Anniversary Dinner At Harwood Arms

We wanted to do a better quality Sunday carvery in London, and daughter Rachel had recommended London's only Michelin-starred pub, the Harwood Arms, in nearby Fulham. Our 58th wedding anniversary was actually on Monday, but we decided to celebrate it at the Harwood just a tad early. It was a perfect choice. And the leftovers easily made it to Monday, June 8th.

Scotch eggs

Near perfect Negroni (perfect would have been within sight of the
Milan cathedral)

The feast

Desserts

Expensive, but one of the best meals we've ever had

Still delectable left-overs the next day, with original
candle and wedding napkins

London Shows, 2026

During our three June weeks in London we saw four shows, a play and three musicals, easily out-doing any previous records we might have claimed. The four were: The Play That Goes Wrong, SIX, Operation Mincemeat, and Hadestown. We agreed that SIX was best and that The Play That Goes Wrong was worst, and disagreed about the middle two, Mincemeat and Hadestown. See the comments below for further elaboration. The quality of staging, acting, singing, dancing, etc., was as good as anything you'd see anywhere else, and the array of shows was about the same as you'd see in New York or any other major theatrical center. Interestingly, the theaters in London are much smaller than what you'd see in the US, ranging mostly from 400 to 1300 seats...intimate to cozy, as the pix below will suggest. The show prices are a fraction of a fraction of what you'd pay in New York, and, if you were a serious theater-goer, you could finance a trip to London by taking in half a dozen shows or so. But I digress. There are rather few pix below--theaters don't permit photography or video, of course--but we got a few before and after shots, to which I'll add some comments. Oh, and our experience with SIX ended with a special theological or at least ecclesiastical experience too...

All of our four shows were in the West End, presided over

by this guy, whose own shows were mostly on the other side of

the river

The Duchess, just under 500 seats, where we saw The Play That Goes
Wrong

Part of the humor; more pix here

Tiny stage; although one might learn a bit about stagecraft--all the
things that can go wrong in a production--we thought The Play was about
fifteen minutes of slapstick spread laboriously over two hours; London's
longest-running show, nonetheless

The Fortune, where we saw Operation Mincemeat

All the conveniences

Another tiny stage...blocking must be vastly simplified with so little
space to cover

Vicki ranked Mincemeat 2nd best of the four we saw

I am still troubled by its making a comedy of a rather serious war
undertaking; see the classic 1956 British film The Man Who Never
Was for something closer to the truth, based on the book by the main
figure in the real Operation Mincemeat; and including one of the most
wrenching war-time grief scenes I know of...definitely not comedy 

The Lyric, where we saw Hadestown

A bit of a nosebleed view, but, hey, the tickets were only £40 each

I really enjoyed the classical focus; Vicki didn't like the non-happy ending

Grand old theatre

We saw SIX at the Vaudeville

Overall best, we thought

So after SIX we elected to walk back to the apartment and
our route took us past Westminster Abbey, where the bells
were peeling and much pomp and ecclesiastical circumstance
were going on, and

Vicki, who is up on these things, quickly discerned the new
Archbishop of Canterbury (funny hat) was being welcomed
to Westminster, officially, and got these pix...

Since we'd just seen a musical about the Head of the
Church of England, his six wives, that is, we thought seeing
the new Archbishop, and the Dean of the Abbey, was pretty
special too, especially the Church of England's first female
archbishop...

National Gallery of Art, 2026

The complete re-hanging of the National Gallery was only recently completed, and, of course, we had to see what they had done. Same 2000+ pictures, different locations, different interpretive stuff. On the whole, after three visits, I'd say, it was not an improvement. There is still a very broadly chronological/national organization, but to it, alas, they have added the "themed" approach that seems increasingly popular in the art museum world. You want to see all five of the Gallery's Botticellis? Five different rooms, depending on which "theme"--"family palace," "ambition, innovation," "wonders of design," "looking at nature, "wonders of art," for example--some assistant curator has decided upon. A massive dumbing-down, I think, but full future employment for picture-hangers as the themes come and go. A more expert, professional, appraisal is here. The grand labyrinth effect remains, too, in the sense that you can't walk any particular nationality or epoch without having to retrace steps, sometimes many steps. Oh well. It's still a grand collection and a grand place, and we'll return whenever we're in London. Below are just a few old favorites and a few new items. The search box will take you to many others.

Van Eyck self-portrait (?); 1430s; apart from being my favorite,
the Gallery is doing a special exhibition next fall, collecting
all nine known surviving van Eyck portraits; I think I've
already seen them all, except not all in the same room; we
did that kind experience with Vermeer a couple years ago at
the Rijksmuseum and found it not a helpful experience...

Never miss an Ucello, Battle of Romano; yeah, we like the old stuff

A favorite Botticelli, Venus and Mars

Holbein Erasmus

Memling triptych monster 

The re-hang seemed to have missed this huge hall...

Holbein's Ambassadors, now hung at the narrow end of a room where
you can't get far enough to the right to see the skull...what were they
thinking?

Never miss a Luini, Jesus among the Doctors, 1515

Velazquez' "Rokeby" Venus; between the Gallery, the Wallace, and
Wellington's Apsley House, there must be a couple dozen Velazquez
paintings in London...

The Vigee-LeBrun self portrait that got us into her incredible
life and art, years ago...

The Nation's favorite painting, Turner's Fighting Temeraire...

And a favorite choo-choo picture, Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed...

Oops, after a wrong turn, we are back in the 18th century, admiring
a wonderful Vernet...

van Gogh, Landscape with Ploughman, 1889

The National Gallery is famously focused...paintings only, Medieval
to twentieth century; but in one of the older parts, under the dome, 
there are perhaps a dozen or more beautiful and large 20th (?) century
floor mosaics, depicting a variety of actions, moods, virtues, what have
you, that we'd not appreciated before...certainly worth a stop, despite the
traffic under the dome

Contemplation

Mud Pie...um, still processing this...

Open Mind

Defiance

Humour...