For Curlew River itself, see BBC iPlayer for the performance at Blythburgh Church as part of the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival, marking 60 years since the work was premiered: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
2/2
![The second half of a hand-written letter. It reads:
"*rather high, but you can sing anything!* The piano part is rather difficult - I must practice hard. The little sign (we call it Curlew after my opera Curlew River) [symbol a bit like a rounded lower-case m] means in *free tempo* a note ([drawing of a musical note with a symbol like a rounded lower-case m over it]) must be sustained until the indicated point is reached - i.e. longer or shorter than written. If this is not clear, please ask. [Treble clef] is 8va alta [Bass clef] 8va basse - for piano.
With much love to you all, & from Peter,
Ben"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yaxxccaskoz5emkz6gxps6m6/bafkreigrs2ifuxufn3mqzzhknqfwc35qav6lm3pjdaxgfsjewv6uu3lmzi)
The second half of a hand-written letter. It reads: "*rather high, but you can sing anything!* The piano part is rather difficult - I must practice hard. The little sign (we call it Curlew after my opera Curlew River) [symbol a bit like a rounded lower-case m] means in *free tempo* a note ([drawing of a musical note with a symbol like a rounded lower-case m over it]) must be sustained until the indicated point is reached - i.e. longer or shorter than written. If this is not clear, please ask. [Treble clef] is 8va alta [Bass clef] 8va basse - for piano. With much love to you all, & from Peter, Ben"
It's #WorldCurlewDay, so here's a letter in which Benjamin Britten explains (to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) the "curlew mark" that he first used in his opera Curlew River, marking a point in the score where various people performing in free tempo will reunite. 1/2
Colour photograph of a small slightly dirty basement room containing a large messy pile of cardboard boxes, bags and some metal chests on shelves on the right hand side.
Arguably, an archivist is trained to throw things away, that is to identify which records should be permanently preserved and which should not. Visit our blog for more #AboutAppraisals and the archivist's role in selecting records: recordoffice.wordpre...
#Archive30
Former Odeon Cinema, Morecambe - William Calder Robson for Harry Weedon and Partners, 1937 Image © Philip Butler
Odeon Cinema, Morecambe - William Calder Robson for Harry Weedon and Partners, 1937 Image © John Maltby
NEWS: The former Odeon Cinema in Morecambe (1937), now a hardware and bathroom supply shop, has been Grade II listed following support from C20 Society.
The Streamlined Moderne style cinema was one of 7 designed for Odeon by architect William Calder Robson; 3 of which survive, all are now listed.
A carpet of bluebells on the floor of a woodland made up of bare coppiced trees.
A close-up of bluebell flowers; beyond, a carpet of bluebells on the floor of a woodland made up of bare coppiced trees.
Seen across an expanse of grass, a carpet of bluebells on the floor of a woodland made up of tall mature trees coming into leaf.
A path between two very old oak trunks, their crowns broken off - on either side is brown bracken and small areas of bluebells, amidst other more intact trees.
Our local bluebell wood (Captain's Wood, Sudbourne, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust site). Every spring I'm startled again to learn how local this glorious display is to the UK - some huge proportion of the world's bluebells here in this country - and struck by how brief it is, just a few weeks.
Whether or not you have been to the Kederminster Library at Langley Marish (now in the suburbs of Slough), do share this one abd consider visiting. It’s utterly spectacular and worth a long journey. langleymarish.com/stmary/keder... - hats off for them for seeing that is open to be visited.
An expanse of bluebells in sunshine; beyond is a lawn and a red-brick former farmhouse.
Bluebells are out in force on the Red House lawn: here's the view across from the Archive. (Rather different from my previous central London workplace views of the Euston Road...)
Our national diary day is getting closer! This year we are keen to hear thoughts and feelings about nature and wellbeing, in addition to the day to day. We accept handwritten and typed diaries, but also photography and sketches, or other creative approaches!
#diary #sketch #photography #journalling
Photographed on a bright Spring day, a Victorian/Edwardian mock-Tudor pub, its windows and doors boarded up. On the right an arch leads into a car park.
Looking over the pictures from that day I'm reminded how Geograph builds up images over time, and tracks changes: one image is of the Railway Hotel, Edgware, which has been in limbo for years. Geograph pictures will form a flick-book of decay, or (fingers crossed) progress.
@timenw.bsky.social
The single platform at Mill Hill East station on the London Underground, a tube train waiting with its doors open on the left of the picture.
One of the fun things @geograph-gbi.bsky.social got me into was occasional long rambles across London suburbia in an extended lunch-hour. On this date in 2017, joining two bits of the Northern line, Mill Hill East to Edgware: www.geograph.org.uk/geotrips/1393
Some years ago I bought this steam-locomotive simulator for my son www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Steam-... which is set on the S&D; it hammered home how steep the climb out of Bath Green Park was, and we usually got to see the scenery at walking pace before running out of steam completely in a tunnel.
Flash was everywhere. Now it's gone. Sound familiar?
Flash is just part of the story of VANISHING CULTURE, a new book exploring the fight to preserve our fragile digital history. 📖
Join us for the book launch!
📅 Apr 23
🕠 Doors 5:30 PM
📍 300 Funston Ave, SF
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/vanishing-...
My pleasure!
<transport nerd klaxon>
It's Bath, but not the Bath Spa station that still serves the town: it's Bath Green Park, which used be a Midland Railway toehold in the SW and the jump-off point for the Somerset & Dorset line over the Mendips (one of the most-lamented Beeching losses).
I hadn't actually spotted those! No, a bit of browsing photos of terminus train-sheds in a vague and aimless fashion - once I was in there the building at the end gave it away.
I think this is a station in a post-Beeching sense, if I'm right about it....?
The humble trig point - yes to all of this (plus, of course, it's obligatory to hop on top of them when you get to the summit and raise yourself a little bit higher still).
It's the classic archive/library mix of scholarly and brutally practical, isn't it? Incunabula, elephant-folios, palaeography, critical editions, manual-handling skills and turning circles. (And don't get me started on the difference a proper loading-bay would make to my life...)
I ought to note that this model does come in varying widths - we're lucky that we could go for the widest, but there are more slimline ones for buildings with less wiggle-room.
(Ah, trolley talk...)
We're lucky to have wide doors in the Archive here - the architect was a wheelchair-user and perhaps because of this the doors are all wide and have good turning space. (First place I've worked in my entire career that isn't embarrassing as regards disabled access.)
Dream positions: 3 (!!) PhD placements at the Prize Papers with emphasis on finding students with the following language skills: French, Spanish, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages. (Of course, I emphasize the Dutch language!)
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/professional...
Brilliant! There's a bit of me that thinks these actually look a bit weird without any dents and scrapes - but we'll soon put that right, I'm sure.
Two gleaming new trolleys, dark blue metal and black wooden body, in an archive foyer. One has a handle at one end and mesh below this but the other three sides open: the other has handles at each end and mesh on all four sides.
Friday afternoon job: assembling two new trolleys for the Archive and Red House. Those who work in heritage will know the joy of having a good trolley and will know just how chuffed we are to replace our rubbish old ones... IYKYK. #ArchiveJoys
That regino clearly stretches as far as Suffolk...
(I may be reduced to writing the document on our environmental monitoring system I hoped I could put off.)
A classical-style column in a town square. The inscription on it reads "Erected by / the people of Yeovil / to celebrate the year 2000 AD / with hope and goodwill for / the future of our community".
The base of a classical-style column in a town square: the bas-relief on it shows a helicopter over a landscape of fields and the sea.
And an oddment on the same day as East Coker, in the centre of nearby Yeovil: the town's millennium monument nods to Westland helicopters, a main employer in the town (and of course a name full of resonance to anyone who paid attention to politics in the late-Thatcher era). 3/3
A seventeenth-century Quaker meeting house: a primitive-looking building like a large barn, with low white-washed walls and shuttered windows below a hulking thatched roof.
Inside a Quaker meeting house, plain wooden benches and seats below plain white walls, a single glass vase of daffodils placed on a little resting place for books.
Inside a Quaker meeting house with rough white walls, a pot of pink cyclamens is placed on a plain wooden window-ledge.
A Quaker gravestone, surrounded by foliage: to Thomasine Magor, who died 12th of 7th month, 1841.
Same day in 2009, Come-to-Good Quaker meeting house in Cornwall. Parish churches tend to get the limelight but historic chapels and meeting houses are also well worth seeking out... 2/3
The view past the west front of an English parish church, made of rich mustard-coloured sandstone, on a bright blue spring day. The church has a tall square west tower, whose shadowed side is toward the camera. Beyond the graveyard, trees just coming into leaf are dotted on parkland.
An English parish church, made of rich mustard-coloured sandstone, on a bright blue spring day. The church has a tall square west tower, whose shadowed side is toward the camera. Beyond the graveyard is a thick mass of evergreen trees.
A view across a churchyard towards rolling countryside, on a bright spring day (trees are just coming into leaf).
A view from a churchyard, with boxy tombs made of mustard-coloured lichened stone, towards an 18th century manor house half-hidden by evergreen trees.
A couple of "on this day" notifications from OneDrive hammering home to me, as ever, how much interesting stuff there is out there in the British countryside: first off, from 2012, East Coker church, as featured in Eliot's "Four Quartets" (the church has a memorial to him). 1/3
Book your Career Conversation for May/June 2026 💬
Career Conversations are one-hour online discussions with Tamsin C Russell, our workforce development lead, where you can explore your career journey so far and share ideas for next steps.
Get in touch with us to book – exclusively for MA members 👇
Three framed drawings of men dancing, mounted on a dull yellowish wall.
A colourful, very detailed, almost abstract painting of a ravine, in vertical format, mounted on a dull yellowish wall.
A large tapestry, in a very detailed semi-abstract style, showing a landscape illuminated by the moon on the left and the sun on the right. It is hung for display inside a cathedral, in front of a medieval painting of many bishops.
Reminded by OneDrive that on this day two years ago I was at Pallant House in Chichester for the John Craxton exhibition to which the Red House had lent a couple of works; a cracking display, supplemented by a huge Craxton tapestry in the Cathedral on loan from the University of Stirling.
Working at the Red House, I occasionally meet people who did know her and yes, they all confirm that. Tantalising.
One of the fun things we did in the past few years was help the background research that supported @markravenhill.bsky.social's play "Ben and Imo" on the Holst-Britten relationship: that really captured the energy you see fizzing off her in these photos.
