Open Gardens in Spitalfields

Posted on 14/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

White accentThanks to an alert from the estimable Gentle Author, we went on Saturday to the gardens open for the National Gardens Scheme in Spitalfields, London, and a splendid time we had. Purely by chance, we started at the smallest garden and moved to the larger ones, but almost all had the same features in common: a small space (even smaller than my garden, and that’s saying something), rectangular or square, and almost completely surrounded (and therefore shaded) by the high brickwork of surrounding buildings. Continue reading →

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Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal

Posted on 12/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

DorothyThe Oxford World’s Classics edition of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Alfoxden journals is one of the very few books I have read where the notes are as interesting as the text itself. Pamela Woof’s mastery of her material leaves no reference unexplained, but she handles her sources with a light touch, and sympathy for her subject shines through. Continue reading →

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An Hour in the Botanic Garden

Posted on 08/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

It seems quite ridiculous to say that Cambridge University Botanic Garden looked even more lovely and amazing today than it usually does, but this is none the less true. From the daisies on the lawn to the campion, lady’s smock and oxeyed daisies in the long grass and the orchids in the chalk garden, or from the roses to the Iris sibirica to the foxgloves, everything looked quite wonderful. Continue reading →

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Barnabas Oley, Vicar of Great Gransden

Posted on 05/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

Oley bookNear the end of John Walker’s selection of letters among the antiquarian great and good of Oxford in the early eighteenth century is an explanation from one John Worthington to Thomas Hearne about the author of ‘the prefatory account of Mr Herbert’s life printed in his little book called the Country Parson’. Continue reading →

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A Week at Waterloo

Posted on 02/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

SiborneI’ve just visited the excellent exhibition on Waterloo and its consequences – including literary ones – at Cambridge University Library: ‘A damned serious business: Waterloo 1815, the battle and its books’. It is thoroughly to be recommended – well laid out, lots of information in the labelling, and legible (something not to be taken for granted in many displays these days, and that’s not just my failing eyesight talking). Continue reading →

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Celebrated Ladies of Great Britain

Posted on 31/05/2015 by carolinemmurray

Memoirs Great_BritainI’ve already mentioned the treasures to be found in the three volumes of John Walker’s Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1813). In Volume 2 part 1, mention is made (in a 1749 letter) of a forthcoming work: George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, who have been celebrated for their writings, or skill in the learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences, first published at Oxford in 1752, and reissued in 1775. Continue reading →

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Mr Fairchild’s Mule

Posted on 28/05/2015 by carolinemmurray

In a previous life/blogspot, I mentioned in passing the horticulturalist Thomas Fairchild (1667–1729), who left £25 for the endowment of an annual Whitsuntide sermon on either the ‘Wonderful Works of God in the Creation, or on the Certainty of the Resurrection of the Dead proved by the Certain Changes of the Animal and Vegetable parts of the Creation’: it became known as ‘the Vegetable Sermon’. Continue reading →

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The Lapwing

Posted on 19/05/2015 by carolinemmurray

lapwing_RSPBI was aghast to learn a few days ago that the lapwing (or peewit, or green plover), Vanellus vanellus, is now a rare bird. A very long time ago, I saw hundreds of them every Sunday evening, and I had vaguely and mistakenly assumed that they (or rather their subsequent generations) were still trotting around where I had left them, but this, alas, is not so, and they are now categorised as having ‘red status’ by the RSPB. Continue reading →

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Professor Henslow’s Legacy

Posted on 17/05/2015 by carolinemmurray

mem HenslowTo CUBG on Saturday for the Festival of Plants: it started cloudy and windy but cleared up to blue sky and bright sunshine. As usual, there was a marquee with stalls showing the work of the Sainsbury Laboratory and other plant research centres, a problem-solving booth (thankfully, my wisteria isn’t currently wilting), refreshments, and specialist nurseries displaying their tempting wares along the Main Avenue. There were also guided tours of various parts of the garden, and I signed up for a whizz round the systematic beds, in the delightful company of Rod Mulvey, a volunteer (and highly knowledgeable) Garden Guide. Continue reading →

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More Amateur Thoughts on Ruskin

Posted on 12/05/2015 by carolinemmurray

StonesOne Saturday in April, I attended a rather brilliant one-day conference at Anglia Ruskin University here in Cambridge, on the subject of ‘Ruskin the Educator’. The tone of the gathering can be indicated by the hissing which greeted a mention of the film ‘Effie Gray’: I haven’t seen it, but I thought that Ruskin was completely unfairly portrayed in the otherwise excellent and moving ‘Mr Turner’, so I imagine that the purported rendition of his marriage and its disintegration was probably even more unkind to the poor man. Continue reading →

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