This painting is from a photograph I took a year or so ago: a bright sunny day on The Mall in London. This was looking towards the Mall Galleries and I liked the dappled light falling through the trees and onto the marble columns. The painting has not turned out as well as I wanted, but that might be the usual state of affairs! Maybe I bit off a bit too much. Having said that, it finished better than it looked when half completed, and I might learn to like it more, which sometimes happens.

It is 400 years ago that Shakespeare died (on April 23rd 1616) and there has been plenty of things to see and do to celebrate the Bard, including at the British Museum. Here, an all-day Sonnetathon from Poet in the City, with actors and performers reading a seelction of sonnets throughout the day in the Great Court.

Great idea, but unfortunately the acoustics did not seem to work too well in the space and I found it fairly hard to hear the words.

I was passing through on my way up the stairs to the left, and to the new Sicily Culture and Conquest exhibition. Hopefully more about this later but initial impression is that it was very good and just the sort of show I like. Definitely more visits to come.

Kolymsky Heights
By Lionel Davidson

Jean-Baptiste Porteur, or Johnny Porter, is a Gitksan Indian from British Columbia, a member of the Raven clan. He is a prodigy with language, cautious, taciturn, extremely resourceful and clever. Tricky. A perfect secret agent for a very particular job.

This was an amazingly good read. Well written, exciting and another excellent thriller from Davidson. This is the second book of his I have read, after The Rose of Tibet, and on this form I will be reading many more. Kolymsky Heights is not only exciting, it is full of detail of language, landscape and life in the Artic, especially the natives of Northern and Eastern Russia, people I had never heard of. Like all great novels, you learn a great deal as you enjoy the read. Like Philip Pullman's review: the best thriller I've read.

On the right, a detaill of Rembrandt's The Jewish Bride, a late masterpiece painted around 1667.

In the recent BBC4 Television program Schama on Rembrandt , Simon Schama calls this "the painting of love". It is a very beautiful and tender picture and another very good documentary from the BBC. Fittingly, for one of the greatest artists ever.

I was lucky enough to see this and many other pictures at the National Gallery a year or so ago, at their Late Works exhibition.

The Royal Academy is posh and a bit more expensive than many places, but they definitely know how to put on a good show. This one is extremely good, and no surprise it is very popular. On Easter Sunday I visited Painting the Modern Garden.

Every room was stunning, and there are a lot of rooms and a large space. Because the entrance to the show was busy (they often act as bottlenecks), I decided to make my way to the last room, sweeping through the first few and getting a brief snapshot of everything. From the end, I worked backwards: not always ideal in an art exhibition, but not a big issue with this one I think. So I started with the rare sight (outside France) of Monet's amazing water lilies, three of the large canvases side by side.

But there is a lot more than Monet in a very well thought out and presented exhibition, including many artists I had never heard of, like Santiago Rusiñol and Henri Le Sidanier, to name only two of note.

The subdued lighting of the room named Gardens of Silence made Rusiñol's Glorieta stand out as if on fire, as it almost glowed. One almost needed to give all the paintings a great reverence.

Le Sidanier's paintings had a beautiful and ethereal quality to them. Another artist I need to look out for.

I knew to expect a crowd because I had seen it when I was here a few weeks ago for the Giorgione exhibition upstairs. I also saw how far ahead you had to book to get a ticket at a decent time. This was definitely worth the wait