Six of the Best 605

David Boyle gets to grips with Southern Railways.

"Children in the United States from the very earliest days of the Republic ... were raised with practices conceived in direct opposition to Old World notions of authoritarian power and natural hierarchy." Judith Warner reviews a history of American parenting from life on the frontier to the 'managed child'.

David Crystal says reports of the death of the full stop are exaggerated

Wilko Johnson discusses death, depression, cancer and Canvey Island with Every record tells a story.

"The interiors of Leighton House Museum in Holland Park are not only some of the most spectacularly beautiful in London; they are also the most completely unexpected." Let Nigel Andrew take you there.

David Runciman thinks England's reliance on Spurs players is a weakness: "The biggest reason Leicester finished ahead of Spurs is that their players spent a lot less time on the pitch (since the team had fewer commitments in other competitions) and so were able to hold their form to the very end. It’s not romantic, but it’s the truth: by the time you get to April and May, miles on the clock count for just as much as tactics and talent. And by the time you get to June and July, maybe for even more."

Read More

The Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square

Embed from Getty Images

After visiting Old St Pancras I wandered down to Brunswick Square and the Foundling Museum.

As its website explains:

The Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram, was established in 1739 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Instrumental in helping Coram realise his vision were the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel. Their creative generosity set the template for the ways in which the arts can support philanthropy.

It also claims to be Britain's first children's charity and its first public art gallery.

The image above shows the original building, with its girls' wing, boys' wing and chapel in between them, which demolished in 1928. The current building, once the headquarters of the charity, was put up in 1937.

When I went round last week their was an exhibition of children's book illustrations in the basement, a cafe and heartbreaking exhibitions about the charity's history on the ground floor, and exhibitions of art by the institution's 18th-century patrons on the floors above.

It was an odd combination, but somehow a compelling one.

When the Hospital closed in 1926, the children were moved first to Surrey and then to a new building at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire.

An account of its later days (it closed in 1954) shows it was one of the barrack-like institutions that children's charities insisted on running early in the 20th century. Their disappearance after the second world war marked a long stride forward.

I did, however, come across one fact about the Foundling Hospital's history that may be of interest to someone I know.

It seems that fashionable London would flock to see the children (or at least the girls) eating their Sunday lunch.

I shall suggest this to Lord Bonkers as a nice little earner for the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans.

Read More

Great Western Railway poster for the Wye Valley

Embed from Getty Images

This poster dates from 1946 and the artist is Frank Newbould.

Read More

Jonathan Meades in Nazi Germany and Shoreditch

Time to catch up with one of this blog's heroes,

At the start of the month Jonathan Meades had an article in the London Review of Books reviewing two books on Nazi Germany:

• Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos
• Speer: Hitler’s Architect by Martin Kitchen

Unlike many earlier authors, neither Kitchen nor Meades tries to exonerate Speer of his crimes. Meades writes

Speer’s earliest war crimes were largely restricted to evicting Jews from properties that Nazis coveted or which might provide shelter for bombing victims. He also effected the demolition of many homes to make way for the bloated white elephant of Germania, Hitler’s new capital. 

These clearances were paltry put beside the consequences of his work on concentration camps. He had no part in running them but it was part of his brief to get them built, to quarry and fire the materials. He was close to Himmler and enthusiastically subscribed to the Reichsführer SS’s dauntingly simplistic policy of Annihilation through Work.

Turning to Hitler at Home, he writes of the construction of the Führer's public image:

The note that ... dutifully credulous journalists struck was remarkably consistent and testifies to the manipulative efficiency of Hitler’s publicity machine. The same words recur: destiny, toil, youth, culture, music, authentic, sacrifice – oh the sacrifice. 

That publicity machine was also sedulous in courting useful idiots, none more useful than Lord Rothermere, who happened to own a newspaper and whose potential as messenger boy to the British establishment Hitler exploited, just as he exploited the New York Times Magazine, which on 20 August 1939 enthused about his love of chocolate and of gooseberry pie and his rapt attention to the petitions of ‘widows and orphans of party martyrs’.

Then came news that in April Jonathan Meades is having a one-man show of treyfs and artknacks at the Londonewcastle Project in Shoreditch.

Treyfs? Artknacks? You will have to follow the link to find out.

Read More

Valuable sculpture sold off for a song by my old school

Thursday's Front Row on Radio 4 had an item on Historic England's forthcoming exhibition Out There: Our Post-War Public Art, which opens at Somerset House on 3 February.

The item runs from 7:38 to 12:32, though the opening one on how Elton John now fits in touring around the school run makes good listening too.

Sarah Gaventa, the curator of the exhibition, talks about some of the lost works she would like to locate (if they have not already been melted down).

I blogged about Historic England and its quest for these lost public artworks in December.

One of the works Sarah mentions in her interview is the sculpture Astonia by Bryan Kneale, which she said was housed at "a Leicestershire school" between 1973 and 2014.

That school was my alma mater - now the Robert Smyth Academy. I remember the sculpture clearly, though I am afraid we never thought much of it.

It was sold two years ago by Gilding's of Market Harborough (frequent stars of TV's Flog It!) from whose website I have borrowed this image.

Astonia fetched £360 but should have made something like £30,000. Its whereabouts are now a mystery.

Leicestershire County Council had acquired it at the end of a mid 20th century era when the authorities believed the people, and children in particular, needed good public art. The wonderful School Prints come from that era too.

I mourn that era's passing, even if Astonia does not appeal to me today either.

Thanks to @RutlandNed for the tip.

Later. @Stephen25367746 tells me Astonia was originally displayed outside Southampton Art Gallery.

Read More

A 1924 railway poster of Warwick Castle

Embed from Getty Images

Read about the artist Adrian Scott Stokes on Wikipedia.

Read More

Historic England appeals for help over lost public art

Artworks created by some of the most acclaimed artists of the 20th century, from Henry Moore to Barbara Hepworth, have already been destroyed. 

Created and sited in the open for all of us to enjoy; these pieces were made for our public spaces, our schools, hospitals, housing estates, civic areas and communities. They were commissioned and designed with a social spirit to add colour to our local places and our daily lives. 

Such sculptures, murals and architectural reliefs are disappearing for many reasons, and for some pieces, it is already too late. Stolen and melted down for their scrap value; neglected and vandalised beyond repair; sold and moved from their intended public spaces; destroyed by redevelopment, or just forgotten - location unknown. The nation's great outdoor collection of public art is in jeopardy.

Historic England is seeking help in tracking down these lost pieces.

The photo here shows The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri from 1951, It was displayed on the Southbank during the Festival of Britain, but its current whereabouts are unknown.

Read More

Six of the Best 553

Richard Kemp has little time for the mayor of Liverpool.

Raymond Smith speaks up for the Green Belt: "The Green Belt may not have turned out quite as it was planned, but it is increasingly used for urban recreation and, if protected, could be of ever greater environmental value.

"During the latter half of the 1930s, a surprising number of Nazi-themed summer camps sprouted across the United States. Organized locally and without the support of Germany, these summer outings bore a startling resemblance to the Hitler Youth." George Dvorsky on a forgotten slice of American history.

Yes you should drag your children round museums, says John Lanchester.

Lynne About Loughborough is pleased by the opening up of the town's Old Bleach Yard.

Wales Online has some fascinating photographs of lost towns, villages and neighbourhoods in Wales - some of them "dismantled for English gain," as it puts it.

Read More