January 15th 2026

I arrive into what feels like Paris of the past, of flea bitten mattresses, and the charming reek of damp furnishings in shuttered corners, out of the sun. Sam Burcher

It seems to me that life and death are never far away in Paris. An Artic wind persistently stirs the air in May. Paris wants my bones, but it can wait. It already has millions of bones in seventy thousand tombs in Père
Lachaise, where the burial shafts go surprisingly deep. I peer inside an open tomb, directly behind Oscar Wilde’s glorious flying Sphinx. Its heavy stone lid has been slid to one side and rests on a wooden sawhorse. A ladder placed inside waits for the descent of a climber to receive the freshly interred body on its last journey underground. 

Billions more bones are stacked beneath this city. The long bones, small bones and skulls of six million people are piled high in the catacombs running sixty five feet deep under the lively streets. My days of wandering overground have convinced me that Paris is the place where poets come to die. Consider the Irishman Oscar Wilde and the American Jim Morrison, illustrious, but exiled poets reviled by many in their native countries. Yet, Paris welcomed them, then subsumed their bones to rest in peace forever.

The French have long revered the poets buried in Paris’s largest cemetery garden named after the confessor of  Louis XIV, Father François d'Aix de La Chaise. Here lie Guillaume Apollinaire, Honoré de Balzac and Molière to name but a few. For me, a homesick outsider, the loveliest structures in this meditative English-style park are the manifold trees forming a purifying canopy. My intention to revisit the graves of Wilde and Morrison and to seek out Chopin and Colette is peppered by distractions. All around ivy twists and turns amongst the trees. I am lost on the cobbled paths of the Divisions. 

Père Lachaise is crammed with all sorts of tombs. Vaults house the dead in stone drawers, the mossy epitaphs to who they were in life have weathered. Some lie under thick slabs of glinting black granite with gold symbols and letters which gleam in the sunlight. Others recline in Gothic tombs laden with angels, flower motifs, symbolic handshakes, intertwining snakes, and the grotesque heads of otherworldly animals. Some are now supine bronze likenesses of their former selves hovering over a casket of bones.

Take for example the hot air balloonists Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel, a pair of science mad adventurers who died of oxygen depletion at 28,000 feet, an altitude known as, “the death zone.” These co-pilots of the Zenith became indifferent to their perilous situation, and were happy to rise and rise. Now, they lie side by side atop a tomb, their verdigris figures with fingers entwined have been grounded for eternity. 

A bronze figure with the unlikely reputation of being a fertility symbol belongs to Victor Noir. His likeness is regularly caressed or even mounted by females hopeful of conceiving. His mouth, nose, crotch and feet gleam against his tarnished prone figure, bearing witness to a bizarre ritual that apparently has brought joy to thousands of women. In life Victor was a journalist who was shot dead in a dual by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, a cousin of the then ruling Emperor Napoleon III, who became a symbol of the Revolution within a year of his death.

Many of the smaller vertical tombs are reminiscent of telephone boxes, but wider and deeper. The hinges of oxidised doors that once secured a place of prayer and reflection are shorn. Inside the rickety chairs, crumbling urns and vases filled with ancient flowers on wonky tomb shelves are dusty and unloved. Stained glass windows that once glowed so beautifully are smashed, the faces of Jesus and the Saints have gone missing. 

The grand mausoleums akin to small Greek temples which crowd the hills and fields have fared better. Intricately carved symbols meaningful to the family decorate the formal and ornate architecture. A reverence for bygone traditions remains intact and the families of passed on loved ones maintain these well-tended tombs.

Countess Stroganoff

One of the grandest mausoleums is too lofty, too mysterious, and too arcane to overlook. It belongs to the Russian Countess Stroganoff, also known as Elizabeth Demidoff.  Her story is too strange not to tell. The Countess Elizaveta Alexandrovna Stroganova, the mother in law of a Napoleonic princess, was a married woman who left her husband and four children in Rome. For a time she lived a glamorous society life in Paris, but succumbed to an illness aged just 41.

Her tomb in the 19th Division is topped with towering white marble columns above magnificent stone mausoleum. Every inch is covered with intricate carvings of knots, hammers and bats, and the protruding heads of wolves and bears. A stone frieze of sables, a small furry animal, similar to a weasel runs around its surface.

The images of the sables trigger memories of a sighting of an unusual and wounded animal a couple of nights before in nearby Belleville. I wondered how it came to be roaming the city streets. Could it be a ferret, a weasel or maybe even a mink? I watched it repeatedly fail to jump a lowish wall overhung by a tree. It was limping and the damaged leg impeded its spring. 
Other observers had gathered and were shining phone torches on the poor creature. No longer able to watch, I walked away praying it would live another day. And just days later, the animal on the tomb of Countess Stroganoff struck a chord. The sables represented her source of immense wealth from the Russian fur trade. I began to fantasise the stout legged creature was a sable signalling the presence of the Countess eternally resonates in Paris.

Sometime after her death, a rumour began to circulate about a strange and enticing caveat in her Will. In 1893 the French newspaper La Justice issued a challenge purportedly set by the Countess that anyone who stayed in her tomb for a year would win one million francs. Countless other newspapers around the world ran the story claiming her body was perfectly preserved in a crystal coffin within the walls lined with plate glass mirrors. The willing applicants could leave the tomb twice a day at dawn and dusk for an hour’s walk, could not work, and meals would be brought in to them.

The rumours became wilder with each passing year, as the reward increased to five million francs. One candidate, who lasted the longest, was a gibbering wreck after three weeks. The outlandish claim emerged that the Countess was, in fact, a vampire. The origin of this story is most likely a work of German fiction by Karl Hans Strobl, which translates into The Mausoleum on the Père Lachaise (1917). This was followed by the French tales of The Guardian of the Cemetery and The Graveyard Duchess (1919), translated into English in 1934 and The Cemetery Watchman (1965), a story in which a Countess preys on the men paid to guard her tomb. The reports circulated many years after her death, so although intriguing, are most likely untrue.

8th January 2026

Sam Burcher enters the Maison and Museum Gainsbourg to explore the life and loves of France’s most prolific modern composer. 

Maison Gainsbourg situated at 5 Rue de Verneuil in the stylish St Germain district of Paris is almost exactly as Serge Gainsbourg, the singer, actor, writer, composer, photographer and director, left it when he died in 1991. Now, the heavily graffitied building serves as his permanent House Museum, where visitors are intimately guided room by room by his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose sweet tones enter your ears via a headset. Like many French dwellings, it’s a curious mixture of grand elegance and modest simplicity. 

Charlotte invites me to open the black door to the right inside the main entrance and step onto the elegant porcelain tiles of the salon, which runs the entire length of the building. At the far end sits a Steinway baby grand piano, and a smaller upright piano. Closer to me is a portrait of the French icon Brigitte Bardot and a row of gold discs, awarded to Serge for his millions of record sales. She confides that her father never taught her to play the piano because he described the experience of being taught by his father as “torture.” 

But, as a result of his musical torture, Serge composed the Eurovision Song Contest winner in 1965, a string of hits for and about Brigitte Bardot, including Harley Davidson (1968) Bonnie and Clyde (1968) and The Initials B.B (1968) with a masterful string section based on Dvořák's New World Symphony (No. 9). The love song Jane B on the B side of the multi million selling single Je t'aime...moi non plus (1969) was inspired by Chopin's Fourth Prelude from Opus.28 in E Minor.

Jane Birkin (right with Brigitte Bardot) was a British actress, model and singer, who met Serge Gainsbourg on the film set of Slogan in 1968. He was forty, she was twenty one, and it was not love at first sight. She thought he was ugly and he didn’t think she was great looking. By the end of the movie they were infatuated with each other and began a fruitful musical collaboration including the albums Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin (1969) and L’ Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971). The duo continued to work together even after they separated in 1980.

In her insightful auto-biographical Munkey Diaries 1957-1982, Jane Birkin prophetically writes,”So living with Serge in his little house in Rue de Verneuil was delightful but complicated. It was rather like living in a museum. In his salon every object had its place and the children weren’t allowed to touch the piano.”

Their daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg was born in 1971. She is an accomplished model and actress, the winner of two César Awards and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award in 2009. In Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre (1996) she played the title role. She starred in Lars von Triers’s compelling Nymphomaniac I and II (2013), and was directed by her father in Charlotte Forever (1986). As a successful musician she collaborated with Jarvis Cocker on 5:55 (2006) and Beck on IRM (2010) and Time of the Assassins (2010).

The tiny kitchen at the back of Maison Gainsbourg is reached by the long corridor running parallel with the salon. Here, Serge prepared dinner so he and Charlotte could settle down to watch every single one of his performances on the small black and white television in the corner. She recalls her parents often went out all night enjoying the glamorous night clubs of Paris, and her mother happily picking her up from school in the afternoons. Her father, she said, never rose before 1pm.

I am guided upstairs, passing Serge’s capsule wardrobe of blue jeans, white t shirts, black jackets and soft white shoes, but never socks, not even in the snow. Endearing photographs of Marilyn Monroe and the almost otherworldly beauty of Jane Birkin adorn the long passage to the bathroom. Charlotte confides that although scrupulously clean, her father preferred to perform all of his ablutions in the bidet. 
In contrast, her mother loved to jump into the bath with both of her daughters. When she was eighteen Birkin married John Barry with whom she had one daughter, Kate. Barry composed eleven of the James Bond themes, the film scores for Out of Africa (1985) and Midnight Cowboy (1969) and the soulful song Born Free (1966). As a child Charlotte (left) measured her growth by her head getting closer to and eventually touching the glass ball dangling from the Venetian chandelier strung ever so low from the bathroom ceiling.

The house provided an essential part of Charlotte’s education. The family’s fame precluded visits to museums and galleries, so she learnt from the books in her father’s study. She earned pocket money by tidying her mother’s messy wicker baskets, which famously morphed into the iconic Hermès, Birkin Bag. After her parents separated, her mother’s topsy-turvy room was used solely to display her father’s collection of antiques dolls, which she found creepy.

Lastly, I arrive at the bedroom where Serge died in his sleep in 1991.The heavily black velvet clad room has a decorative screen and an ornate Baroque bench carved in the shape of a mermaid reclines at the end of the low, wide bed. This is where his body was embalmed so his family and friends could spend more time with him. Being close to his cold, dead body was better than not having him there at all, Charlotte says.

In life, Serge Gainsborough was a prodigiously gifted artist, in private he was delightfully mischievous. He particularly enjoyed the company of the policeman he met on his nightly perambulations around Paris, and liked nothing more than to invite them home for a drink. Then, after hours of conversation, they were invariably persuaded to give him their badge of office, and even on occasion, a pair of handcuffs  A long glass table in the living room is laden with dozens of badges, something a gendarme is strictly forbidden to part with.

18th December 2025

Sam Burcher visits L’ Hôtel in the heart of the Left Bank one hundred and twenty five years after Oscar Wilde died here.

I met Florian Liger-Bernard, a front desk concierge at L’ Hôtel, in St. Germain des Prés, to discuss the minutiae of Oscar Wilde’s stay until his death on 30th November 1900. He told me about the many other celebrities who have followed in the famous Irish writer’s footsteps since then. “There can be no coincidence if you choose to stay at L’Hôtel. It is a form of decadence,” he said.

The original building was created in 1828 by Célestin-Joseph Happe on the exact spot occupied by Queen Margot’s 17th century palace, the Pavillon d’Amour.  After several iterations, it underwent a significant refurbishment in 1967 after Edmond Dreyfus, the Parisian king of textiles purchased the hotel in 1963, which had fallen into disrepair.

Over the last twenty years, the new owners, part of the Curious Group of Hotels, The Portobello Hotel, London, Canal House,  Amsterdam and Drakes, Brighton, have further transformed L’Hôtel. They utilised the extraordinary skills of interior designer Jacques Garcia, the recipient of numerous cultural prizes, including Chevalier in the Order of the Légion d’honneur and the Oscar Wilde Prize in 2002. 

Once open to all the elements, the central atrium is now snugly under glass. If you look up directly after entering the lobby it appears as an elegant circular tower with exquisitely lit balconies and arches on each floor interspersed with reliefs of classical figures. 

Around the tower a staircase spiralling six floors is covered in a luxurious leopard print carpet. Small indentations on the handrail burnished from hundreds of years of use attest to the innumerable and celebrated hands that may have caressed the same beautiful imperfections. 

The bedrooms are variously named L’ Apartment, Bijoux, Chic, Grand, Mignon, Reine Hortense, and of course, Oscar Wilde Suite. Each room is individually and sumptuously decorated in the epitome of impeccable French style. There is an ambience of charm, comfort and warmth inside one of Paris’s first and most beloved five star boutique hotels.

In the Venetian room number 30 on the third floor the walls are textured in finely striped golden velvet, the bedhead is a profusion of intricately carved wooden leaves in a Rococo style with burgundy drapes on either side. A crystal chandelier shimmers over the centre of the bed. The Rosso Francia marble that proliferates throughout the building extends to the deep bathtub.

After an exceptional breakfast Florian shows me the photographs in the bar of previous guests; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Salvador Dali, Princess Grace, and Frank Sinatra, who romanced Ava Gardner in The City of Love. He points out the grainy deathbed photo of Oscar Wilde. We respectfully discuss his life and death in a quiet nook full of hardback books. 

The Rise and Fall of Oscar Wilde

There would be no luxury for Oscar Wilde following his disastrous libel trial in London in 1895. The case against the 9th Duke of Queensbury’s claims of homosexuality, at the time a criminal offence, had led to Wilde's conviction of gross indecency and two years hard labour in Reading Gaol. 

Consequently, when he arrived in Paris in February 1898 his health was considerably weakened. And, matters did not improve, since L’ Hôtel had yet to become the luxury establishment it is today. Wilde checked in under the pseudonym of Sebastian Melmoth to a shabby rather than chic Hôtel d’Alsace, its draughty atrium open to the elements.

His eighteen month residency was an unhappy one, not least because he had once been accustomed to and craved beauty. From his sickbed Wilde famously said, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us will have to go.”

The libel trial had bankrupted him, and although he still received royalties from his English and Irish publishers, the cheques were slow to arrive. To tide him over, the French Government acted to give Wilde some money demonstrating its benevolence towards the arts, a tradition which extends to foreign artists to this day. 

When he died aged 46 there were no funds left. Oscar Wilde succumbed to a swelling on his brain, caused by a fall in prison and an infection from two surgeries performed in his room to remedy it. His final hotel bill went unpaid for two years after his death, until his literary executor Robert Ross arrived in Paris to settle it. 

The last invoice is amongst the framed mementos on the gilded peacock walls of Room 16. The Oscar Wilde Suite represents an opulent homage to the writer, but there is speculation about whether he died here. As his health deteriorated, he was too ill to climb the spiral staircase to his first floor room. According to the social media page of The Oscar Wilde Appreciation Society, Oscar moved to a room downstairs to have surgery, but for the final two weeks he returned to his room on the upper floor. 

No-one can be completely sure, but the room on the ground floor is now possibly the elegant niche in Wilde’s Lounge where the finest champagne and classic cocktails are served with bright green Italian olives and roasted cashews. I think Oscar, who said, I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best,” would approve.

26th November 2025

Sam Burcher meets James Jessiman, sculptor, teacher, writer, publisher, and the man behind 020 Desk Zero, a poetry telephone line happening now and in the future.

James is a man with a backpack (more about that later) and he’s on a mission to make the spoken word more accessible. His medium is 020 Desk Zero, an audible gallery that you can free phone to listen to poetry, prose and musical artworks. In the Audrey cafè at the National Gallery in London, he hands me a card for the 24 hour hotline, which is activated the moment a caller brimming with curiosity dials 020-3375-9376.

020 Desk Zero has been active in the UK for around eighteen months and receives thousands of calls. It riffs on the idea of Dial-a-Poem, which started in New York in 1968. And, perhaps harks back to playing one top ten single a day on Dial-a-Disc (1966-1991) provided by the Post Office when you dialed 160, definitely more fun than TIM, the speaking clock. Now phone technology has moved far beyond that, there are more options to choose from. The numbers on James’s card from one to zero and symbols connect you to the sound of something entirely different. 

The artists and writers James curated for 020 Desk Zero, Gates of Desire, are all creators he deeply admires. It was the perfect way to interact with them and learn more about their work. The gallery facilitates an intimate space in which to hear works lasting between 30 seconds and 30 minutes long.  Each contributor received a limited edition cassette of the collection, available only to them. Although there are connotations between phone numbers on cards and illicit sex, not the case here, powerful themes of desire, fragility and longing are present nonetheless.

So, let’s imagine for a moment a rotary dial with ten indentations. Our fingers caress the circular face in anticipation of dialing our chosen numbers. Then, we insert a finger into a hole to about the depth of the first phalange, making a clockwise rotation until the metal stop. We’ll either impatiently rotate the hole counterclockwise, eager to dial again or lugubriously allow the mechanism to glide our finger back. Maybe we’ll extract it altogether to fully savour the delicious clicking sound as the dial springs back to the resting position, and then repeat the process.

1st October 2025 

It’s not every day that you get invited to take part in an exhibition in an art gallery in Soho. So when it happened, Sam Burcher jumped at the chance. 

Art Exhibition

How The Light Gets In is the first show that Cleo Harrington MA (RCA) has organised and curated for Art in The Village ® , the company she founded in 2007, with just four students in a village hall. This September, keen to show the work of her students, she realised that a formal exhibition would be a great place for them to meet up and see each other’s work mounted, framed and labelled in a professional setting.  

Cleo’s interest in art was stimulated by her mother, who was a neighbour of and collaborator with Terence Conran in Regents Park in Camden during the 1950’s. She illustrated all of Conran’s furniture catalogues for his design company long before he expanded it into Habitat, his chain of home stores.

The exhibition took place at the GPS Gallery on Great Pulteney Street, an elegant Georgian building in the heart of London’s Soho. It was well attended by the public, as well as friends and family. Several of the student artists made sales, and buyers appeared to talk with some of the more established artists who also had their work on show.

Over the last five years I have enjoyed many of Cleo’s fun and instructive in person and online classes, including drawing, watercolour, mixed media, Gelli printing, as well as an acrylic painting workshop taught by her fellow curator and art tutor Mark James MA (RCA). (Mark's artwork right, Cleo's artwork left). This was an enjoyable way to get back into making art after a thirty year hiatus from my time at Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts. Although exhibiting seemed like a daunting prospect at first, it turned out to be a warm and enriching experience. 

During Covid, Cleo worried that it was going to be the end of her business. So, she set about putting the whole thing online, which turned out be a successful move. Pretty soon, an Internet community had formed of over eighty students who could Zoom in from Europe, North America and Canada, and all over Britain.

Once things had returned to normal, the online classes remained, and the monthly sketch club and other face to face classes around London resumed. Over time and through regular meetings people have made new friendships with other students, and supported each other to go further with their creative work.  

Art Holidays

Before lockdown Art in The Village ® was running painting holidays, most notably in Sweden. Since then, there have been trips to Paris, Gozo and Provence. The holidays are designed to explore the surroundings and hone in on the locations where well known artists drew their inspiration from.  

Experiencing art in this way allows you to focus on your painting and drawing for a week. It provides an opportunity to meet local artists and participate in local arts festivals and workshops, to wander the galleries and to work en plein air in the house museums and gardens associated with the fascinating artists who once lived and worked there.

This October, Cleo and Mark take a group of students to Malta and Sicily to explore the work of Caravaggio, just as the trip to Provence earlier this year followed in the footsteps of Van Gogh. Next year’s art holidays to Provence will examine the subjects and idyllic landscapes of Cezanne’s prolific outpouring of oil and watercolour paintings. There is also a planned return to St Ives, which has a formidable history of marine art    

My invited guest Suzi Behl said: ‘It was an interesting show, similar to the Summer Exhibition at the RA. A great range of work on similar themes, because it was done in the classes and on the holidays, but with so many rich and varied perspectives.”

As a lover of literature as well as art, I was pleased to spot a plaque dedicated to John William Polidori (1795-182) who lived on Great Pulteney Street until he died aged 26. He was the personal physician and travelling companion of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and his soon to be wife Mary Godwin.  It was the terrible weather forcing them to stay indoors on their famous trip to the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva in 1816 that inspired Mary to conceive her Gothic Horror novel Frankenstein and Polidori to author the proto-Dracula novel, TheVampyre (1819). 

The How the Light Gets In exhibition at the GPS Gallery set in its historic location was a wonderful culmination of years of dedication by students and tutors, all brought together wonderfully well by Cleo, Mark and the Art in The Village ® team.

Instagram @art_in_the_village_uk  Website www.artinthevillage.co.uk

26th September 2025

Sam Burcher visits this illustrious café still thrilling customers with its mysterious and exquisite presence almost a century after it opened.  

Russian Dancers  

A stone’s throw from Central Park on West 57th and Seventh is The Russian Tea Room. A trio of golden dancing bears above the entrance, the red and white banner announcing its name, and the whirl of the revolving door are clear signals that something different is going on inside here. 

The Russian Tea Room was founded in 1927 by a dissident group of dancers from the Imperial Russian Ballet fleeing to America following the Revolution. Almost one hundred years later, the sumptuous rich red leather seating, golden firebirds, sculpted ice palaces and shining forest green walls hung with Russian inspired artworks declaims this extraordinary café is very much still open. 

One could always enjoy pastries and steaming cups of spicy tea served from golden Samovars. But, after Prohibition ended in1933, a selection of the finest vodkas and wines were imported to complement an expanded menu of both traditional and international cuisine. Delicious dishes of home made dumplings and Stroganoff, both meat and vegetarian, jostle with French onion soup, Boeuf Wellington and Chilean sea bass, alongside a selection of caviar and herring for lunch or dinner. 

When the Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet in 1961 en route from Paris to London, he caused a sensation. He was lauded in the press for his grace, strength and athleticism, causing Le Monde to comment, “He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in Firebird.” 

The KGB had been keeping close tabs on Nureyev who was rebellious, which he said was down to his Tatar-Muslim blood that ran faster and boiled quicker than his countrymen. Under the false pretexts of a performance at The Kremlin and the serious illness of his mother, he became suspicious and managed to evade his minders. He danced freely around the world and returned to Russia years later for performances without any confrontation with the authorities. 

In 1984 Mikhail Baryshnikov (left) defected from the Kirov Ballet, first to Canada, and later becoming the principle male dancer at the New York City Ballet. The Russian Tea Room provided a welcoming, happy place for both Nureyev and Baryshnikov, as shown in the photographs of these phenomenal dancers adorning the walls. 

September 5th 2025

Sam Burcher examines the lesser known role of the author and Poet Laureate John Masefield as a journalist and spy-writer during the Great War.

The contribution of the poet and author John Masefield to The Manchester Guardian, founded in 1821, has been radically understated by the writer himself, and by those who worked there. He was initially employed on a trial basis, becoming a regular contributor after distinguishing himself with several outstanding back pages. The broadsheet shortened its name to The Guardian in 1959 after widening its reach to beyond Manchester. And, between 1903 and 1924 some 390 articles by the future Poet Laureate were published. Of these, only five were poems, the rest were miscellaneous articles, short stories, prose and a variety of his reviews.

Masefield’s debut collection Salt Water Ballads (1902) includes perhaps his best known poem Sea Fever, in which he reflects upon the wild call of the oceans. He voluntarily joined the marines as a thirteen year old orphan, partially to escape his nagging aunt’s disapproval of what she called his “compulsive reading.” Several years later, he jumped ship in New York, working in a carpet factory by day and bartending late into the evening. By night he read voraciously, the tales of Chaucer sealing his decision to become a writer. After his discharge as a Distressed British Seaman Abroad, Masefield spun the sights and sounds of his awe-inspiring sea voyages, and a near shipwreck around Cape Horn, into his epic poem Dauber (1913).

Time spent in America had left Masefield ideally placed for the second strand of his role at The Guardian, which was the collection of miscellany from the American Press. It is highly likely that his column inspired the Guardian Weekly, which began in 1919. And, as I discovered, his information gathering penetrated far deeper into American society. In fact, Masefield was part of a secret ring of spy-writers enlisted by the War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) during World War I, its purpose to counteract German influence in neutral countries, specifically America. 

17th July 2025

The Doors 60th Anniversary is celebrated in style in Los Angeles with an exhibition, which includes rare and unseen photographs of the city’s most iconic band. Sam Burcher reports.

It seems to me that 2025 has been a year of resurrection for The Doors. It started back in May in Paris when the heavily graffitied funerary bust of Jim Morrison suddenly reappeared nearly forty years after it was stolen from Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Amongst the ornate tombs of literary luminaries Oscar Wilde and Moliere, Morrison’s modest grave has been a pilgrimage for fans since his death in 1971, barely four months after he quit the band to focus on writing poetry in The City of Light. 

The surprise news from Paris went viral, bringing international attention to the band once more. And, by happy coincidence, a celebration of the 60th Anniversary of The Doors has opened just off their old stomping ground on the Sunset Strip. In 1966, they were the house band at the famous Whisky a Go Go, which first opened in 1964. Forty years later in 2006, it was the only music venue to be inducted into the prestigious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is where The Doors honed not just their exceptional sound, but Jim’s penchant for experimental performance. 

Held at The Morrison Hotel Gallery, the 60th Anniversary is celebrated with a collection of forty-five black and white and colour portraits documenting The Doors from their formation in 1965 onwards. The Gallery is housed within the lobby of the Sunset Marquis Hotel also in its’ sixth decade, and widely appreciated for an eclectic display of photographs of many iconic faces from the , mainly British and American music scene.

Henry Diltz, one of the Gallery’s founding owners, opened the exhibition on July 10th. His close friend Ringo Starr was amongst 200 invited guests attending the lovely summer party around the pool bar and verdant gardens. One of Henry’s photographs included in the show is the cover of Morrison Hotel, The Doors fifth album released in 1969, from which they stare out from the window of the Downtown hotel, sadly now burned down. A large print of this photograph, others from the same shoot and various configurations of his smaller prints are shown here. My favourtite is the large colour print of the band outside the Hard Rock Cafe (1969).

Other historic photographs include Michael Montfort’s photo of The Doors busking on a street corner in Frankfurt, which captures their humble beginnings. There is also an opportunity to acquire a number of the rare signed black and white portrait by Joel Brodsky of Jim Morrison at the peak of his fame. This photo, known as The American Poet, is the hot one featuring the bare chested singer without his shirt on.

Whilst Paul Ferrara’s shots reveal the band cohesively working in the recording studio, by way of contrast, the image of a live performance showing Morrison collapsed on a stage illuminated by the brightly coloured lights is telling of his struggles ahead. 

I am intrigued by the photo of the band in full flow at the Roundhouse in London in 1968. Over the course of a weekend The Doors performed twice a night. The late show featured some of their greatest songs; Hello, I Love You, Soul Kitchen, Love Me Two Times and Break on Through, with David Bowie in attendance on one occasion. Whereas in America the audience would respond wildly to Jim’s theatricals and tribal calls, the Roundhouse audience remained passive. The Doors and Bowie connection persists with prints from the Aladdin Sane album cover session by Duffy at the Morrison Hotel Gallery. 

When Gallery Director and Curator Jamie Bucherer approached The Doors management with her idea for a 60th year celebration, the response was affirmative. She loves the compelling and previously unseen images they provided saying, “They are very special and beautiful and really capture the band in different moments.” It’s a chance for the fans, old and new, to see novel photographs and revisit old favourites, she added.  

Jamie accepted the offer of a striking bust of Jim Morrison by the sculptor Sissy Piana, who intends to cast it in bronze (left). The sculpture sits well with the photographs and serves as a reminder that Jim Morrison’s rediscovered bust must be placed somewhere in Paris where it can be seen again. The suggestion of The Louvre by Jamie is not an unreasonable one, since it’s unlikely that it will be returned to the graveside where it was placed in 1981, then stolen seven years later.

In a mad moment of synchronicity, I was in Paris revisiting Jim Morrison’s grave when the Police Directorate announced the recovery of the bust in a routine search. The Associated Press was at Pere Lachaise Cemetery looking for a story, so I shared a sense of what the atmosphere was like when the bust sculpted by Mladen Mikulin was in situ. And, how unlike the subdued mood of the present day, there was a buzz of respectful celebration; of music and dancing, of drinking and smoking, and then I gave out strawberries to the joyful gathering, perhaps like a Dionysian maenad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAlk5v1y_JE 

25th April 2025

On her quest for the eternal spirit of poetry, Sam Burcher meets the Mancunian poet and spoken word performer Stephen Belowsky in West Hollywood.

Stephen and I bond over a shared dislike of over-chlorinated swimming pools, which is the case in our hotel pool on West Sunset. Stephen’s eyes are red and sore and he’s a worried man. Later that day, I see him on the Strip; sunglasses on, almost as if in a trance, picking up the stories and energies on this world renowned street. I know better than to interrupt his flow. 

The next day he bounces into the discrete nook on the hotel’s sun balcony. He flicks up his sunglasses to show me his clear eyes are healed after the application of eyedrops prescribed by the chemist. He announces he’s just had breakfast with Neil Sedaka and flashes a selfie. I’m aware of the popular tunes of singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, but who is Stephen Belowsky? 

Turns out, he is the only two times winner of the Western Australia Poetry Slam and twice an Australian Poetry Championship finalist. Originally from Manchester, his family emigrated to Australia when he was a youngster. But Belowsky couldn’t settle, bouncing between Manchester, Perth, New York and LA. He was the in-house poet at the Standard Hotel, where Creation Records founder Alan McGee, who released Stephen’s single 2020 Ball Drop on his Creation 23 label during lockdown, was the sometime DJ.

How do you write your poems?

“Every poem’s got a story, there’s always a reason,” Stephen said. Stay Greasy Baby is about when he had a HairBear Bunch afro combed style. And, because he was losing his hair, he smoothed it down into a slick greased back pony tail. He was hanging out with the actor Steven Seagal, known for an extraordinarily slick hairstyle. 

“Stay greasy baby, ‘cause it’s a long slide down, I don’t mean slicking it back with L’Oreal, ‘cause I’m worth it, or slicking it back like Steven Seagal, Just stay greasy baby, stay greasy on that long slide down.”

West LA Gypsy of the Nineties is another of Stephen’s poems that, “just made itself.” Inspiration flowed at the Insomnia Cafe, a quirky hangout on Beverley Boulevard, in the early 1990’s. The writers coming in and out included the scriptwriters of Friends. One young woman often came in wearing her shades. She once said to him, “Tell me what you think of these sunglasses?”and that’s how the line came about. The scenes of Los Angeles just hung around in that poem, he recalls.

 April 2025

In our rapidly changing world, the Original Farmers Market is a haven of constancy and connectivity for people in the heart of LA. Sam Burcher takes an intriguing walking foodie tour with Jody Flowers, the owner, operator and head guide at Melting Pot Food Tours. 

We meet at 10am under the prominent clock tower at 3rd & Fairfax close to where the stallholders are busy serving delicious freshly made fare. Our Original Farmers Market Food and History tour starts with coffee and a slice of melt in the mouth and comfortingly warm French toast. For Jody, the market is a family affair. It is the place where both her sons work, a favourite for date nights with her husband, and somewhere her 89 year old mother regularly enjoys spending time with her grandchildren.

“The farmers market is really special. I love having my two feet on the ground and sharing the experience,” Jody said. 

The market has become a well-loved destination in LA for 91 years, which is a long time in the history of this city. Remarkably, it sits on land still owned by the Gilmores, farmers from Illinois who brought 260 acres of swampy land in 1870 to start a diary farm. Diary farming is a water intensive business and in 1901, whilst digging for water, the Gilmores struck oil.

It was at this point the cows went out and the refineries went up. The emerging car manufacturing industry soon went hand in hand with LA’s plentiful oil fields. And, at its peak, 3,500 Gilmore Oil Company stations pumped cars along the West Coast highways and byways. Eventually, drilling was banned around 3rd & Fairfax, which had become residential, and the company was sold off. 

From Farm To Fork

Not much is known about the Gilmores today, but in 1930, they was persuaded to rent a parcel of land so that Southern Californian farmers could bring abundant supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables to the locals. This was at a critical time during the Great Depression and the idea provided a positive solution for many people. Originally, just 12 farmers rolled up in their trucks along with 6 other merchants, each paid 50c rent per day. The venture soon expanded into the permanent fixture with over 100 outlets known as The Original Farmers Market, since 1934. 

After meandering in labyrinthine passageways, eyeing the tasty treats at every turn, it’s time for an early lunch. Jody directs me to Magee’s Kitchen, purveyors of the  lip-smacking corn beef sandwiches with spicy mustard on rye that fed the original farmers in the 1930’s. We also visit Magee’s House of Nuts, founded in 1917, and here since 1939. Today, Kanti fills the pots of 100 percent pure nuttiness in front of us from an industrial sized vintage blender with no nasty additives. My favourite is the smooth dry roasted peanut butter, but the almond, macadamia, walnut and pistachio butters are superb too.

In the 1950’s President Eisenhower, who was also a farmer, stopped by with plenty of questions about the blender. On a tour of America in the 1960’s the Beatles left signed photographs saying Magee’s was fab! Elvis Presley was another celebrity fan of the market and sadly, this is where James Dean enjoyed his last breakfast. More recently, Jennifer Aniston is a regular here.

Something for Everyone

Jody and I move on to sample pickles. Similar to a friendly bartender mixing exotic  cocktails, Will at Kaylins & Kaylins conjures tasty plates of jalapeño, horseradish, mustard, spicy dill, kosher dill, and the original 1910 recipe sour pickles. These flavoursome treats are gluten free and vegan, it’s easy to guzzle an entire plate of them. 

 January 2025

John Paul Getty’s legacy is two outstanding museums in Los Angeles in honour of his prolific art collections. And, in the wake of the devastating wildfires, the Getty Foundation is leading the LA Fire Relief Fund for artists who have lost their livelihoods. 

At the time of his death John Paul Getty (1892-1976) was known as the richest man in the world, worth around 25 billion dollars in today’s money. He had made his fortune in the oil fields of America and through a series of clever deals in Saudi Arabia, even learning Arabic to better negotiate the right to drill for oil there. His first shrewd investment of a $10,000 gift from his father in one lucky oil strike had made him a millionaire at 21. 

After a couple of years enjoying the life of a Hollywood playboy, Getty knuckled down to a work ethic that would eventually alienate his family and friends. Notoriously parsimonious, he did his own washing in the hotel suites that doubled as his offices. Despite marrying five times and having five sons, he became an increasingly isolated, eccentric and lonely figure with several of his children and grandchildren suffering extreme physical and mental hardships. 

The Getty Villa

Besides his family tragedies there were extraordinary triumphs, one being the Getty Villa set high beyond the bluffs in Pacific Palisades.The beating sun, warm sea breezes, aromatic plants, and Italian cedar trees all closely mimicking the Mediterranean so beloved by John Paul Getty. Joking that he was the reincarnation of a Roman emperor Getty instructed his architects to recreate the ancient Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, buried under tons of volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in Naples, AD 79.

The Romanesque villa and its two Peristyle courtyards are lined with scores of lofty Corinthian columns, each crowned with the motif of acanthus leaves growing abundantly in four surrounding gardens. Both peristyles enclose long, glittering blue marble pools offering a place of peace and contemplation. Dripping grapevines heavy with fruit and foliage of resplendent colours adorn the shady trellises on either side of the longer outer peristyle. Classical statues grace the walkways running parallel with the smaller pool.

Sam Burcher Is in Hollywood for the North American premier of My Way, just one film in a week of stunning new films shown at The American French Film Festival, October 29-November 3, 2024.

 And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain…..These are the opening lines from one of the world’s most memorable songs. Lyrics forged from darkness, a heroic lyrical and melodic representation of the dark night of the human soul before the light of a new dawn. Over time, My Way has has been covered by artists as diverse as Nina Simone, Sid Vicious, the Gypsy Kings, and, of course, the grandfather of them all Frank Sinatra. For many his version is the definitive one, which he recorded in one take in 1968. 

What is a man, what has he got? ….This song came at a critical juncture for Sinatra, who was heartbroken over his divorce from the beautiful actress Ava Gardner. As we learn, one night she simply exits the restaurant in which they were dining to run off with her bull fighter lover. So great was Sinatra’s rejection that, tired after thirty years of touring and recording, he abruptly quit show business. The film explains how a French song restored his life and career and became Sinatra’s comeback theme tune.

My friend, I’ll say it clear, i’ll state my case….My Way explores the story of how a young Canadian singer/songwriter Paul Anka first heard the original version of this song with French lyrics in France. He dreamt of rewriting the lyrics in English for his friend and hero Frank Sinatra, who affectionately called him “Kiddo.” Anka's English words would become a forthright confession for Sinatra, and for many others an admission of a universal state of being of which we can be certain. 

I’ve lived a life that’s full. I travelled each and every highway....Throughout the film we discover intimate details about the song’s composition and musical structure. We learn about its acoustic origins in Paris with Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibault and Claude Francois, the gifted French writers who created My Way under the title of Comme D'habitude. Then, we travel to Las Vegas where Anka honed the American version which he presented to his hero. We understand the lyrics as a poetic recitation performed again and again, which never becomes boring. Over 4,000 artists have covered the song and each new incarnation sets My Way on a free and eternal path.

The film’s directors Thierry Teston and Lisa Azuelos have succeeded in their good intention to reclaim the song for everyone, especially for women. We see two singing Nina’s - Nina Simone and Nina Hagen - harness the energy  of My Way at different, but pivotal points of global social change in the compelling expression of personal freedom. The song has allowed many more women to speak up for themselves and be heard. An exuberant Teston told me ,“It’s a song for everyone. When people listen to it on the train in the morning, they feel powerful.” 

Jane Fonda, whose voice personifies the history and evolution of My Way is perfectly cast as the Narrator of the film.  Aside from being a Golden Globe and two time Academy Award winning actress, she is self-confessed Francophile, and a peace activist who was living and working in Paris with her husband, the French actor Roger Vadim when the song was recorded in 1968 - a troubled year for America and France. In the context of this intriguing musical documentary, and more broadly for The American And French Film Festival, My Way exemplifies what France brings to America and what America brings to France. 

To think I did all that, and may I say not in a shy way….My Way has become a gift of a song for all ages and backgrounds. And, like it's namesake, the film works across a diversity of cultures. It's hard to comprehend the darker shades of violence erupting around kareoke performances in South Asia. Easier to understand is the meaningful choice of My Way at the funeral of a courageous leader rubbed out for his outspoken beliefs.

But, there is plenty of humour here too. Footage of Sid Vicious’s outrageous version of My Way along with the razor sharp insights by his manager Malcolm McClaren are laugh out loud funny. An appearance by David Bowie is a welcome sight, and we find out how My Way inspired Life On Mars an anthem of his own, with similar unforgettable qualities. 

And more, much more than this, I did it my way… The film concedes these lyrics may have narcissistic tendencies. But, perhaps deliberately, overlooks the interpretation of My Way as a song of self-will run riot. Some critics claim the words dissuade the listener from handing control of their lives to a higher power. Whether they know it or not, the film makers flip this criticism on its head by concentrating on the joyful notions of self-empowerment, self expression and transformation. For billions of people, including myself, who embarce the sentiments of My Way, this film is an engaging celebration of the soundtrack to our lives.

Now in its 28th year, The American And French Film Festival (TAFFF), is a beacon of light for those who love French film in LA. TAFFF continues its focus on education, and to date has invited 38,000 school children to the premiers, sparking curiosity and new perspectives on film. This year a combination of 59 films and television series contended for the TAFFF awards. The Festival commenced with the highly acclaimed film Emilia Pérez, directed by Jacques Audiard, the official French entry for the Oscars presented in collaboration with Netflix. 

October 2024

St Ives is a pretty coastal village in Cornwall with deep roots in the emergence of Marine Art, Troika Pottery and Cryséde Textiles.

St Ives Museum

St Ives Museum started in 1926 on the founding principle of, “Gathering up the fragments lest they be lost.” This was at a time when the town was on the cusp of change; the fishing and mining industries were all but dying out. Decades of overfishing in Cornwall coupled with the closure of the tin mines meant the outflow of minerals into the sea which had once provided a rich food source for pilchards was no more.

The fishing season would begin in August with a cry across the town of Hevva! signalling that a shoal of silvery pilchards was in sight. The Seine net used to catch them was so vast (350m) that forty men were required to carry it down from the lofts to the big red boat waiting in the harbour to ‘shoot” it into the sea. Once caught the haul of pilchards was transferred into smaller tuck nets and taken to shore in boats called dippers.

It was the famous Victorian novelist and travel writer Wilkie Collins who introduced avid readers to the thrills of Cornish folklore in his Rambles Beyond Railways; Notes in Cornwall Taken A Foot, published in 1851. Collins, who was also a keen collector of statistics, records that in 1850 St Ives exported 22,000 barrels of pilchards, known as hogheads, each containing up to 3,000 fish.

With high demand from France and Spain, the pilchard trade was labour intensive demanding large numbers of the town’s population. Women and their eldest daughters, known as salt maidens, worked side by side to salt and stack layers of fish, up to four feet high, in twelve hour shifts for a few pence per hour. The salting process took around five weeks during which time the pilchards were pressed under great weights to extract their oil.

St Ives Museum was a pilchard packing factory in the 1840’s, and today retains a detailed history of the Cornish pilchard industry told through artefacts and visual stories. In 1847, the total exports from Cornwall was 122 million fish, which cause the storytellers to reflect on man’s greed, rather than man’s need. However, It is unlikely the hardworking townsfolk of St Ives could have envisaged that a part of their crowded, noisy and smelly workplace would be dedicated to preserving the stories of their rich cultural imprint. 

Capturing the Light

The Museum’s personable curator Andy Smith and his fact-toting deputy Peter Garrett are on a mission to tell the true story of St Ives’s transformation from a small fishing village into an internationally known artists colony. They are ably assisted by Cornish Art Historian and author David Tovey. A number of his superb personal collection of oil paintings make up the Museum’s current exhibition Capturing the Light 1885-1914. His book, Pioneers of St Ives Art at Home and Abroad 1889-1914 is a richly illustrated companion to it. 

This is the second in a cycle of four exhibitions at St Ives Museum which documents the emergence and evolution of the colony as it has never been seen before. Far too often, the well-funded art establishments date its beginning to the mid-20th Century. But, as many of the glorious light infused paintings here demonstrate, its origins go further back in time. 

Last years exhibition Discovering St Ives 1830-1890, won the Cornish Exhibition of the Year (small museum). This year, Capturing the Light celebrates the heyday of the marine artists who travelled from as far afield as Australia, Canada and America to paint the wonderfully wild scenery and magnificent light en plein air.

The arrival of the railways in 1877 had made access to rural areas easier. Turner’s visit to St Ives yielded preparatory sketches of the area, but no finished pieces. Whistler arrived in the spring of 1884 with the Camden Town Impressionist Walter Sickert, and the Australian born marine painter Mortimer Mempes in tow. Whistler produced several gentle oils of beach scenes from his vantage point above St Ives Bay. 

But, it was the French painter Emile-Louis Vernier who put St Ives on the international art map. Inexorably drawn to the light, he completed around ninety paintings here between 1884-1887. When he returned to Paris with his paintings, two were exhibited at the Paris Salon. His poignant images of blue oceans and skies, red sailing boats, and calling lighthouses drew keen attention to the little fishing village.

June 2024

If you are visiting the Royal Academy for the Summer Exhibition, you may as well enjoy Flaming June, the incandescent oil painting made by Lord Frederic Septimus Leighton in 1895. A lithe woman sleeps in a dress of gloriously vivid saffron. Her form curls in a circular pose on a draped couch, one foot rests on the floor. Her ankle length hair falls in waves over her flushed youthful face. Behind her, sun rays shimmer over the Mediterranean and perhaps the strong scent of the overhanging oleander flowers have intoxicated her. A peaceful, yet powerful radiance emanates from her relaxed figure. A peep of a nipple, a long luscious thigh and a well rounded buttock all visible though her diaphanous slip.

That Flaming June drowses under a flower known for its toxic effects is perhaps a realisation of the connection between sleep and death. In any case, it can be viewed as an example of the Victorian preoccupation with the myth of Briar Rose, and other passive Sleeping Beauties in need of awakening. Whether one ascribes erotic, imaginative, literal or visual connotations to the subject, it is certain that Lord Leighton (1830-1896) blended the best of high renaissance art to his popular muse. She is Michelangelo’s Night made for the Medici chapel in Florence and the stylised flame haired females of the Pre-Raphaelites rolled into one.

Like her creator, Flaming June has travelled far and wide. She was owned by the London Graphic magazine which put her on the cover of the 1895 Christmas edition. Then, after a ten year loan to the Ashmolean in Oxford in 1900, she disappeared for decades. She was eventually discovered concealed in a box behind a chimney in Battersea in1962 by a builder who sold her only for the value of her ornate frame. There is a rumour that when he was a young man the avid pre-Raphaelite collector, and music and theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber spotted her in a Battersea junk shop for £50. But his grandmother refused to loan him the money to purchase her.

For the last 60 years Flaming June has lived at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. She is  part of the European collection made by Luis A Ferre when Pre-Raphaelite art had fallen out of favour. After the major London galleries refused to purchase her, he whisked her off to the Caribbean in 1963 for a nominal sum. Now, Flaming June has returned home, and is on loan to the Royal Academy from February 2023 where she will stay until January 2024. This is a happy homecoming for a work by Lord Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy for eighteen years from 1878.

When Flaming June was first exhibited publicly at the 1895 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition she caused a sensation. It’s fiery presence prompted Samuel Courtauld to call it, “The most wonderful painting in existence.“  It has since become one of the most reproduced images in the world. One of the preparatory studies of the head of Flaming June was discovered at West Horlsey Place, the country house of the Duchess of Roxburghe, the great aunt of Bamber Gasgoine. The former host of University Challenge unexpectedly inherited the drawing in 2015, which had been hung discretely behind a bedroom door. 

 Today, most of Leighton’s drawings, paintings and sculptures are on permanent show at his studio and house museum at 12 Holland Park Road, a must visit. Leighton House in London is crammed with a lavish collection of richly coloured tiles and textiles gathered from his travels in North Africa and the Middle East. He followed the footsteps of his close friend George Frederick Watts to his Little Holland House studio on nearby Melbury Road. Leighton assembled his awe-inspiring house over many years, where he lived alone. Eight other Royal Academicians were inspired by Watts and Leighton to build studio houses in the area, an artist’s colony known as the Holland Park Circle. Only Leighton’s house remains. 

He made his first submission Cimabue to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1855.This epic painting, five metres long and two metres high, depicts a procession of the Madonna made by Leighton in Rome. On the first day of the exhibition Queen Victoria was persuaded by Prince Albert to buy it. From that moment on Leighton was considered the great hope for British art and he took full advantage of his opportunity to promote art for art sake from within the establishment of the RA. Leighton died devoted to art and his last words expressed his love for the Academy, He lies in St Paul’s Cathedral next to the architect Sir Christopher Wren.

August 29th, 2023

This year marks the 100 year anniversary of a prestigious poetry speaking contest at Oxford in which my grandmother Diana Homer was a prizewinning speaker.

In the spring of 1923 the future Poet Laureate John Masefield made an announcement to The Times that he would be holding a verse speaking contest at Oxford. Masefield was an orphan sent away to sea at thirteen by an aunt who disapproved of his compulsive reading. A distressed seaman abroad and almost shipwrecked, he used his awe-inspiring voyages to inform much of his early writing, including Salt Water Ballads (1902) and Dauber (1913). Now, his plan was to discover a raft of beautiful speakers passionate about poetry to create a mainstream tradition for its performance.

As the principal organisers of the contest, John Masefield and his wife Constance sought help from their circle at Oxford. Gilbert Murray, the Regis Professor of Greek, George Gordon, a Professor of English Literature, Sir Herbert Warren, the President of Magdalen, and two winners of the Newdigate Prize: Laurence Binyon and Heathcote Garrod, a Professor of Poetry, all agreed to act as judges. George Gordon named the two day festival The Oxford Recitations, and gave the opening speech at The Examination Schools on July 26th 1923.

Over five hundred contestants entered, exceeding all expectations. But, after hearing the first dozen or so speakers, Masefield wondered had he made a mistake in pushing for the contest, when a young woman began to speak in a way that made him hold his breath. He later recalled, “I had heard nothing like it. What I had not imagined was the power of such speech upon an audience, which sat as if in a trance.”

A recital by Diana Homer, the daughter of the Unitarian Minister F.A.Homer, would have a similar effect upon John Masefield. Diana was my grandmother, then a teenager drawn to Oxford with a headful of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton set by the judges as test poems in the syllabus, which had been mailed ahead of the competition. She would be a constant winner in the women’s division until 1929. More about that later.

On the whole, the first year of the Recitations revealed impressive talent and application. Each judge selected two favourites from amongst the trained speakers, talented amateurs, up and coming actors and students competing in the ballad, lyric, dramatic and narrative classes to battle it out in the Oxford Prize Class Finals. Highly coveted silver and bronze medals were awarded to the first and second place men and women with prizes of around £200 in today’s money for the exceptional speakers.

The contest took place at the Schools from morning until late in the evening. Door stewards ensured the recitals went undisturbed and prevented the audience from questioning the judges about their decisions, or from asking them for autographs. Clapping was restrained during the day in case exams were taking place elsewhere in the building. But, on Finals night, the crowd was roused into rip-roaring song, ending with a resounding, “Three cheers for Mr and Mrs Masefield!”

A Choir of Nightingales

John Masefield was guided by the revolutionary impules of WB Yeats, whose lecture in Lincoln’s Inn on new ways of speaking poetry he attended as a young man in 1901. Yeats’s methods, with his emphasis on the vowels and the beats, was a step towards realising the poet’s intention, but also a challenge to the stuffy Victorian drawing room approach to recitation. Masefield became a regular visitor to the Monday evening gatherings for poets, writers and painters held in what he described as, "the most interesting rooms in London" in which Yeats overwintered every year between 1895-1919.

By 1924, Masefield had resolved the earlier problems of his contestants shrieking, whispering, going prone or falling off the stage. A third day was added and most speakers were displaying the poems with their voices rather than outlandish gestures. He declared the effect of probably the best speakers in these islands gathered together was that of, “A choir of nightingales.” The excitement and delight of the poetry touched all present with a new feeling for poetry and a new understanding of the principle of speaking it

February 2023

The Painted Rocks 

I spy chipmunks scampering over the rocks on the road to Tafroute. It’s been so long since I saw this striped, squirrel-like creature that for a second it’s hard to remember its name. Back in the 1970’s, chipmunks were caged pets in schools and households across Britain. But roaming free in Morocco, they are released from the karma of captivity. I comfort myself with this thought as we speed towards the Rocher Peinture, a group of brightly coloured granite boulders strewn intermittently amid the desert plains of the Anti-Atlas Mountains. 

The largest rock is the size of a small hillock, and resembles a strong, muscular organ, rather like a giant heart or a lolling tongue. The land artist Jean Verame (1939-) originally painted it a deep azure blue ( left) in the mid -1980’s, but time has weathered its surface to a lighter cerulean (below right). Smaller rocks washed in bubblegum pink and acid green squat like unfamiliar blobs in the landscape. There is spacious desert as far as the eye can see, periodically interrupted by the bright protuberances. It looks and feels like a film set, especially when my lover walks off into the distance, a lone figure in the landscape. As I hang back at the big blue rock, I have a premonition he will soon walk away and not turn back.

A big full moon is strung over the Anti-Atlas as I pick out the Hotel Salama in the middle of Tafraoute's main square. For me the sign is an easy spot as it pokes above the low rise shops and businesses nestling under the looming mountains.The hotel breakfast bar serves particularly good coffee, the butter is excellent, and there is an egg. Later, we barter for blankets and shoes, and when I express how good it is to see the mountains from the town, a small group of traders complain the mountains get in their way!

The sheer beauty of Morocco’s physical geography abounds from the deserts of the Anti-Atlas to the snow striated Atlas Mountains. As the road winds from one place to another, a varied palette of stones create swirly textile-like patterns across the undulating hills, producing a breathtaking variety of ever-changing landscapes. A mountain in the shape of giant tagine cooking pot rises up to the sky along the way. On the ground, pebbles and larger stones have been arranged in piles by the roadside to communicate a myriad of messages; no entry, a place of prayer, a boundary marking the road’s edge, a sheer drop, and other possible alerts left by and for travellers and nomads. The hooded cloaks of the sun wizened men of the Maghreb seem to mimic the mountain peaks. And, late in the day, these pixie-like men sit in groups to appreciate the mountains, which all too soon will block out the rays of the evening sun.

BY ALICE HINES | MON. AUGUST 11, 2014 | 2:00 PM | CULTURE CLUB

“People do seem very nostalgic for that time,” mused photographer Derek Ridgers about the period between 1978-1987, documented in his book 78-87 London Youth. It’s easy to see why: the photographs, snapped in clubs, after-hours haunts, and on the streets of London, capture so many subcultures that still fascinate today, from punk to goth to New Romanticism to skinhead to Acid House. It’s baffling to think that so many movements could have co-existed in such a short period. Even so, subcultures were simpler back then, according to Ridgers.

“Nowadays, there’s nothing that's easy to rebel against.” Fashion was a huge part of that rebellion, according to Ridgers, whose subjects sport everything from mohawks resembling Grecian columns to bones-as-jewelry to Leigh Bowery-esque makeup. (Ridgers also photographed Bowery himself, in addition to Boy George, Michael Alig, John Galliano, Hamish Bowles, and some other names you might recognise.) Of course, one reason nostalgia might be mounting for the era could be that many of the original punks and blitz kids are now in their 50s, in prime time for life reflection. With Derek’s help, we tracked down five intriguing subjects captured in 78-87 London Youth, and asked them about their lives then and now.

How old were you in this picture? Where was it taken?

SAMANTHA BURCHER: I was just 16 years old in this photo (above, right). It was taken in 1980, in the famous Blitz Club in London. I had been a member of the club from the very first evening, and had already been “clubbing” in London for two years.

What were you doing in your life that year? What are you doing now?

SB: I was still at school, but had been seriously distracted by my alternative music and clubbing life. I always shared the stories of my nocturnal adventures with my school friends and fell asleep a lot during lessons. I was the most famous girl in the school. Now, I work as an environmental campaigner and also as a photojournalist. A recent assignment was covering a demonstration about the plight of honeybees, which was fronted by Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett and combined fashion designers and protest.