Stories from Highgate Cemetery

Yesterday I spent an hour or two walking around the eastern section of Highgate Cemetery. It has fewer famous graves than the western section (viewable by guided tour only), but nonetheless hosts its share of celebrities -- Karl Marx, George Eliot and Douglas Adams, to name a few. And of course, there are many people buried there who aren't so well known, but nonetheless lived remarkable lives. You can buy a map at the entrance with the most notable graves listed on it, but I thought I'd share what I'd learned about a few people who didn't make the map.



Kenneth Hsiao Chien Lo wrote 40 Chinese cookbooks, starting in the 1950s when Chinese cuisine was unknown to most British people. My father has actually owned a copy of his Complete Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking since I was a kid, but I didn't make the connection when I saw his grave. Mr Lo was also a tennis champion. It's a Chinese custom to put food offerings on the graves of the dead -- hence the oranges.



Tom Wakefield published at least 15 novels, mainly dealing with gay issues, as well as an autobiography. I guess "Mother" is a joking reference to his sexual orientation (and maybe also to the cat he's pictured with), but I'm not sure.



Mansoor Hekmat, also known as Zhoobin Razani, was an Iranian Communist leader and an opponent of the Islamic Republic. He seems to have been fairly humane as Communists go, opposing Stalinism and rejecting both the Soviet and Chinese systems. You can read a wide selection of his writings on his official website.



Simon Wolff was a toxicologist who devoted his short life to campaigning for alternatives to cars. He died when he was just 38 (of a respiratory infection, according to this site), and his widow set up a charitable foundation to continue his work. I found links to three pictures of him here.



Buland al-Haidari was an Iraqi-Kurdish poet. You can read English translations of three of his poems here.



I was disappointed not to be able to find any information about Ahmad Aminzavar, humorist. Googling him led only to other photos of his grave. If anyone does know any more about him, please leave a comment.



Patrick Caulfield was a painter and printmaker. He was part of the Pop Art movement, but you probably didn't need me to tell you that.

The American author Opal Whiteley, whose strange story I recently learned, is also buried in this part of the cemetery. But I didn't come across her grave, and she's not famous enough to be on the map. Maybe next time.

These people lie with many others of whom Google knows nothing; some, perhaps, not remembered by anyone alive today. But their graves all have at least one visitor.

Victorian drawings and watercolours

William Etty - Female Nude
with a Cast of the Venus de'Medici
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

Once again the Courtauld Gallery has produced a small exhibition that knocks the socks off many larger shows. Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours fills just one room, but I found myself lingering in it for a long time. One of the first works you see when you enter is this drawing by William Etty, which today looks a bit like an unintentional feminist statement. The model's expression seems to me to hold a hint of self-doubt, as if she is comparing her own beauty to the idealised form of the Venus de'Medici.

The exhibition is full of little treasures, including lesser-known works by Turner and Landseer, and one of Edward Coley Burne-Jones's sketches for a stained-glass window in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Morris Room (one of my favourite places in the city). There's a watercolour by Edward Lear of The Quarries of Syracuse, which served as the basis for a straightfaced oil painting called City of Syracuse from the Ancient Quarries Where the Athenians Were Imprisoned. But in the lines of the sketch beneath the watercolour, I thought I could glimpse the whimsy of the drawings that accompanied his nonsense verse.

John Ruskin's watercolour Mer de Glace, Chamonix is an intricately detailed study of the surface of an Alpine glacier. Ruskin, with his insistence on close observation of nature, was one of Gerard Manley Hopkins's greatest influences. In July 1868, on holiday in Switzerland,* Hopkins wrote this description of a glacier in his journal:

Walked down to the Rhone glacier. It has three stages -- first a smoothly-moulded bed in a pan or theatre of thorny peaks, swells of ice rising through the snow-sheet and the snow itself tossing and fretting into the sides of the rock walls in spray-like points: this is the first stage of the glaciers generally; it is like bright-plucked water swaying in a pail -; second, after a slope nearly covered with landslips of moraine, was a ruck of horned waves steep and narrow in the gut: now in the upper Grindelwald glacier between the bed or highest stage was a descending limb which was like the rude and knotty bossings of a strombus shell -; third, the foot, a broad limb opening out and reaching the plain, shaped like the fan-fin of a dolphin or a great bivalve shell turned on its face, the flutings in either case being suggested by the crevasses and the ribs by the risings between them, these being swerved and inscaped strictly to the motion of the mass. Or you may compare the three stages to the heel, instep and ball or toes of a foot. - The second stage looked at from nearer appeared like a box of plaster of Paris or starch or toothpowder, a little moist, tilted up and then struck and jarred so that the powder broke and tumbled in shapes and rifts.

But my favourite piece in the exhibition was Millais's The Parting of Ulysses (from Circe) -- a postcard-sized, brilliant blue watercolour that looked like a medieval miniature.

* He went there because he was going to enter the Jesuit novitiate in the autumn, and Switzerland didn't allow Jesuits in, so this was his last chance to visit.

Solidarity with Belarus

This afternoon I went to a demonstration at the Belarusian Embassy organised by the Belarus Committee, a coalition of human-rights and free-speech groups including English PEN, Amnesty International, Index on Censorship and others. The actor Samuel West tried to deliver a letter on behalf of the group, calling for the Belarusian government to respect freedom of speech and assembly and to release all prisoners of conscience. The staff at the embassy refused to open the door.

It has been two months since rigged elections returned the dictator Alexander Lukashenko to power. (He's been president since 1994, during which time Belarus has never had an election judged to be free and fair by international observers.) It has never been easy to be a dissident in Belarus, but the days after the 2010 election saw the biggest crackdown yet. Over 600 journalists, writers and activists were arrested, and 33 remain in custody today. Just two days ago, one activist was sentenced to four years in a high-security prison after a one-day Soviet-style show trial (not too surprising in a country where the police are still called the KGB).

All of this is happening on the European Union's doorstep. So why did only a few dozen people turn up to the protest today? How many right-on British liberals would have turned up if the demonstration had been against Israel or the U.S.?

Peder Balke

Yesterday I popped into the Post-Impressionist section of the National Gallery to have a look at the Cézannes, and also to visit my favourite painting in the Gallery, Rousseau's Surprised! Hanging among the more famous paintings, I noticed a new acquisition: a tiny, almost monochrome seascape by a Norwegian painter called Peder Balke.

I hadn't heard of Balke, but it turns out that's because hardly anyone has. Ordinarily, when we walk around a gallery, we're looking at the work of successful artists -- people who managed to play the game, sell their works, stay in the public eye. Even those who, like Van Gogh, died in poverty nonetheless managed to devote their lives to their art until the end. We don't often hear about the ones who might be called failures: those who eventually concluded that making a living as an artist wasn't for them.

Balke was one such "failure". Even a commission from Louis-Philippe of France was not enough to establish him as a professional artist. In the 1860s, after decades of trying, he gave up. (His Wikipedia article seems to say, in unclear English, that he went to work as a city planner or something like that.) But he continued painting for his own pleasure, and it is the work he produced then that is being rediscovered today.

How many other secret masterpieces are out there, I wonder?

Nothing but flowers

London's weather is due to get gloomy again for the next few days. If you need some colour and cheer, I highly recommend Kew Gardens' Tropical Extravaganza, a celebration of orchids and bromeliads in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. As the pictures I took today show, there is no hyperbole in the name.

Skinny as a dry lease area

Sometimes Google's automatic translator works quite well. And sometimes it, um, doesn't. But at least it produces some beautiful found poetry. Here, according to its English translation of a Korean Wikipedia page, are the known subspecies of slender loris:

• Skinny lease to the highlands
  
• Skinny as a lease of Mysore
  
• Do not lease a bar, Skinny
  
• Lease to the north, Skinny
  
• Skinny as a dry lease area
  

Of course, all these belong to the genus Oh, and Rory scan.

Speaking of talking to strangers ...

If a stranger talks to you in London, it's a pretty safe bet that they're either foreign, from the North (which most Londoners would regard as the same thing) or up to no good. So I was relieved when the man who started chatting to me yesterday turned out to have a foreign accent. We were waiting at a pedestrian crossing near the University of London.

"These signs are very good," he said, gesturing toward the instructions painted on the street.

"Sorry?" I said.

"Well, I am here visiting my son, and I see on the road: LOOK RIGHT. And if I look right, to make sure there are no cars coming, then I will be right."

"Er ... right."

"But if I make a mistake and look left, and I start to go across, and a car comes from the right ...."

"Yes?"

"Then I will be left on the road."

"Oh -- ha ha, very good! Where are you from?"

"Sweden. I am here visiting my son. I used to be in charge, now he is in charge."

"That's always the way."

"He is becoming a man. Well, have a nice day."

"You too."

Museums big and small

The Petrie Museum is the only museum I've ever been to where the staff offer you a torch (flashlight) at the entrance. This collection of Egyptian archaeology is in a very unglamorous university building, and the weak fluorescent lighting means you need help to see some of the exhibits.

When we think of Egyptian artifacts, most of us think of the sort of things housed down the road at the British Museum: glitzy sarcophagi and monumental sculptures. The Petrie, by contrast, tends to have smaller things: little steles, statuettes, fragments of pottery and glass. These objects, accompanied by minimal labelling, fill glass cases in two largish rooms and along the wall of a basement staircase. Looking through them is a bit like a treasure hunt. The Petrie's displays cover a wider time period than the British Museum's -- from the Paleolithic through the Coptic eras -- and also focus more on the lives of ordinary people, with items like clothing and children's toys.

My favourite things in the museum were a series of limestone monkeys from Amarna, made in the 14th century BC. They were once painted, though only traces of the red pigment remain now.

But the most eye-catching thing in the museum makes a very different impression. It's what remains of a Badarian pot burial.

Apparently the skeleton belonged to a man who was quite tall for his day. The museum acknowledges the ethical questions that come with putting his remains on public view. "Should the burial be displayed in this way?" a placard asks.

Whatever your answer to that question, the Petrie's display doesn't seem nearly as dodgy to me as one of the current temporary exhibitions at the British Museum, which blandly celebrates the work of Eric Gill without ever alluding to the fact that he was a child- (and animal-) molesting scumbag. I think that little detail might affect how the viewer interprets both the idiosyncratic sexuality of some of his works and the ostentatious piety of others.

Another special exhibition at the British Museum is more cheerful. It compares traditional costume and jewellery from Oman and the Balkans. They're quite similar in some ways: women wrapped in layers of cloth, coins made into jewellery to show off the wearer's wealth. The Omani section also displays some of the ornamental weapons carried by men.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be my cup of tea (sexism, materialism and violence? Sign me up!), but I enjoyed looking at the brilliantly coloured fabrics used in both places. And it was nice to see a group of schoolkids enter the room and immediately rush over to the displays, calling to each other, "Look at this! Look at this!"

Stranger danger

This afternoon I caught the Tube into central Harrow just as the local primary school was letting out. As I entered the station, I saw a small boy hiding inside one of the tall stands that hold free newspapers in the morning. He kept peering out anxiously at the kids streaming past the station, then ducking inside again.

I thought he might have been hiding from bullies or something,* so I asked him, "Are you all right? Has someone been bothering you?"

In a trembling voice, he said, "My mum's with me," and ran out of the station.

I got the impression that this was what he'd been told to do if a strange grown-up ever approached him. I'm very glad that kids are learning to protect themselves in such situations. But it was still odd to realise that the stranger was me.

*I also have to admit that if it had turned out he was just hiding there for fun, I would have asked to take his picture.

Images of Nature

Multi-Ocellated Racerunner
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

The Natural History Museum recently opened a new gallery to display selections from its vast (and till now mainly unseen) treasury of botanical and zoological art. The gallery will focus on a different theme every year. This year it's the large collection of Chinese watercolours commissioned by the 19th-century naturalist John Reeves. To protect the pictures from light damage, the museum will put a different set of watercolours on show every three months.

Judging by the quality of the works I saw today, I'm going to become a regular visitor to this gallery. This delightful little picture of a rare lizard exemplifies the skill and character of the paintings. Look at the shadow!

Another nice thing about the gallery is that the NHM are using some of the original display cases from the building's opening in 1881 -- reconditioned to protect the paintings, of course. This both allows the museum to claim some extra green credentials and gives a sense of its history.

Signs of spring

Today was an unexpectedly sunny day in London, so I decided to visit Camley Street Natural Park. I'd only recently learned of the existence of this park, tucked away behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations. It's a small place, but when the weather is fine you can walk around it quite a few times without getting bored.



After a long, grey winter, it was a real pleasure to spend time here and see and hear the early signs of spring. The birdsong could be heard even over the massive construction going on nearby -- mainly great tits and coal tits, with the occasional blackbird and robin. There were little clusters of snowdrops and buttercups:





And there was plenty of life emerging from buds, both leaves and flowers.




I went in search of the two tame rabbits mentioned on the park's website, but found that they no longer live there. Apparently the local foxes kept trying to get into their hutch, so a member of staff took them home where they would be safer and less stressed.

The aquarium at the Horniman Museum

I decided to go to the Horniman Museum because I'd read glowing reviews of it, but for a while I was perilously close to being disappointed. In the free part of the museum, the only part I really enjoyed was the musical instrument gallery. The anthropological exhibits had been collected from "primitive" peoples in the Victorian era for the purpose of illustrating the racist theory of "cultural evolution" (although, to be fair, the museum is upfront about this and makes clear that the idea has now been discredited), and the natural history section was full of stuffed specimens. Worst of all, some local parents seem to regard the place as an indoor playground: little kids were screaming and running around the galleries while their parents chatted on the benches.

Then I decided that while I was there, I might as well pay £2 to get into the museum's aquarium, and it was at this point that the visit turned around. I spent the next hour or so happily looking at fish, seahorses, frogs and other water life.

The aquarium's pride is its jellyfish -- it's apparently one of the few places to run an artificial insemination programme for them (though I'm not sure how that works and probably don't need to know). Here's a look at one beautiful creature:



As you can hear, there were still a lot of noisy kids in this section. But at least they were paying attention to the exhibits, and at least their parents were paying attention to them.