Also, if you don't live in London you have to factor in hundreds more to get there (and extra hours as tickets aren't linked, so would often need an overnight stay).

So sorry.

A dead tulip lying on the ground next to a hole where a badger has dug up the bulb and eaten it.

Less so when you have badgers in the neighbourhood.

Eighteenth-century plaster casts of portrait busts, mainly of women, a couple of male figures, stacked in rows on three shelves, at the Accademia gallery, Florence.

On the shelf.

1/2 Had to go see this one for myself! The former St Attracta Catholic Church, now being colorfully maintained by Church on Fire International, "the home of supernatural intervention." A certified banger, even with all the blue & yellow stuff.

Architects: John L Bartolomeo & Assoc, 1960
Cicero, IL

Sunlight grazing across the deeply rusticated stone facade of Palazzo Gondi, Florence, with arched and square windows.

A grilled window of the Palazzo Medici, Florence, surrounded by a rusticated arch and set in deeply rusticated stone wall, with a dark blue Fiat Cinquecento parked in front.

Looking up towards a corner of the Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, showing pilasters, arched windows and rustication, and a projecting cornice against the sky, the side facade just visible as a plain wall showing that the main facade is a thin veneer of stone.

Rusticated Renaissance palazzi, Florence.

Grand cathedral interior with domes and arches covered in elegant mosaics depicting religious iconography.

Grand cathedral interior with domes and arches covered in elegant mosaics depicting religious iconography.

Grand cathedral interior with domes and arches covered in elegant mosaics depicting religious iconography.

Grand narthex covered in elegant mosaics depicting religious iconography.

It’s most well-known for its endless mosaic collection, containing over 41 million mosaic tiles!

Bottom part of medieval fresco in the church of S. Miniato al Monte, Florence, showing red-clothed feet, with wooden chairs stacked underneath.

Lower section of a classical sculpture of a woman with robes slipping down and kicking out a bare foot behind her; there's a big dark painting in a gold frame in the background. From the Uffizi gallery, Florence.

Feet of a marble sculpture of a woman representing 'Night' on the top of a tomb in Michelangelo's New Sacristy, S. Lorenzo, Florence, with an owl looking out from under one raised leg.

Red-shod feet of an angel with purple cloak in detail of an early Renaissance painting, blue clouds, gold leaf background, and the words 'Ave Gratia Plena' in gold on the gold frame, from the Accademia gallery in Florence.

In Florence, depictions of people are for some reason usually above eye level. If you point the camera straight, it frames the feet. There are a lot of expressive feet in Florence.

(From Luca Signorelli, Crucifixion with Mary Magdalene, 1490s).

Detail from a Renaissance painting showing the bottom of a crucifixion scene where a skull is lying on its side at the foot of the cross, a lizard standing up on its teeth.

Florentine Golgotha.

You should get the editors to retract them all.

An image of a contextual streetscape with houses faced in brick, render and boarding with tiled roofs

Now out, an Open Access article on Essex's 1973 "Design Guide", which fundamentally shaped the design of housing in England: doi.org/10.1080/0266....

Thank you to @rproctor.bsky.social @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social & others for encouragement & comments, and @britishacademy.bsky.social for funding

Strong contender for best place on earth.

Just been to Siena. OMG.

Facade of the church of S. Miniato al Monte, Florence, covered in scaffolding.

Conserving historic monuments is very important. Not too late to join our MSc in Conservation of Historic Buildings. But if you do, please avoid doing this to buildings when I'm visiting them.

I think crag martins have only recently spread to cities from the mountains.

Underside of a gigantic stone arch with carved rosettes. It's not quite possible to see but there's a crag martin nest squeezed behind one of them.

There are crag martins nesting in the giant rosettes at Milano Centrale.

I normally race to photograph as much as I can without reading it, to save on hotel bills.

Expensively far, too.

So transparently biased and political, but significant for that reason.

Text from book saying 'Chapter Four: Hell, Utopia, and Middlesborough'.

Important reading. Thomas Sharp, English Panorama, 1936 (Architectural Press edition 1950).

Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity This book traces the formation of Italian migrant belongings in Britain, and scrutinizes the identity narratives through which they are stabilized. A key theme of this study is the constitution of ide...

I read a really good book largely about this church and its people: Anne-Marie Fortier, Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity, 2000. www.routledge.com/Migrant-Belo...

In this particular case, that a person must have had a significant idea and influence so far unattributed, so look it up and find they gave a speech that amply confirms it.

I love it when I have an inkling that some small thing in the past must have been true, then look it up in the old newspapers, and find it was.

Clifton Cathedral - Percy Thomas Partnership, 1969-73, Grade II* © Phil Boorman

Clifton Cathedral - Percy Thomas Partnership, 1969-73, Grade II* © Phil Boorman

EVENT: Join C20 for a Bank Holiday weekend in Bristol. We’ll see the recently refurbished Grade II* Clifton Cathedral (1973), the last major cathedral built in Britain; the ‘Bauhaus, Breuer, Bristol’ exhibition and more.

🗓️ Thu 30 Apr - Sat 2 May
🎟️ Tickets: secure.c20society.org.uk/Default.aspx?t…

Poster for the film La Grazia showing an old man dressed in black on the edge of a wood, depicted in cool blue tones.

Film of the year so far. La Grazia. Really great.

Latest thing on LinkedIn is diatribes against AI written with AI. Think I'm being trolled by the algorithm.

Also, 'study visas' as an 'abuse'? Really? We have had some terrific PhD students recently from some of these countries who fully deserve their places to study here.

Advert from a 1942 local newspaper, 'A Demonstration of the Making of Molassed Silage'.

Briefly back reading newspapers again, failing to find useful information.