Tag Archives: london

Canvases filled with colour at a gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens

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DURING MY FIRST visit to an exhibition of paintings by Cecily Brown (born in London in 1969) at the Serpentine South Gallery (until 6 September 2026), I was not much taken with her works. On that occasion, I do not think I was in the mood for looking at art. Realising this, I revisited the show today, 19 June 2026. I came away from it satisfied with what I had viewed.

Cecily’s education in art was at Epsom School of Art, then at Morley College, and later at the Slade School of Art. She did well, receiving various awards. And since completing her studies, her works have been hung in many prestigious museums and galleries in Britain, the rest of Europe, and the USA.

Apart from a collection of pen and ink drawings that resemble illustrations for children’s books, most of the works on display at the Serpentine are canvases. Each of them is covered by what at first sight looks like a riot of colour. However, closer examination reveals that within these seemingly chaotic collections of sweeping brushstrokes, there are many details, such as people embracing, plants (flowers, trees, and bushes), animals, ponds, letter boxes, buildings (including an aerial view of the Serpentine Gallery), and more.

Although I enjoyed seeing these pictures during my second visit to the gallery, I cannot place Cecily Brown amongst the modern and contemporary artists whose works please me most.

A church in London: twice destroyed and twice recovered

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FOREST FIRES ARE often spontaneous and followed by new growth and renewal. London has been destroyed by fire twice (not spontaneous!), in 1666 and in 1940, and each time it has undergone regeneration. After the earlier conflagration that destroyed many of the city’s churches, new ones were built to the designs of Christoper Wren (1632-1723). One of these churches, which was damaged by bombing and fire in 1940, and restored to its former glory after WW2, is St Lawrence Jewry.

The church was first built in the twelfth century (c 1136), close to London’s Roman amphitheatre and the early mediaeval Jewish ghetto. It was destroyed during the Great fire of London in 1666. A new church, designed by Wren, was constructed between 1670 and 1677 on the site of the first church. This spacious, lofty church was destroyed during the Blitz on 29 December 1940. And in 1957, it was restored by the architect Cecil Brown to Wren’s original design. Like the legendary phoenix, it rose from the ashes.

The church stands near London’s Guildhall, and hosts regular lunchtime concerts on Tuesdays. We attended one today, 16 June 2026. The Norwegian baritone Jan-Magnar Gard sung lieder and other songs accompanied by the pianist Niall Townley. Both these accomplished musicians are postgraduate students at the Guildhall School of Music. It was an enjoyable experience hearing them perform within the well-maintained, beautiful, almost square nave of the church, under its decorative ceiling.

St Lawrence Jewry was so-called because of its proximity to the place where Jewish people were permitted to live and trade. Not far from the church, in a street called Old Jewry, there is an interesting memorial plaque. It reads:

“The Great Synagogue stood near this site until 1272.”

King William I (1066-1087) is believed to have encouraged Jewish people to migrate to Britain. However, English prejudice and agitations against the Jews increased gradually until it reached a peak in the thirteenth century. For this reason, the synagogue closed in 1272. And soon after 1290, Jewish people were expelled from England. It was not until the 1650s during the Commonwealth of England headed by Oliver Crowell that they began returning to this island.

Hearing Welsh being spoken one Sunday in London

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KAFFEINE IS THE NAME of an excellent little café in central London’s Eastcastle Street. We go there often, always passing that intrigues me, but which I had never entered until the last day of May 2026. Built in 1889 with a brick and stone façade that includes some columns with Corinthian capitals, it bears the name “Capel Bedyddwyr Cymreig”. Designed by the architect Owen Lewis, it is The Welsh Church of Central London, or in Welsh ‘Eglwys Gymraeg Canol Llundain’.

Inside the church, there is a vestibule with a mosaic floor. Within this space I noticed a Bible in Welsh lying within a glass case. A pair of doors leads into the main body of the church. This rectangular space has a centrally positioned set of organ pipes at one end, and beneath them, a pulpit (upon which the preacher was standing). A gallery with cast-iron balustrades and supported by slender pillars with Corinthian capitals. The ceiling curved gently upwards towards a centrally located set of windows that ran along the long axis of the church.

On the day we entered the church, there were no more than about 20 people in the congregation. Two services are conducted every Sunday, and occasionally the church hosts an organ recital.

I am pleased that after having passed this church many times and finding it closed, we were at last able to enter it. Also it was lovely hearing Welsh being spoken, even if I could not understand a word of it.

The church is used for Baptist services. When we entered it on a Sunday morning, a service was in progress. It was being led by a lady, who said things in Welsh, and then repeated what she had spoken in English. The proceedings were bilingual.

Although the church was fairly empty, the same could not be said of Kaffeine. Despite it being a Sunday morning in an area where most businesses were closed, this café was extremely busy, quite crowded.

A Scottish architect and a house in north London

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MY NAME IS Adam Robert Yamey. Robert Adam is the name of a famous Scottish-born architect who was born in 1728 (in Kirkaldy, Scotland), and died in 1792 in London. I was brought up within just under two miles of Kenwood House, which lies between Hampstead and Highgate.

Library in Kenwood House

In 1764, Lord Mansfield (1705-1793), then the owner of Kenwood House, commissioned Robert Adam to remodel the place. Adam’s work included adding a library, adding an impressive Ionic portico, and redesigning the interiors of several rooms. Adam’s works, especially the library he designed, made Kenwood House become a remarkable building. Many people visit it today not only to see Adam’s architecture but also to view the magnificent collection of old master paintings housed within the mansion.

In 1780, Kenwood House had a lucky escape. A group of rioters objecting to Lord Mansfield’s espousal of rights for Roman Catholics left London, and headed towards Kenwood. Having already wrecked Mansfield’s central London home, they were aiming to demolish Kenwood House. Luckily for Mansfield, and for us today, the rioters never reached Kenwood House. You can discover how they were stopped by reading my book “Beneath a wide Sky: Hampstead and its Environs”.

My father, an economist, had wanted to name me ‘Adam Smith Yamey’, in honour of the famous pioneer of economics, Adam Smith (1723-1790). However, my mother was not in favour of this choice of names. Instead, my name contains the Scottish architect’s first and family names. Often, I wonder whether this was because my parents, who were both interested in art and architecture, knew and liked Kenwood House.

[My book is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/BENEATH-WIDE-SKY-HAMPSTEAD-ENVIRONS/dp/B09R2WRK92 ]

The eagle and the President at a square in London’s Mayfair

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THE AMERICANS HAVE shifted their embassy away from Grosvenor Square, but the building that housed it still remains, now beautifully restored. I was pleased to see that the edifice has not lost the huge sculpture of an eagle that was on top of it. This eagle is attached to the building by means of an attachment designed by my uncle WS Rindl, a structural engineer.

Outside the former embassy, there are a couple of statues, including one depicting Ronald Reagan, who was President of the USA from 1981 to1989. It was during his presidency that in 1987 he gave a speech demanding that Russian President Gorbachev bring down the Berlin Wall. His words, spoken at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate were:

“Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”

And less than two years later, the gate was opened, and the wall came down. His words are on a memorial next to his statue on Grosvenor Square. The memorial contains a fragment of the Berlin Wall, whose demise Reagan encouraged.

On a lighter note, it is said that when you met Margaret Thatcher, you came away thinking she was the cleverest person in the world, but when you met Ronald Reagan, you left him feeling that you were the cleverest person in the world. Reagan had a way of flattering others in the best possible way.

The art of war at a museum in south London

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ALTHOUGH LONDON’S IMPERIAL War Museum contains a rich collection of objects related to warfare, it also has a fine art gallery in which there are many paintings inspired by, and recording, wars from WW1 onwards. The artworks, mostly paintings, are to be found in the rooms in the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries on the museum’s third floor.

“Gassed” by John Singer Sargent

The paintings and other artworks are mostly by artists, who are now well-known, such as, to mention only a few: Joan Miro, Paul Nash, Eileen Agar, Laura Knight, Percy Wyndham-Lewis, John Piper, Eric Ravilious, John Singer Sargent, David Bomberg, and Steve McQueen. Others are by less well-known artists, and many of them have created images inspired by outbreaks of warfare that have occurred since the end of WW2. One of these, made by Steve McQueen, is a collection of postage stamps with faces of military personnel who died during the relatively recent Iraq conflict. These postage stamps, all of which bear a soldier’s portrait and the head of Queen Elizabeth II, are kept in a special wooden cabinet with sliding panels that can be pulled out to see the stamps.  Like all the other artworks, this is both dramatic and moving. And seeing them during a period of warfare in the Middle East made them seem even more poignant.

There are several paintings by artists who joined British Colonial Artists Scheme, which encouraged ‘native-born’ artists to depict aspects of activities connected with warfare in the colonies. One of these artists was an African called Katongole. Another artist of interest is an Iraqi refugee called Walid Siti, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1984, and his etching was inspired by warfare.

Of all the wonderful paintings on display, two particularly attracted my attention. One showing Indian soldiers, who were recovering from injuries during WW1, lying in beds under a large, amazingly decorative dome in Brighton Pavilion, This was painted by Douglas Fox-Pitt in 1919. The other, which is the biggest picture in the galleries, is by John Singer Sargent. Called “Gassed”, it shows a long line of blindfolded soldiers, injured by poisonous gas, being led by an officer wearing a white overcoat. As they walk along, they are passing the corpses of their fellow soldiers.

The artworks in the Blavatnik Galleries at the Imperial War Museum easily rival what can be seen in the permanent collection of Tate Modern, and are a ‘must-see’ for anyone who has an interest in twentieth century artists, especially those who worked in Britain.  

A cathedral south of the River Thames but not on the tourist trail

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I HAVE PASSED this Victorian gothic church many times while travelling on the 148 bus route northbound, but it was only today, 7 April 2026, that I first set foot in it. The church is, actually, a cathedral but not the Anglican Southwark Cathedral (near London Bridge). It is St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, a Roman Catholic church.

Opposite the Imperial War Museum, the cathedral was built in 1848. Although it is a Victorian gothic edifice, it has the feel (a spacious lightness) and appearance of churches built in mediaeval times. Maybe this should not be surprising when one learns that its first architect was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), one of the leading exponents of of Gothic Revival in Britain. Pugin converted to Catholicism in 1834, and this attracted him new patrons and commissions.

What we see today when entering the cathedral is not what Pugin would have seen. In WW2, the building was badly damaged by bombing. Within the external structure of Pugin’s building, the architect Romilly Craze (1892-1974), who restored many bombed churches, designed a gothic revival cathedral, which was opened in 1958, and that is what we see today.

Within the cathedral, one can admire the fine twentieth century stained glass windows, the circular shrine of Frances Xavier Cabrini (patron saint of migrants), the tomb of Peter Emmanuel Amigo (sixth Bishop of Southwark; lived 1864-1949), and a reclining sculpture of Provost Robert Doyle (1793-1879). Doyle was associated with the construction of the cathedral, and asking Pugin to design it. He was also involved with purchasing the land on which it was constructed.

Although it cannot compare with the great mediaeval cathedrals in England, St George’s is plasing to the eye, and judging by the large number of people joining a service on a Tuesday lunchtime, it serves its purpose well.

They tried to reduce a city, London, to rubble

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AS I WRITE this on 7 April 2026, the President of the USA has already threatened “… to bomb Iran ‘into the Stone Age’.

In 1940, the Germans, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, had slightly less ambitious evilintentions. They tried to reduce London to no more than rubble, and to some extent they succeeded, as can be seen at an exhibition being held at London’s Imperial War Museum until 1 November 2026. The show, “Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art”, contains a collection of paintings and drawings done by artists who were in London while it was being bombed by the Germans, during the so-called Blitz. There are images by a wide range of war artists, some I had heard of, and others that were new to me. Each image is accompanied by a good explanatory panel.

By John Farleigh

I knew thar during the Blitz, peopled sheltered in deep Underground stations, and that the artist Henry Moore is famous for depicting these makeshift shelters and those sheltering within them. What interested me in the War Museum’s exhibition was that there were pictures of these Underground shelters  and other subterranean places by other artists, including: John Farliegh, Edward Ardizzone, Olga Lehmann, and Anthony Gross.

The other pictures on display show the damage done to buildings, aspects of attack and defence, life during the Blitz, and portraits of those who suffered during the attacks. Given what has been threatened by a President of the USA, it was somewhat unnerving seeing the pictures in the War Museum’s superb exhibition.