FLAMING JUNE OR ONE MIDSUMMER NIGHT

John William Waterhouse - Dolce Far Niente

I love iconic images and over the years have amassed a collection of those that continue to inspire me as if seeing them again for the very first time. They are old friends.

I have always appreciated literature, art and fashion.  The Pre-Raphaelites enchant me because the way they painted brought together these three in a wonderfully unique way. And the carved and gilt frames they created to hold their pieces have a magic all their own.

The dresses and interiors have equal billing with the ladies who pose languidly often looking as if they had been captured unawares. Even though history informs us that they posed for hours and long days on end. You can feel the softness of the silk on their skin, and smell the scent of the roses and the incense in the air.

I don't have an absolute favourite image either painted or photographed. I like to divide them into seasons and cherish them throughout the year.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was my favourite Shakespeare before the melancholy of other works overtook it. I still have a little print of Bottom by Arthur Rackham which I love and turn to every summer.



A Midsummer Nights Dream by Arthur Rackham

And who could resist Rackham's Titania? Delicate and haughty in turn.

Antique print of Titania circa 1860

But of all the images of June the one that I have loved best is Flaming June painted by Frederic, Lord Leighton in 1895.

Flaming June in it's fabulous original frame

You can see the painting here in his studio in Holland Park.  Photographed by Bedford Lemere in 1895.
http://www.englishheritageprints.com/lord_frederic_leightons_studio_bl13090_a/print/1471701.html

You either love it or hate it.  I got to see it in 2008 when it was displayed at The Tate in London. Although orange is not a colour I often wear and only use sparingly in my home I do like the energy surge which orange conveys and the immediate hit it gives your senses. The power of orange belongs more to sunrise, sunset and summer, and I am a twilight, midnight and winter person. This orange is almost overwhelming, but not quite. It is not an Autumn orange which is rust.  It's warmth envelops you, a sleepy summer idyll that brings back holidays abroad. Those we took and those we meant to take. It seems to say that the orange of it, glowing as it does, is her, the Goddess of June. The frame adds to the golden aura.

I like the idea that he never confirmed who sat for it and so it is left to our imagination to decide if there was a real live muse or if he was channelling an Olympian Goddess.   It adds a poignant note to this that although he painted so many Goddesses he never fund his own and died unmarried living all alone in his fabulous house in Kensington.

This work which Lord Leighton produced almost by accident has received a mixed reception throughout history. It failed to attract a bidder when it came up for sale in the 60s and probably had it's most popular period in the days of the Athena poster which adorned many student walls.  It even has it's own Wiki page where you can read more about it.

"Flaming June is a painting by Sir Frederic Leighton, produced in 1895. Painted with oil paints on a 47" x 47" square canvas, it is widely considered to be Leighton's magnus opus,  showing his classicist nature. It is thought that the woman portrayed alludes to the figures of sleeping nymphs and naids the Greeks often sculpted. The (toxic) Oleander branch in the top right, symbolises the fragile link between sleep and death.

Dorothy Dene, the actress, and Mary Lloyd, who was depicted in paintings by various Pre-Raphaelite artists, have been variously credited with modelling for the work.

Flaming June was auctioned in the 1960s, during a period of time known to be difficult for selling Victorian era paintings, where it failed to sell for its low reserve price of $140 (the equivalent of $840 in contemporary prices). Afterward, it was promptly purchased by the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico where it currently resides."

Flaming June resides at this museum

I was thrilled to see that it had survived and remained a part of modern culture when I caught a glimpse of it in an unexpected place - included on Paul Weller's Stanley Road album. It's behind him on the blue wall where he sits upon a bed. I wondered if her beauty and warmth had touched the Mod Father as much as she had others in her long life. 



Flaming June behind Paul Weller on Stanley Road

And as I am more a twilight-midnight person I quite like this painting by Diane Sellers which is an interesting take on Flaming June.

Midsummer Nights Dream by Diane Sellers

Tom Lubbock argues the defense for Flaming June in The Independant

THE SPORT OF KINGS ~ Royal Ascot 2012

The bunting by The Bandstand at Ascot Racecourse

Having looked forward to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and Royal Ascot for so long it's now nearly over. Let's hope that summer returns after this winter like weather intermission!

The day that we attended Royal Ascot the weather was kind and the sun shone on proceedings. Not only is the location beautiful and the horses magnificent but people watching is wonderful. We saw some fabulous outfits and you have to look at all the little details, there are small treasures dotted all about. Especially crowns! 

A pile of champagne coloured silk cushions to rest on in the Moet Stand

The beautiful geraniums by the table areas

'Rembrandt' lions flank the crown gates

A little like Alice in Wonderland
A signpost topped by a crown in the Royal Enclosure

There are crowns everywhere! The crown gates into the racecourse

The Royal Box from the parade ring side

You can just make out the Royal Box balcony, with the flower trim and heraldry

Even the saddlecloths are adorned with a crown.
This one is worn by the star of the meeting -
FRANKEL.

A bit of fun - the Budgie in the flowers on this hat!

Just one stunning colourful hat, there were so many

UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
and his wife Princess Haya in the parade ring with their horse

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
and His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in the main parade ring

The traditional sing along in the bandstand after racing

The song book

  

The band - don't you love her hat?

All over for another year
Catching the parking lot bus back to the car

And ... for a meeting which has it all, the most perfect ending to Friday. A winner for the Queen when her 3 year old filly 'Estimate', who was favourite for the race, wins the Queen's Vase. It's her first winner at the meeting since Free Agent landed the Chesham in 2008 and her 21st winner at the royal meeting overall. And as she usually gives the winner of this race the award, her husband The Duke Of Edinburgh presented it to her. Something that has never happened before.

The meeting ends tomorrow, and the Austalian superstar unbeaten mare Black Caviar makes her debut in England. We are not there but it would be such fun to see all of her fans who have travelled over from Oz en masse to cheer her on. Good luck to them all!

THE SPORT OF KINGS ~ June is for Royal Ascot

Anne Marie O'Brien.
Wearing his colours on the day Yeats made it 4 Gold Cups.

For me June is all about weddings, garden parties, Pimms, lovely floppy blossoms, big hats and of course a Midsummer Nights Dream. But just before the Shakespeare comes another great pageant. Royal Ascot. Next week. I would not miss it for anything.

Most of these photos are from an article we did for a magazine in 2009.

The Queen and the royal party arriving in the parade ring

It's a week long heady combination of fashion and the best horseracing in the world on the most stunning racecourse imaginable. It's a week where dreams come true and extraordinary things do happen to ordinary people - like us! The Queen attends every day and her arrival heralds the first race. Both the people and the horses appreciate temperate weather for this week, nothing too hot, or too cold and definitely not rainy. 

In the great scheme of matters much more important it is a week of frivolity - but it is often the small things in life which give us the greatest pleasure and long lasting memories.

Last year Ascot Racecourse celebrated the 300th anniversary of it's creation. Every year those of us who follow horseracing, fashion and the royal family look forward to the week. We always attend at least one day and we had 4 of the most glorious years of our lives there with one great horse, named Yeats,  who won year after year on Ladies Day, setting a record. We will never forget him. A bronze of him now resides in the main parde ring where he will overlook proceedings forever.

But Royal Ascot is full of great horses and each year we hail the current heroes and heroines. This year everyone is looking forward to the presence of an Australian legend, an unbeaten mare named Black Caviar.

This current weather is not fuelling the familar anticipation as I wonder if I own anything suitable  which I would be allowed onto the racecourse wearing. There is a strict dress code, especially in the Royal Enclosure where either well connected friends or your ancestors gain you entry. 

A wonderful old Royal Enclosure badge. Sadly they are now not so beautiful.

This beauty attended on Ladies Day in the 1920s.
But she would never be allowed into the Royal Enclosure with those pretty, but bare shoulders!

I fear I will end up a bedraggled wraith on the day whatever I wear. Our usual picnic in the car park will resemble a Mad Tea Party. Brollies will turn inside out in the wind. But on the day the racing will still be grand. Despite the celebrities who attend, the horses are the real stars all week.  

The wonderfully talented and beautiful opera singer Katherine Jenkins
singing in the bandstand after racing.

Prince Phillip presents a trophy to owners Mr and Mrs Derek Smith.

It is a perfect place to people watch. You see everything from ridiculously expensive outfits to those lovingly sewn and resourced vintage. There are celebrities galore, serious couture and fun in equal measure.

A couple we snapped one year.

Dapper gentlemen.
Two of the Queen's guards pose for us. 

It all kicks off next Tuesday when we will be there. It's always spectacular and so much work goes into it by so many people. This year, with the Diamond Jubilee as well it will be a once in a lifetime event and I feel very lucky to be able to be there. I hope my spirits rise to the occasion - and that the sun shines just a little more than it is doing today.

WORDSMITH ~ William Butler Yeats & James Joyce

 - Passion and the Power of Words

I am having a day in remembrance of two greats who have coloured my world. Yeats and James Joyce seem somehow entwined in my memory, both able to show the dark and light side of human nature and life.

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

 ― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems

William Butler yeats was born in 1865, on June 13th. It is the 147 anniversary this week.

Long ago and far away his whispered and shouted words stole into my life and took me across the lake to Innisfree.

To places deep and dark and high and light that I could never have imagined without him. He allowed me an understanding of human quality and frailty.

There are many and varied delights he gave to us, but Mrs Black is insisting that I share this ode of his, to a black cat, like her. When she was still a wild cat who we could not touch she would sit on the windowsill entranced when I read her TS Eliot and Yeats. I think this one is her favourite of all cat poems.

Black Minnaloushe watches the Moon by Megan Noble

“The Cat and the Moon

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.”

 ― W.B. Yeats

It is 90 years since James Joyce published his novel Ulysses. As the feature on their 'In Our Time' BBC Radio 4 are running a version of Ulysses, dramatised by Robin Brooks and introduced by Mark Lawson. You can listen and read about it here.

Ulyssess BBC Radio 4

This is what their website says about the book.

"Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's novel Ulysses. First published ninety years ago in Paris, Joyce's masterpiece is a sprawling and startlingly original work charting a single day in the life of the Dubliner Leopold Bloom. Some early readers were outraged by its sexual content and daringly scatalogical humour, and the novel was banned in most English-speaking countries for a decade after it first appeared. But it was soon recognised as a genuinely innovative work: overturning the ban on its publication, an American judge described Ulysses as "a sincere and serious attempt to devise a new literary method for the observation and description of mankind."

Today Ulysses is widely regarded as the greatest example of literary modernism, and a work that changed literature forever. It remains one of the most discussed novels ever written.

Steven Connor
Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, University of London

Jeri Johnson
Senior Fellow in English at Exeter College, Oxford

Richard Brown
Reader in Modern English Literature at the University of Leeds

Producer: Thomas Morris."

CELEBRATIONS - Diamond Jubilee

The flotilla of boats by Tower Bridge.
Photo by Facunda Arrizabalaga - EPA

We live in a very peaceful little patch of English countryside and seldom venture out of it. It was madness of course, but we are glad that we went to London to see the Queen. It is not often that you have the opportunity to witness a Diamond Jubilee.

It was quite a pilgrimage. We drove halfway, to a station, to catch the train to Paddington and then a tube to Sloane Square. It was like stepping into the Tardis - so many memories came flooding back.  We headed for the Embankment just by Chelsea Bridge. 

Once upon a time, before I resided in this green and pleasant land I only visited and when I did,  I stayed just off the King's Road. Years later we were married at Chelsea Registry Office. Being there made me feel nostalgic for those days. It was a magical time and place in the 60s and 70s  It's still magical, and despite the weather (more on that later) it was wonderful to have a walk around my old haunts. Although I no longer want to live with the pace of life in London, there are some enchanting places there that will always be special to me. I fairly skipped up the King's Road towards the river.

The shops in the King's Road were well decorated. 

Cath Kidston's window

Ted Baker's window

I loved this window!

It is typical that the weather before the Diamond Jubilee week was warm and wonderful and on the day it rained ..... and rained. But Britain is green for a reason and all those lovely little patchwork squares of land would not be so pretty if they were brown. So, we just took our umbrellas, like everyone else.

Patriotic rain macs

The perfect pub to come across on the way.

These ladies were fabulously attired, wonderful to see people make an effort.

It was very crowded, the news estimated that a million people went. So much to see, both on the streets and the river. It was impossible to capture it all, I took many photos, but most of it is just tucked away in the memory now.

Everyone cheered and shouted as the Queen passed in the royal barge. It was a fantastic atmosphere that gave me, a history fanatic, a small glimpse into what it might have been like in the days of Charles II, or Henry VIII when the river played such a huge part in both daily life and good and bad occasions.

The royal barge by the Houses of Parliament
photo by Matt Candy, Getty

The weather forced cancellation of the flypast finale along The Thames and once the Queen had passed us the rain came down in buckets. We dashed back to the King's Road to a few favourite haunts for cover, shopping and coffee,  and then we had a long journey home.

This young boy watching the pagentry with wonder is the image I will most remember.