Victoria and Albert Museum, 2026, I

We visited the V&A several times in 2026, and also the V&A Storehouse and the V&A East, posts on which will appear in due course. Although we've been to the South Kensington V&A many times, we kept finding new exhibits, new items, new angles. And so we visited the great museum three times this year. Past visits include:

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2009/11/victoria-and-albert-museum.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/08/and-yet-another-day-at-v.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/08/victoria-and-albert-museum-2021.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/08/another-day-at-v.html

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/09/victoria-and-albert-museum-conclusion.html

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2024/08/not-so-many-pix-from-v-and-bm.html.

Before preceding any further, I have to remark that the
V&A's "rest" areas surpass any of those of other museums of my
acquaintance...compare, e.g., the Louvre

Even prayer rugs, for those so inclined (declined?)

Anyhow, searching for things new (to us) we headed for the
design department

And were not disappointed...this a cascading lamp designed
by Dali

Thanks to Vicki's then early-adopter mode, we owned one of
these...Ohio, 1977

Drawers...Dali would have been greatly amused

Wearable Google street view equipment

Desk

Digital detox box

Comfy chair...mocking commericalism...it said

Now we have moved on to the Gilbert Collection halls...above and
following are a variety of micro-mosaic images

From Hadrian's Villa...the Romans excelled at micro-mosaic pix...
the first we saw at the archeological museum in Naples, from Pompeii,
so fine one has to stand very, very close to see it's a mosaic and not a
painting

Ultimate example...Rome from the Janiculum...incredible

Rest areas, continued...show me anything comparable in the museum world

Apart from championing micro-mosaics, the Gilberts
also did silver and other precious materials

Who the Gilberts were...major acquisition for the V&A,
opened just two years ago

We have drifted on now to the silver areas

(Rich) Kiddie silver

One drifts from hall to hall, room to room...now we
are in a Medieval Christian area

Body or other parts from assorted saints, other demi-gods

Preview of next V&A posts, the plaster casts...

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...