. For us all the death of any young person increases the scandal. And if this young person was someone of supreme promise, an artist perhaps that was entering into full flowering of their creative powers then the scandal of Death, including those who have never met such a person or even experienced any of their talent is torturously unbearable.

The war in which Russia has invaded and attempted to conquer a peaceable nation brings horrors daily, horrors which I had thought, at least in Europe had been extinguished after the conflagration of WWII. Tragically, human nature – or rather inhuman nature – does not change very much.

In the middle of not only the scandal of Death but of the various means of inflicting that scandal through the actions of war, in the midst of pictures of burnt-out blocks of flats, of bomb cratered roads, of destroyed art galleries and concert halls, of maimed or killed young (they always seem to be young) soldiers in the midst all this catastrophic madness, I have been particularly affected by the death, through injuries sustained when a Russian missile destroyed the pizzeria she was eating in Kramatorsk, of Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. Aged just 37 Victoria had documented in her books the atrocities the country next door had inflicted on her people. She had already received recognition and prizes for her work and her last book is due to be published soon. So far I have read nothing of hers but found a Spanish translation of one of her books on Kindle.

To think that Victoria Amelina, after working as a computer programmer only started writing about five years ago and only became a poet last year!

What tragic loss!

The deaths of creative persons, artists, writers, painters, composers, journalists as victims of war had to be one of the most tragic situations in this utterly useless, horrifically violent, monstrous and heartbreaking thing that is affecting not only Ukraine but Europe, indeed our whole planet..

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.