Inspiration

A small post for a Thursday evening. When I wrote my brief blog about the Pantheon, I had a very interesting email from a reader, an architect, Tom Matthews, in Colorado – who sent me these photos of students of the American Academy in Rome. Not quite sure when they were taken. The title of this blog is, after all, Inspiration, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite so inspiring in a while. What would you give to be there? Thank you, Tom.

Perhaps the photographs are the Venn Diagram (don’t you love Venn diagrams?) of Pantheon blog and the crazy blog I wrote a while ago about the crane climber, Mr James Kingston – which, if you have not already seen it, I urge you to read right now. Happy vertigo.

Incidentally – thank you everyone for your many interesting and inspiring comments on the Italian blogs. I’m grateful to learn a lot more about buildings I love; and I’m really grateful to have had a prompt to go and see, with friends, Plein Soleil at the Curzon Mayfair last night – totally fantastic… what a great film, which I didn’t really know.  Shall we have an Alain Delon moment (for Friday morning?).

I will be honest – I learn as much as I ever write on this blog. Fun.

I’m writing on a perfect, balmy evening in London, which they say is the last night of summer… the temperature is meant to drop by 10 degrees overnight. We’ve had supper outside Susannah Hunter’s on Lambs Conduit Street, with our neighbour Maggie Owen, served by fabulous Ciao Bella, and, well, it felt a tiny little bit like being back in Rome, and all feels well with the world… but I, for one, am secretly rather looking forward to autumn now. Paris in the morning sounds glamorous, until you hear that Bridie and I, on a buying trip for exciting new things for the shop, are catching the 5.40am Eurostar and back to London tomorrow evening. Grim.

But then I am to Dorset, and I don’t know about you… I just can’t wait.