As part of the UEFA Europa Conference League last night’s match between ACF Fiorentina and Crystal Palace FC meant more to us than just football.
Sandra’s family is from Florence, while my very first match—years ago with my granddad—was watching Crystal Palace in South-East London. From that moment on, Palace has always been my team (yes, even back in the days when they beat Accrington Stanley! That was in 1960 and the amazing score was Crystal Palace 9 and Accrington Stanley 2).
So this tie was a bit of a “family derby”:
💜 Sandra for Fiorentina
🔴🔵 Me for Crystal Palace
What made it truly special, though, was the spirit of the fans. We flew to Italy in a plane with a big group of Palace supporters. They kindly helped Sandra with her luggage—such a simple gesture, but it said everything about the club and its people. We managed to watch the match with its increasingly tense second half on Italian radio. But whatever the result on the pitch, moments like that remind you what football is really about. Proud of Crystal Palace, proud of their supporters—and a memorable night for both sides.But especially for the Eagles because although they lost the match in the second leg 2-1 they won the first leg 3-0 and so go on to the semi-finals on aggregate!

Goal Scoreboard.

0–1 Crystal Palace
Ismaïla Sarr – early first half (header) �
The Times +1
1–1 Fiorentina
Albert Gudmundsson – 29’ (penalty) �
AS USA +1
2–1 Fiorentina
Cher Ndour – second half (exact minute not consistently reported, around mid–second half) �

Football #CrystalPalace #Fiorentina #ConferenceLeague #FootballFamily

I’ll admit it plainly: watching the current President of the United States, I’ve more than once found myself wondering whether we are looking at a question not just of politics, but of mental capacity. Some statements and behaviours feel so exaggerated, so disconnected from what one expects of a head of state, that the comparison with history’s more troubled rulers comes almost uninvited.

History does, after all, give us striking examples. In Britain, George III’s periods of incapacity led to power being transferred to the Prince Regent, effectively sidelining the monarch while preserving the system. In Bavaria, Ludwig II of Bavaria—patron of Wagner and builder of fantastical castles—was declared unfit to rule and removed by his ministers. Across Europe, there are echoes of similar moments, reminders that leadership and mental stability have not always gone hand in hand.
Faced with such precedents, it is tempting to ask: are we seeing something similar today?
And yet, that conclusion—tempting as it is—demands caution.
It is one thing to feel that a leader’s words are inappropriate, erratic, or even absurd. It is quite another to claim mental illness. In modern public life, exaggeration, provocation, and theatrical self-presentation are often part of the performance. What appears irrational may in fact be deliberate—a way of dominating attention or appealing to a particular audience. Without direct medical evidence, declaring a leader “unwell” risks becoming more an expression of frustration than a serious diagnosis.
From my own perspective, living here in Italy, this tension has become even more striking. I do not generally agree with the politics of Giorgia Meloni. And yet, on the recent remarks directed toward the head of the Catholic Church—Pope Francis—I find myself entirely in agreement with her condemnation. Whatever one’s politics, there are moments when basic respect matters.
What makes the situation more troubling is that it does not seem to end there. The tone has extended beyond the Pope to include remarks about Meloni herself. She is someone who publicly identifies as a woman, an Italian, a mother, and a Catholic—though not especially devout—and she has clearly taken offence. In doing so, she has also highlighted something broader: the risk of alienating not just opponents, but allies. As someone who is a permanent resident of Italy and one who is not infatuated by her politics I, for once am fully with her on this one
And that raises a more practical question. Quite apart from debates about mental capacity, what happens when a leader’s style consistently strains relationships? International politics depends not only on power, but on trust, cooperation, and a degree of mutual respect. If those begin to erode, the consequences may be felt far beyond any single remark.
Moreover, the historical comparisons only go so far. Monarchs like George III or Ludwig II could be quietly sidelined through regencies or court decisions. Modern democracies are structured very differently. There is no simple mechanism to “retire” a leader for perceived incapacity. Instead, systems rely on elections, legal processes, and constitutional safeguards. These mechanisms can feel slow, even inadequate, but they exist precisely to prevent subjective judgments—however strongly felt—from becoming decisive.
That said, the concern itself is not trivial. The pressures of high office are immense, and they can magnify traits that, in another context, might be less visible. When behaviour begins to feel consistently extreme, it is understandable that people start to question not just judgment, but capacity.
The difficulty is that in a polarized climate, those questions quickly harden into certainty. What begins as unease—“Is something wrong here?”—can turn into conviction: “There must be.” At that point, the line between observation and interpretation becomes blurred.
In the end, we are left in an uncomfortable position. It is entirely reasonable to feel that something is off—that the tone, the claims, and the manner of speaking do not match the gravity of the office, and that relationships—even with traditional allies—may be fraying. But translating that feeling into a medical conclusion, or a call for removal on health grounds, goes beyond what can responsibly be known from the outside.
So perhaps the more grounded position is this: we may question judgment, we may criticise behaviour, and we may worry about the diplomatic consequences—but the question of mental capacity, however strongly it presses itself upon us, remains one that cannot be settled by observation alone. And in a democracy, it is not that question, but the functioning of institutions, that ultimately determines what happens next.

Posted originally November 3, 2019 (revisited after the Ramses exhibition at Battersea Power Station 2026).

The little-known Battersea Park railway station is a distinctive Victorian building set between two railway bridges.
Designed by Charles Henry Driver (who in 1864 was assistant to Sir Joseph Bazalgette on the Thames Embankment project, as well as on the Abbey Mills and Crossness pumping stations), it features a Venetian Gothic façade in polychrome brickwork and, inside, a monumental staircase—though rather too steep for those less agile.

This is the station where my wife, Alexandra, used to arrive as a young girl before continuing on to the school she attended, which was only about fifty metres away.
At the time, Notre Dame High Grammar School still had a Battersea branch, which has since been closed due to a reorganisation of secondary education in London.
Today, the nineteenth-century buildings—gloomy in the darkness of a typical autumn evening—where Alexandra studied, played, made friends, practised, was teased, praised, dreamed, and occasionally complained, are far removed from the sound of schoolgirls’ voices. They have been repurposed as small business and enterprise units.
Only the melancholic chapel remains in the hands of the Church, and Mass is still celebrated there every Sunday.

The Notre Dame High School in Southwark, however, still exists and remains very well attended. It is a Catholic comprehensive girls’ school located at Elephant and Castle in south London. Pupils attend between the ages of eleven and sixteen. The current headteacher is Sister Anne Marie Niblock, with previous heads including Sister Myra Poole (SND) and Sister Rosemary O’Callaghan (SND).
The school was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1855 and in 2005 celebrated its 150th anniversary. The order bases its spirituality on the teachings of its foundress, Saint Julie Billiart, canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1969.

The sisters run several other schools across the United Kingdom, including two in Liverpool and others in Surrey, Glasgow, Plymouth, Norwich, Leeds, and Sheffield.
It is interesting to note that the school was inspected by OFSTED in the autumn of 2012 and received an “Outstanding” report—the only school in central London to have achieved this rating at the time—continuing the founder’s tradition of excellence. No wonder, then, that I found such a remarkable wife there.

How many vain hopes
on these darkened broken stairs:
Silently night falls.

I first visited this place in 2019, when I wrote the original version of this post in Italian. We returned again recently, after the Ramses exhibition at Battersea Power Station, and I found it as evocative as ever.
For my wife, too, the return carried a particular weight. It was not only her former school, but a landscape of memory—of adolescence, of friendships, of the small, vivid experiences that shape a life long before it becomes a story.
Revisiting it, I was struck again by how these old school buildings hold more than architecture. They contain versions of ourselves that no longer exist. We do not simply return to a place; we encounter a past self, briefly reanimated in stone, corridor, and chapel.

And so, as we walked through the familiar surroundings, something else emerged: a quiet sense of what has been lost. Not in a dramatic or regretful way, but in the simple, unavoidable passage from youth to age—from expectation to hindsight, from futures once imagined to futures already lived.

Instead of facing forward with the untested confidence of what was once ahead, we find ourselves more conscious of what now lies in front of us—not as promise, but as certainty. There is, after all, something that awaits us all, something even the pharaohs, with all their monumental attempts to resist time, ultimately could not escape.
Yet the place itself does not feel merely elegiac. It also holds continuity: the chapel still breathes, Mass is still said, and memory—personal and collective—still quietly accumulates in its walls.

And perhaps that is what makes returning feel so powerful: not only what has gone, but what, in some form, stubbornly remains.

It is a curious and rather beautiful symmetry that the Ramses exhibition at Battersea Power Station should be housed by a place that once generated power of an entirely different kind. The turbines are silent now, replaced by a panoply of shops and restaurants, yet the sense of force remains. It has not disappeared—it has shifted. Where once there was mechanical energy, there is now something older, more symbolic: the enduring power of Ramses and the Egyptian pharaohs.
Indeed, the building itself, designed by the same architect of Liverpool cathedral Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, seems almost to anticipate them. Those vast, weighty walls, that sense of immovable mass—they feel, in their way, Egyptian. There is something of the colossal about Battersea, something that echoes the monumental ambition of ancient temples.

The exhibition, produced by NEON Global in partnership with Egypt’s official antiquities authorities who clearly have the aim of attracting visitors to their newly opened Egyptian museum in Cairo, is called Ramses, but there were in fact eleven kings of that name. The one who dominates, however, is Ramses II. And for good reason. He ruled for an extraordinary sixty-six years, belonged to the great 19th Dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom, and left behind more monuments than any other pharaoh. Power, longevity, and visibility—he had all three.
What strikes one on entering the exhibition is how different it feels from a more traditional display, such as one might encounter at the British Museum. There is, unmistakably, a greater sense of the spectacular. The presentation is designed to engage immediately, to draw in visitors of all ages. Perhaps there is less of the dense, scholarly framing one finds elsewhere—but this is not a weakness. On the contrary, it makes the experience more immediate, more alive. One learns, certainly—but one also feels.

And what one learns is the scale of Ramses’ ambition. He was, above all, a master of image. His statues and carvings proliferate across Egypt, asserting his presence everywhere. He even appropriated the monuments of earlier rulers, erasing their cartouches and replacing them with his own, as if to suggest that there was only ever one true pharaoh.

The same instinct shaped his account of war. At the great Battle of Kadesh fought against the Hittites and one of the largest chariot battles in history, he proclaimed a resounding victory. Modern historians tend to see it differently—as a stalemate. Yet from this conflict emerged something remarkable: one of the earliest known peace treaties in history. Even here, then, power was as much about narrative and diplomacy as it was about force.
His buildings remain astonishing. Abu Simbel, with its colossal seated figures carved directly into the rock, is perhaps the most overwhelming of all. I remember – visiting in 2003 – travelling through Egypt, seeing those immense forms rising out of the landscape. Even their relocation, necessitated by the Aswan Dam and carried out by Italian engineers, adds another layer to their story. Ramses also left his mark on Karnak and Luxor, and even founded a new capital, Pi-Ramesses. Everywhere, the same message: permanence, scale, dominance.

And yet, alongside all this, there is something unmistakeably human—his relationship with Queen Nefertari. Among his many wives, she stands apart. This was not merely a dynastic arrangement; it seems to have been a genuine love. In artistic representations, she appears at the same scale as the king—an extraordinary honour. He built a temple for her at Abu Simbel, something almost unheard of, and referred to her in tender, poetic terms as “the one for whom the sun shines.”

Her tomb, in the Valley of the Queens, is often described as the most beautiful in Egypt. And when she died—relatively early in his long reign—he never truly replaced her. There were other wives, many children, an immense dynasty. But she remained unique.

The exhibition captures all this with clarity and care. There is fine jewellery, thoughtfully displayed; there is a strong sense of narrative; and, crucially, it remains accessible. The timed entry system works well—I often found myself with space to look, to reflect, even to linger.

For me, the most moving moment came near the end: the coffin of Ramses II himself. After all the spectacle, all the assertion of power, one is brought face to face with the man—or rather, with what remains of him. It is a quiet, almost humbling conclusion in its bare wood, in its depicting of his all-seeing eyes and symbols of power. Here Ramses is in the classic Osiriform pose, aligning him with Osiris and the promise of rebirth. He is shown holding the crook and flail—symbols of royal authority—while wearing the Nemes headdress adorned with the protective Uraeus cobra, and a curved divine beard marking his transformation into a god. One leaves with a sense not just of grandeur, but of continuity.

The colossal temples of Abu Simbel and Battersea Power Station: different worlds, different kinds of power. And yet, across the centuries, something of the same human impulse endures: to build, to impress, to be remembered.

Yesterday, almost six years after the dreaded COVID crisis, I returned to Ruislip Lido—this time with my wife. It felt like a quiet full circle. My first visit had been in those strange, constrained days when a single permitted outing for exercise turned even a simple walk into something faintly momentous. A reservoir in northwest London became, briefly, an entire world.
I had meant to come back. Yesterday, I finally did.
It was April at its most changeable. The weather arrived in shifts: sudden, blustery showers sweeping across the lake followed just as quickly by warm sunshine and clear blue skies. The day kept rewriting itself.
And the place itself has changed too.
What was subdued then is fully alive now. Families everywhere, picnics spread across the grass and trestle tables, children racing along the paths, the easy hum of a place properly in motion again. The facilities are excellent—well kept, quietly efficient, clearly loved.
Most of all, the miniature railway is running again. Entirely operated by volunteers, it is a remarkable effort—part transport, part devotion, all heart. My wife and I took a return trip from Willow Lawn to Woody Bay. The outward journey was diesel-hauled, sliding through the woods.

The freshly leafed trees opened suddenly onto water and sand. Woody Bay calls itself a “beach,” and with enough imagination, it nearly is: a strip of sand, a stranded pirate ship refusing to leave, and…palm trees. In the right light, and a break in the clouds, they tip the balance just far enough that you could almost believe you’ve wandered somewhere warmer.

We stopped for lunch—excellent sandwiches from Sandra, eaten with lake views and no complaints whatsoever.
The return was behind steam: Mad Bess, a name that promises chaos but delivers only calm. A steady chuff through the trees, a slow retreat into green shade, the world gently reassembling itself as we went.

There was one disappointment. We came for bluebells and found very few. We were early—and the woods were not yet ready to oblige.
So we’ll return.
That, in truth, feels like the point.
A wonderfully British Sunday: sunshine and showers, steam and sandwiches, volunteers keeping a railway alive—and palm trees doing their best to convince you, briefly, that you’ve gone somewhere else entirely.

In medieval London there were once around sixty monasteries, most of them swept away in the 16th century under Henry VIII. When I visit places like Waltham Abbey, I find it difficult not to think about that disappearance—not as an abstract historical fact, but as something almost physical, as if an entire layer of life had been stripped away. What survives feels fragmentary, but also strangely concentrated, as though time has pressed everything into what remains.
Waltham Abbey itself is only a portion of what it once was, preserved almost by accident through continued local use. Yet the moment I stepped inside, it didn’t feel diminished. If anything, it felt more intense. The Norman stonework has a kind of weight that is hard to describe—solid, uncompromising, almost severe. The pillars, with their deep-cut grooves, give the impression not just of craftsmanship but of force, as if they had been carved out of a harsher world.

I knew, of course, that the abbey is associated with Harold II of England, who died at the Battle of Hastings. Standing near his tomb, it felt less like encountering a historical figure and more like standing at the edge of a break in time—the moment when one England gave way to another. There was nothing dramatic about it, just a quiet awareness that something had ended there.
What surprised me was that the visit didn’t fully register until later. It was only after seeing the Victorian copy of the Bayeux Tapestry at the Reading Museum that everything came together. Looking at the image of Harold at Hastings—whether struck by an arrow in the eye or cut down in the confusion of battle—I suddenly realised that I had already been to the place where he was said to be buried.
That realisation was oddly powerful. It connected what had seemed like separate experiences: an image in a museum, a place visited almost casually, a historical narrative I thought I already knew. For a moment, they formed a single thread. The story was no longer just something observed; it had become something I had, in a sense, moved through.

Inside the abbey, other details lingered in a quieter way. The painted tombs, especially those showing children, made me pause—there is always that unspoken question about how many lives were cut short. The presence of Thomas Tallis added another layer, a reminder that this was not only a place of endings but also of creation, of music that has outlasted the building itself.
I was particularly struck by the astrological ceiling. At first it seems decorative, but the more I looked, the more it revealed itself as something structured and symbolic. Leo, my own sign, tied to the sun and to cycles of growth and harvest; Pisces, my wife’s, suggesting transition and duality. It turned the passage of time into something almost narrative—a movement from ending to renewal. I found myself thinking about how often medieval thought brings these things together so naturally: time, faith, nature, and human life all part of the same pattern.

Outside, the town itself felt unexpectedly complete, almost like an idealised version of an English village, with its half-timbered houses and quiet streets. Even the fact that the Prime Meridian runs through it seemed to reinforce that sense of standing at a kind of invisible line.
Lunch was traditional—eel, pie, mash and liquor, followed by cherry pie and custard. I can’t say I’ve developed a taste for eels, but that hardly mattered. What stayed with me was the atmosphere, the sense of stepping briefly into another rhythm of life, something closer to the Victorian world than to the present.

By the time we left, taking the Underground back from Loughton with its unexpectedly elegant 1940s station designed by John Murray Easton, the day felt less like a sequence of visits and more like a set of connections slowly revealing themselves. Waltham Abbey had not been dramatic or overwhelming, but it had a way of staying with me—quietly, and then more insistently afterwards—until the different pieces of history, place, and memory settled into something that felt unexpectedly whole.

Another sun-drenched morning began with our long-anticipated visit to the splendid Mansion House, the Palladian residence of the Lord Mayor in the ancient City of London—that enduring “Square Mile” whose boundaries still echo the footprint of Roman Londinium.

Designed by George Dance the Younger, the building unfolds with quiet authority: grand reception rooms, glittering chandeliers, and, above all, the remarkable Egyptian Hall—despite its name, far more Roman in spirit than anything of the Nile. It is a space built not merely for ceremony, but for power made visible.

Our guide, a knowledgeable young Polish woman, led us through these interiors with clarity and enthusiasm. At one moment, by happy chance, my wife encountered the Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, who was born and raised in east London, in the heart of what is traditionally considered Cockney country. A light-hearted exchange followed: my wife asked whether she could ride in the Lord Mayor’s coach, which her own ancestor, Cipriani, had adorned with his allegorical paintings. The Lady Mayor replied, gently but firmly, “No, I’m afraid not. I was only able to ride it once myself.” On the subject of titles, she explained that although she is now formally and explicitly a woman, the office remains Mayor—though tradition now allows for the style Lady Mayor. Here, history and modernity meet, gracefully.
The Mansion House is, in truth, less a home than an embassy: the symbolic heart of the City. The Lord Mayor—elected annually by the ancient livery companies—serves as its ambassador, promoting the financial and civic life of London across the world. This role contrasts with the directly elected Sadiq Khan, who governs Greater London as an executive authority, chosen by the wider electorate for a fixed term. Around this structure lies yet another layer: the boroughs, each with their mixture of ceremonial and, in some cases, executive mayors—evidence that London remains, even now, a federation of historic communities rather than a single, uniform entity.

Leaving behind this world of civic splendour, we travelled westward on the Elizabeth line, tracing a path from the ancient core of the capital to its outer reaches, and beyond, to Reading.
Reading revealed itself as a town of quiet prosperity—Victorian brick alongside modern glass, a place where commerce and history sit comfortably together. The Reading Museum proved a delight: housed in a fine Victorian building, its galleries guide the visitor from medieval life through to the early twentieth century. Upstairs an extraordinary full-scale reproduction of the Bayeux tapestry, embroidered – for it is actually an embroidery and not a tapestry – by thirty five women under the direction of Elizabeth Wardle in the late Victorian age, stretches along the wall—so finely executed that one feels momentarily transported to Normandy, witnessing the unfolding drama of the Battle of Hastings and the fall and death of King Harold. Indeed I am told that it is easier to follow than the original in France for it clearly is less faded and worn. In the museum’s top floor are large mosaics from the nearby Roman city of Silchesteris, a natural history section and an art gallery.

It was in the heat of the afternoon—approaching thirty degrees—that we made our way into the gentle calm of the Forbury Gardens with its flowers, bandstand and mighty lion, a war memorial for the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment which suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan in 1880 during the Second Anglo-Afghan war. So it clearly wasn’t dealing the recent disasters in that part of the world but…. plus ca change. Beyond them we found the evocative ruins of Reading Abbey.

Here, the tone of the day shifted.
Once among the greatest monasteries in Europe, the abbey stood as a centre of learning, music, manuscript production, and royal patronage. Among its cultural treasures was the remarkable rota “Sumer Is Icumen In”, later echoed by Benjamin Britten in his Spring Symphony, often regarded as one of the earliest surviving examples of polyphony in English music.
Yet what confronts the visitor now is not merely ruin, but something closer to erasure.
The surviving fragments—the huge jagged walls of the infirmary, the refectory, the chapter house—still suggest former grandeur. But of the abbey church itself, there is virtually nothing. No nave, no sculpted façade, no altar. no pier or arcade, no carved detail survives. Not a single figure, not even a fragment of decorative richness, meets the eye. The effect is stark: grandeur reduced to outline, magnificence translated into absence. It is, in the truest sense, a grandly sad place.

This absence is the legacy of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, carried out under Henry VIII. Between 1536 and 1541, roughly 800 religious houses across England were dissolved. Their lands were seized, their communities dispersed, and their buildings frequently stripped for materials or left to decay.
At Reading, the human cost is as striking as the architectural loss. The last abbot, Hugh Faringdon, was executed in 1539 on charges of treason—charges inseparable from resistance to the king’s religious policies. Later recognised as a martyr, his fate lingers here, giving the ruins a deeper resonance.
It is difficult not to hear, in these broken walls, an echo of William Shakespeare’s haunting line: “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” The image is uncannily apt. Those “choirs” were once filled with voices—the ordered, rising cadences of monastic chant. Now, like the abbey itself, they are silent.
The scale of destruction in England was remarkable, though not identical to what occurred elsewhere in Europe. In parts of the German lands, the majority of monastic churches were adapted for Protestant use. In France, widespread destruction came later, during the upheavals of the French Revolution. In countries such as Italy and Spain, most medieval abbeys survive to this day, forming a remarkable historical heritage and drawing visitors from around the world. It is precisely this preservation of religious buildings that makes them such cherished cultural destinations. England, once equally rich in abbeys, suffered cataclysmic destruction during the Dissolution, leaving fragments like Reading to hint at what was lost.
That nation’s case was distinctive for its speed, administrative efficiency, and economic motive. Abbeys became quarries; their stones travelled into bridges, houses, and civic buildings. What was lost was not only architecture, but an entire cultural ecosystem—libraries, music, learning, hostels, centres of pilgrimages, places of healing and continuity. ‘Dissolution’ is a misnomer, it was more a ‘destruction’. Yet many of these places survive spiritually and factually to this day: learning in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, infirmaries in the hospital of Saint Barts, libraries in several of our cathedrals.
Survival took also other time forms. In more remote settings—such as Fountains Abbey or Tintern Abbey—distance spared these structures from total dismantling. They endure as some of the most beautiful ruins in Europe, their aesthetic shaped as much by loss as by preservation, their presence inspiring poets like Wordsworth and painters like Turner.
Standing in Reading, one cannot help but imagine an alternative history. Had the abbey survived, it might today rival Salisbury Cathedral or Gloucester Cathedral—a major ecclesiastical monument. Instead, it lingers as a shadow of its former self, its greatness inferred rather than seen.
And yet, there is something powerful in that very absence. The openness of the sky where once a vast church stood invites reflection in a way that completeness might not. It asks the visitor not only to observe, but to imagine.

By now the day had reached its height. We wandered on through gardens and quiet streets, pausing for ice cream and coffee, enjoying the simple pleasures of a warm English afternoon. And then, as the light softened, we returned once more to the Elizabeth line, carrying us back eastward.

It had been a day revealing, in a single journey, two Englands: one of continuity and ceremony, still alive in the rituals of the City; the other of rupture and loss, written into the broken stones of a vanished abbey. Between them lies a history at once magnificent and fragile—woven, like the tapestry we had seen, from many threads; yet here and there, as at Reading, the pattern breaks, and we are left to imagine what has been torn away—a quiet but poignant lesson in absence, a pilgrimage to a shrine whose saints’ relics had been dispersed or destroyed ages ago.

Another wonderfully sunny day in London unfolded with that peculiar richness only this city seems able to provide—layer upon layer of experience, each entirely different from the last.
It began at the Jacobean Charlton House, where, somewhat unexpectedly, we found ourselves listening to a brass quintet. It’s not something I would normally go out of my way for—though I’ve always had a soft spot for brass bands, especially when they seem somehow connected in my mind with steam trains—but this proved a delightful exception.
The group, five young women calling themselves “Queentet,” performed a lively and varied programme. Not every piece was entirely to my taste, but their energy, confidence, and sheer musicianship carried the day. There was something particularly striking about seeing such a young ensemble, not least the player commanding a great, gleaming tuba with effortless authority.

From music, we moved into nature. Drawn by the sunshine, we wandered into the walled garden, where volunteers were hard at work among beds of spring flowers. It was there that I made a small but thrilling discovery. Among the blooms were Narcissus Poeticus—the very same delicate, fragrant flowers we look forward to each year on the Prato Fiorito. To find them here, in southeast London, felt almost uncanny. One of the gardeners explained that they are not easily obtained; their presence was due entirely to the head gardener’s passion for unusual species.

The garden itself was a joy—tulips blazing with colour, a sense of quiet dedication among the volunteers, and even a friendly young South African gaining experience while searching for work.

We rounded off our visit at the little tea house, where a perfectly judged bacon sandwich and a cup of tea were followed—on the recommendation of a nattily dressed gentleman in what looked like 1950s attire—by an excellent bread-and-butter pudding.
That gentleman turned out to be the day’s great surprise. In conversation, he mentioned he had once been a musician. When I asked what he played, he replied, quite casually, that he had been the bass guitarist for The Zombies. It was one of those improbable London encounters. We spoke at length about the 1960s, about music and venues, and of course about their enduring classic “Time of the Season.” It felt as though the past had briefly stepped into the present.

From there, we set off again, intending to visit the bluebells in Oxleas Wood, but instead stopped at Woodlands Farm—a place already known to us. The farm, now a thriving charity, was full of life: sheep on the verge of lambing (and indeed we saw a couple of newborn lambs), cows, and snorting pigs, alongside a carefully tended garden. It serves a vital purpose, reminding visiting children that food does not originate in plastic packaging but in living, breathing animals and working land. Once part of a Co-op dairy farm, it was sold to the charity for the symbolic sum of one pound—a small detail that somehow makes its continued existence all the more heartening.

Time pressed on. From Welling we caught the train into Cannon Street, pausing briefly for a complimentary coffee, before making our way to Covent Garden. There, in the old market—once a bustling fruit and vegetable hub, immortalised in My Fair Lady—we stumbled upon an impromptu performance by a lively guitarist. It was the perfect prelude to the evening.

By seven o’clock we were seated in the Royal Opera House for Mayerling, Kenneth MacMillan’s dark and psychologically charged masterpiece. Our seats were excellent, offering a clear view of what would prove to be an unforgettable performance.
The ballet tells the tragic story of Archduke Rudolf and Baroness Mary Vetsera, and it unfolded with extraordinary intensity. The dancing was remarkable. Rudolf, danced by a Russian performer, and Mary, by a Japanese ballerina, brought a rare emotional truth to their roles.
Here, MacMillan transforms the traditional pas de deux into something far more visceral and daring. The choreography becomes a language of desire, desperation, and psychological fracture. The dancers seemed at times almost to dissolve into one another, their movements fluid, weightless—less like bodies than like fleeting, ethereal forms shaped by music and emotion. It was deeply sensual, at moments unsettling, yet always utterly compelling.
And in the end, despite the darkness—the inevitability of tragedy—there was something strangely uplifting. Not happiness, but the sense of having witnessed a life lived intensely, even recklessly, to its very edge.
The applause was overwhelming.

Still carried along by that emotional high, we made our way home on the Underground, arriving close to midnight. It had been one of those rare days that remind you of the astonishing variety of London: from brass music in a Jacobean house, to rare flowers in a hidden garden, to a chance meeting with a figure from musical history, to the earthy simplicity of a working farm, and finally to the heights of artistic expression at Covent Garden.
All of it bathed in glorious sunshine—a day that seemed to promise that summer, when it comes, will be warm, generous, and full of life.
A truly unforgettable London day.

Nestled in the heart of London, St Mary-le-Strand is one of those architectural jewels that often goes unnoticed—yet it stands as a testament both to English Baroque brilliance and to modern urban design thinking. For centuries, this church was literally ‘stranded’ amid the chaos of London traffic on the Strand. Today, however, it is the centrepiece of a transformed urban space, a tranquil pedestrian haven, a mini-piazza in the heart of London.
The story begins with James Gibbs, a Scottish architect whose career bridged the classical traditions of Rome and the Baroque innovations of London. A Catholic in a Protestant-dominated society, Gibbs studied in Rome under the famous architect Carlo Fontana, immersing himself in the grandeur of Italian Baroque.
When he returned to Britain, Gibbs applied his knowledge to create what has been described as English Italianate Baroque. St Mary-le-Strand is a perfect example: its sides cleverly evokes the elegant facade of a Renaissance palace in Rome, while the spire above the portico unmistakably marks it as a church.

The combination of a classical portico with a steeple above is a hallmark of Gibbs’ style, also seen in St Martin-in-the-Fields, his other great London church. This architectural innovation would later inspire Protestant churches across Britain and even America.
Beyond ecclesiastical work, Gibbs made lasting contributions to civic and academic architecture. In Cambridge, he designed the Gibbs Building (Fellows’ Building) at King’s College and the University Senate House, blending classical principles with a distinctly British sensibility. This is particularly meaningful to me as King’s College, Cambridge, was my own university college when I was a student there in the late 1960a. Gibbs’ stately homes and private houses—though many no longer survive—demonstrate the breadth of his talent. Gibbs also published a highly influential treatise on architecture, helping disseminate his style far beyond the buildings he created.
For centuries, St Mary-le-Strand’s setting reflected the realities of urban London with the surrounding streets dominated by cars, buses, and heavy traffic, leaving little room for anyone to pause and appreciate Gibbs’ work. Yet even in this chaotic environment, the church maintained a quiet dignity—a lone beacon of Baroque elegance in the heart of the city.
The last decade has seen one of London’s most successful urban redevelopment projects: the pedestrianisation of a part of the Strand reclaiming the area from traffic and restoring it as a public space.
The scheme included:
Diverting all traffic through Aldwych, now reconfigured as a two-way street.
Creating pedestrian-friendly public spaces around St Mary-le-Strand, with seating, greenery, and areas for cultural activities.
Reconnecting historic buildings, notably St Mary-le-Strand and Somerset House, creating a harmonious relationship between architecture and urban space.
The scheme was completed in December 2022 and today the area functions almost like an Italian piazza: open, sunlit, and inviting. On one side, there’s the Baroque elegance of St Mary-le-Strand. On the other, Somerset House, designed by Sir William Chambers, monumental and classically ordered, providing a counterpoint that enhances the sense of space.

Walking down from Fleet Street and emerging from the mayhem of Trafalgar Square, we found ourselves in a peaceful oasis. The weather was typical London: a rather dowdy, cloudy afternoon, the light muted and soft. Yet this only added to the charm of the space.
We settled into one of the quirky chairs placed around the piazza, enjoying the calm. The urban business seemed to melt away. For a while, there was no traffic noise dominating our sense; the sunlight that broke through the clouds glinted off the portico of St Mary-le-Strand.
Even the rather brutalist frontage of King’s College University of London nearby caught our attention, its stark geometry softened by a sequence of posters celebrating people who contributed to its academic excellence, including figures like Rosalind Franklin, whose scientific legacy looms large. A small typographer’s shop tucked into the corner delighted Alexandra in particular: her cousin, who sadly recently passed away, had been a typographer, and she was fascinated by this little link to family history.

In those moments, the Strand’s pedestrianised space revealed itself as a true urban haven. We relaxed, resting ourselves, breathing in the history and the beauty, and feeling completely present in the scene. It was a reminder that even in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world, moments of serenity and reflection are possible.