Tag: memory

Heirloom

June 24, 2022 2 Comments
Heirloom

It’s made out of a single piece of oak and sits upright on the window sill, though its planed rear and central hole suggest it was originally intended to hang on a wall.  The head of an adult man or a woman.  The face framed by stylised hair locks, long, straight and deeply incised, and […]

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Lost

May 28, 2022 5 Comments
Lost

Evening runs aren’t really my thing these days.  Almost always I go out early in the morning.  But today’s different.  For one thing, this is my first run for several weeks, since aggravating an old Achilles tendon injury.  So my route, as well as my timing, is unorthodox: short and slow; no cliffs, no hills. […]

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Laura Cumming and Degas’ ‘The Bellilli Family’

February 22, 2020 3 Comments
Laura Cumming and Degas’ ‘The Bellilli Family’

Many people have praised Laura Cumming’s book On Chapel Sands: my mother and other missing persons (Chatto & Windus, 2019).  It begins, like a novel, with a sudden disappearance: of her three-year-old mother, in summer 1929, from a sunny beach on the Lincolnshire coast.  Like a detective story it pieces together what happened, and tries […]

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