At the British Museum's exhibition of I am Ashurbanipal, I heard a couple of women talking Arabic, and they seemed very engaged and animated. I asked if they were Iraqi: Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire is outside what is modern day Mosul, northern Iraq. One said yes, "I am Assyrian!". She was very happy here, seeing all the old artifacts on display and reading the ancient history. It's been a very tough few years over there, with civilisation replaced with utter savagery sometimes. Let's hope things get better.

The quiet, subdued and cathedral like quality of the museum interior makes a perfect antidote to the mad consumerist rush at Christmas. Whenever I stare at the old cuneiform writing tablets (see left) I'm left very confused as to how it all makes sense! But it all did: letters, literature and starting with plain accounting of course.

The word tome means large book. I think Codex Amiatinus is the largest book I've ever seen: an Anglo-Saxon bible a foot tall. Quite exceptionally large and a beautiful piece of work from 1300 years ago, it is the oldest surviving, complete Latin Bible in the world.

Made at the monastery of Wearmouth Jarrow in the North East of England, it is back in England for the first time since it was sent over to Rome as a gift to the Pope. The British Library exhibition Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is a show full of books and writing, and a fascinating journey back to the beginnings of the English language. I just wish I could understand it better.

Swaffham holds an Visual Arts Festival every year, including an exhibition. There are always a lot of bad pictures on show but often a lot of very good ones as well. The "bad" art is generally no worse (and maybe better) than some stuff you'll see at the Summer Show. The Swaffham show is for charity and always worth a visit. I sometimes seriously consider buying something and this year was no exception.

Like last year, one of the people with a small display of ceramic work was Jane Bygrave. A Norfolk artist, she creates some lovely little ceramic figurines. Quirky, with a lot of character.

The National Gallery's Mantegna and Bellini exhibition is the sort of show perfectly suited to London's national art gallery. Not only because they own a few pictures by the two artists but because they have the international clout to borrow other precious paintings from sister galleries in America, Germany and Italy.

Right: The Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine and Mary Magdalene (detail shows Mary), Giovanni Bellini, 1490, Oil on Panel

It's not a "blockbuster" in the way that a Leonardo or a Monet show is (after all, Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini are not well known) but the collection brought together here is very high standard. Some beautiful paintings, as well as drawings from the British Museum and others, as well as sculpture. Worth a second visit.

The National Gallery has a YouTube channel of course, where you can view a short introductory video as well as see Caroline Campbell's longer introduction :

Artist Helen Flockhart has a show on at the Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh called Linger Awhile. Her art is detailed and colourful, with a very gothic sensibility. As far as I could see, she has fans as well: all the paintings (oil on board mostly) were sold. Not bad at all.

Below: I see and Keep Silent, oil on board, 2018, 40x26cm

I've been very lax in updating this blog recently but I have still been doing my usual gallery visits and reading some good books. I've even had bursts of productivity in painting. Unfortunately, I've not managed to write much. I'd ike to rectify that a bit.

Right: A painting by the German artist Rudolf Schlichter called Jenny (oil, 1923).

This painting is part of the Tate exhibition Aftermath. Aftermath is on at Tate Britain, but Tate Modern also has a German-themed exhibition at the moment called Magic Realism, covering Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33. Both exhibitions are very good. The post-war art of Germany was an early fascination for me years ago, the angry and so-called "degenerate" art that appeared in the turmoil of defeat and revolution. Jenny has a very 1920's look, but also a very typical German 1920's look, a bit sad, a bit strange. These two exhibitions (Magic Realism is free) also go with another one at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Colour is Life, devoted to the German Expressionist Emil Nolde. Nolde had more works on show in the Nazi's Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937 than any other artist. His work is very colourful, and sometimes beautiful but, on occasion, he sank to using the same anti-semitic stereotype in one or two religious paintings he produced.

Below: Emil Nolde, Paradise Lost, Oil, 1921.

A big Summer Show this year for the RA, celebrating its 250th anniversary, and curated by Grayson Perry. It's getting quite a monster of an event now, including what appears to be a new annual BBC advertprogram to trail it properly.

As usual, a unique collection of all sorts of art and architecture: you see stuff at the Summer Exhibition you would not see anywhere else. Some very good, a lot I don't like and plenty I don't really understand.

However, this year seemed to have a lot more I thought was terrible. Not merely because it's something I, personally, don't like, but something I felt was bad art, on its own. I know all about the eye of the beholder, and I understand personal taste, but the things I mean here seemed on a different level. When I see something that appears laughably amateur, but see an "RA" after the name, I almost did laugh out loud. Is someone pulling my leg? You really never know today. Even Ken Howard's work seemed a bit flat to me.

There's a lot more I could highlight.

See all the art work here.

I bought three art DVD's last week, two Peter Brown and one Haidee-Jo Summers. I like both painters a lot and they share some similarity in style. I've really loved some recent work from Brown (noted on the blog here and here); he also won the Critics Prize at the recent NEAC show again (see right). There's something very confident, almost effortless, in the way his paintings are put together and I really liked seeing how he did it on the DVD's. Both Brown and Summers manage to do a lot with a small amount of actual paint work sometimes, so nothing is laboured or too fussy. I have a lot of learning to do!

Right: Ned Drawing on the Studio Floor, Peter Brown, Oil, 147 x 107 cm. Winner of The NEAC Critics’ Prize 2018.

Below: Greenhouse with Figure, Haidee-Jo Summers, Oil, 25cm x 35cm

The production company APV also do a streaming option using the Vimeo service, but I've never had much success with Vimeo, and the preview they have didn't work (it didn't play), so that option was off the table. I'd rather buy a digital download like I have for some Will Kemp videos. Anyway, DVD's bought but two of the three didn't play on my main DVD devices. I don't have a dedicated DVD player anymore, relying on my laptop - which didn't play two of the disks. Tried a USB DVD, same thing: chug..whir..chug..whir.. basically getting into some read loop failure. Luckily, my last DVD on a spare Windows laptop worked. Compared to a digital download, this is all far too painful and unreliable.

The BP Portrait Award opened this week at the National Portrait Gallery. A lot of very good paintings as usual, including the stunning winner by Miriam Escoffet: An Angel at my Table.

On the right, however, I'll highlight my own (cropped) photograph of Rebecca Driffield's painting Claire Tomalin. A more painterly picture than some but I really like the style.

This year, the exhibition seemed smaller, although that might just be because it was a lot more cramped than usual. The usual, larger gallery space must be being prepared for another show (maybe the upcoming Michael Jackson exhibition). I think the smaller rooms detract from the experience and I hope they return to the larger space next year

See all the paintings here.

Good weather for a visit on Sunday to see the new Royal Academy, now the building work is almost complete and it's open to the world. This celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding.

And what would Sir Joshua Reynolds, first President of the RA, think today? Especially when confronted with the display they have of some of the current student art work, let alone the dress code nowadays. Probably dumbfounded!

As part of the new displays, we are confonted with something quite horrific in many ways: a cast of a "real" crucifixion (made to "settle an artistic debate"). From the label :

Sculptor Thomas Banks RA and painters Benjamin West RA and Richard Cosway RA believed that most artists' depictions did not accurately demonstrate the effects of crucifixion. To prove their point, they obtained a corpse fresh from the gallows and nailed it to a cross while it was still warm. Once rigot mortis set in, a surgoen removed the skin and Banks made his plaster cast from the flayed body.

The RA has a web page about it. Quite amazing what you coud get away with back then. Below is a detail from a photograph I took. If you want to see all of it, see the web page. Not for the squeamish.

A less unsettling display is a copy of Leonardo's The Last Supper. A large oil painting, it is thought to be a copy by pupils of the master, painted about 1520. The original is extremely degraded now but this copy shows many details lost over time. The RA web page has the history.

A very good article in History Today about the Language of the Roman Empire. The question being: what language did the Romans speak? The answer is quite complicated. It was not just Latin. Not only did the Italian peninsular contain many languages, such as Oscan, Umbrian, Etruscan and Greek, but as the empire expanded, we start seeing languages like Punic used. This was a language spoken by Rome's great enemy Carthage and and all over North Africa. Slaves would also bring in a great variety of languages and dialects. A fascinating and well written article by Katherine McDonald of Exeter University.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to St Peter and Paul Church in Swaffham, Norfolk, for a Sunday afternoon performance of Handel's Messiah by the Merry Opera Company. This was the first time I have heard it live.

The piece is "dramatised" to an extent, the actors play parts; no talking but movement and singing. Initially dressed normally, it only became clear who was in the show when they moved apart from the audience in the church nave and started to sing the parts. Swaffham's Anglican church was a beautiful stage for a wonderful and moving performance about Christ's birth, death and resurrection.

Right: The main Easterly window of the church.

The big stained glass window in front of us all really added to the atmosphere. Amazing voices from only twelve singers and the single organist. It moved me enough to bring a tear to my eye on a few occasions. Handel's music and song is a powerful and beautiful work of art. The singers and musicians did it full justice.

A second visit to Monet and Architecture at the weekend. I noticed a large interactive TV display in the National Gallery's entrance hall displaying a Monet site that Google have put together with the gallery. Not as good as a visit in real life, but very well done and worth a browse :

Monet Was Here

Below: The Promenade Claude Monet in Vétheuil. This is from Google's street view at the Monet Was Here site.

Perhaps I was starting to get a little jaded with the art of Claude Monet: too much impressionism recently perhaps. His work's been central to a couple of big, recent shows: The Tate's Impressionists in London and the Painting the Modern Garden exhibition at the Royal Academy a couple of years ago. Of course, once you get to see the new Monet and Architecture show at the National Gallery, all that quickly falls away as you see, once again, how good he always is. Never mind that he is not really painting architecture or buildings, but light and atmosphere.

At the Impressionists in London, I was struck by a sequence of paintings he made of the Houses of Parliament, a subject he actually treated in a similar way to his famous haystacks. Seeing a few side by side was striking, and a similar feeling at this new show with a sequence of paintings of Rouen Cathedral. A great and prolific artist and always worth seeing.

The BBC adapted Lewis Grassic Gibbon's book Cloud Howe for the radio a year or so ago. On the web page, it used a lovely photograph of a Scottish scene: mountain, cloud and croft. I thought I'd try and paint it. The play of sunlight and shadow on the mountain and the low clouds rolling over the distant peaks really make the scene beautiful.

I think it came out quite well.

Well, it's Venice again, but a beautifully atmospheric take on the city by watercolour painter Martin Caulkin. As seen at the Mall Galleries today at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 206th Exhibition :

The exhibition was very good with many very good paintings as usual.

The Little Drummer Girl
By John Le Carré

Score: 5/5

The secret world is of itself attractive. Simply by turning on its axis, it can draw the weakly anchored to its centre.

Stepping away from the British secret intelligence agencies and into the world of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Le Carré creates a beautifuly crafted story about the hunt for a bomb maker blowing up jews in Europe. I've read that some people don't think Le Carré can write female characters but this book shows that as false. Charlie is a perfectly crafted and realised lead, a left-wing actress who has flirted with a few more extreme wings of the movement, although more a fellow traveller than someone of true conviction. You can hate her and her superficial justifications on one page and love her vulnerability on another. As usual, there are wonderful set pieces and exceptional characterisation. The "interview" she is given before accepting the job (an interrogation really) is a marvellous piece of sustained, taut writing.

We are not speaking of some enchanted forest. When the lights go down on the stage, it will be night-time in the street. When the actors laugh they will be happy, and when they weep they will very likely be bereaved and broken-hearted. And if they get hurt - and they will, Charlie - they will surely not be in a position, when the curtain falls, to jump up and run for the last bus home. There's no squeamish pulling back from the harsher scenes, no days off sick. It's peak performance all the way down the line.

Through Charlie, Le Carré also produces a peak performance.

I work in Wapping so was interested when I saw there was a group of artists calling themselves The Wapping Group of Artists. The Mall Galleries had an exhibition of work from them this month and I caught the last day.

Mostly paintings near the Thames but not too many from Wapping itself (a pity). A lot of very good work on display from a group of talented plein air artists.

Right: Outer Pool, Robin Mackervoy, Oil

This is an iconic Wapping building that I work close to. Beautiful in the sun and the quiet streets.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the new Royal Academy exhibition Charles I: King and Collector. Last week I went to the closely related exhibition Charles II: Art and Power at the Queen's Gallery. Both are showing stunning works but the RA pips the award for the greatest display, even though it's almost twice the cost.

The Royal Academy has some very large rooms and they are needed here, for some of the work is monumental. In particular, there are the nine huge Mantegna canvases of the Triumph of Caesar (c.1484-92), bought from the Gonzaga's of Mantua when they hit some financial difficulty at the start of the 17th Century. Charles' man Nicolas Lanier added these to the collection for his master.

Right: Triumph of Caesar: The Trumpeters by Andrea Mantegna, c.1484-92

See : The life of Charles I: King, collector, tastemaker, traitor by Jenny Uglow.

Who can argue with such greats as Holbein, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian and Veronese? To name but a few ...

Coincidentally, a BBC TV show was on recently about the setup of the RA exhibition, available via the BBC iPlayer : here. It is always fascinating to see how much work goes into this type of show. Great royal propaganda recently

The Three Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End
By Cixin Liu

Score: 4/5

I really enjoyed this science-fiction trilogy by Chinese author Cixin Liu. It's full of amazing ideas in physics, maths, space, cosmology and philosophy. As a novel, it is sometimes a little clunky, especially the characters, who are often very thin, but the dazzling speculation keeps everything moving. The first book of the trilogy, The Three Body Problem, was good enough to convince me to pick up the next in the series, although I procrastinated. Unusually, I thought the second and third books were better. I let the Chinese names wash over me occasionally, knowing I would get used to them, and went along for the ride.

These books are definitely a bit "science nerdy" in (quite a few) parts, but if you like science and cosmology, that's a plus point. This is first contact with aliens and the consequences for Earth over the following decades and centuries: the aliens are invading, are on their way and have managed to sabotage Earth's scientific progress in order to make conquest straightforward. It turns out that the crux of the book is that the universe is not only full of life but that everyone is keeping their heads down. It is a very dangerous place (a "Dark Forest"). Not an entirely new concept but told well, and with a Chinese spin that's fresh. There are a lot of unexpected and wild twists, and slightly fresher perspectives.

It's entertainment but also educational as well, and might kindle an adult or adolescent interest in science and technology. If you like the idea of wondering what multi-decade human hibernation would be like, a fourth-dimensional space, the ultimate type of prisoner's dilemma on board a space warship or just how "magic" advanced technology might be, this is the book for you.

I am now looking forward to reading a book of his short stories: The Wandering Earth.

From a Wired article :

When Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem was published in English in 2015, it became the first Chinese sci-fi novel to win a Hugo award. President Obama took it on holiday. Mark Zuckerberg recommended it on Facebook. Yet even as his reputation spread, Liu, 53, continued to work in a power plant in Shanxi Province.

On Chesil Beach
By Ian McEwan

Score: 4/5

A typically well written book by McEwan but a very uncomfortable read. A frank exploration of the wedding night gone wrong. You cannot trust cover quotes in general, but on a McEwan book, a little more perhaps and the quote from the Independent on Sunday is "Wonderful ... Exquisite ... Devastating", which sets the tone.

Very powerful but also dreadful, in that I can't say I enjoyed reading it because it was so painful. Love can drive people to do the craziest things, as can physical desire and both are very powerful emotions that can overwhelm everything. How can one person know what another truly feels, if they don't say?

The end of January, that is.

It's amazing how fast time flies but some months can be more interminable than others. The New Yorker magazine has a great cover for January 2018, as seen linked at Ann Althouse's blog :

Call for the Dead
By John le Carré

Score: 4/5

This short novel is from 1961 and the first of le Carré's spy books, and the first to feature his recurring character George Smiley. The novel concerns the apparent suicide of a Foreign Office worker after a brief interview by Smiley himself. The fall-out from this leads to deeper problems, including the uncovering of a spy.

Like all the le Carré's books I've read recently, I enjoyed all of this. A lot of the background to Smiley is here, as well as incidents and people mentioned or met in later books. Some scenes, like the teasing out of information at the Repertory Theatre by the policeman Mendel (another great character himself) are absolutely wonderful. Le Carré is masterful when writing minor characters and how they speak and act (it's quite amusing as well). Helpfully, Smiley takes his time to sit and painstakingly list the facts as known at one point, so we also know where we are again. A whodunnit and detective book as much as a spy novel and another great read.

I went to the Tate Modigliani exhibition again, and this time I had a look at their virtual reality reconstruction of his Paris studio. As I was there early, I went straight in. The Tate web site describes it and also has a Youtube video showing how it was done.

Using an HTC VR headset, the experience was pretty good. The headset was fairly comfortable and not too heavy, and the display and rendering of the VR world believable (almost). Even down to the specks of dust in the sunlight (a nice touch) and the cigarette smoke drifting up from the ashtray. Could have used a bit more resolution perhaps, but it was well done.

If you're near Dundas Street in Edinburgh, pop into the Scottish Gallery and have a look at Philip Braham's paintings. Very interesting pictures I'd love to see in real life.

Above: Sighthill Cemetery (after Muirhead Bone),2017,oil on Fabriano Pittura Paper,30x40cm

Above: Leaves in a Pool,2016,oil on linen, 25x35cm

Children of Time
By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Score: 5/5

I was not far into this book before realising how good it promised to be and it did not disappoint.

One of the best books, let alone best "science-fiction" books, I've read. A story that spans a couple of thousand years, interrupted every now and then for the humans as they wake from suspension aboard their "ark" ship in deep space, and check up on things, or make their plans. Time is also a central character when you travel interstellar distances, with the possibility of generations being born and dying, sleepers aging at vastly different rates depending on their wakefulness and activity and lots of changes occurring. Both aboard a spaceship and on a planet.

Tchaikovsky's written a novel that really gripped from the start, in surprising ways. A novel that was exciting, thought provoking and beautiful, with more than one moment leaving me feeling astonished. This is really good. The ending itself was wonderful and inspired. Books like this come along rarely and I think I could easily recommend it to everyone, even the arachnophobes.

Here's to a good, positive and happy 2018. Happy New Year to everyone.

My new year day for the past few years has been a visit to Tate Britain and whatever main exhibition they've had on. This year for the Impressionists in London. I've been before but this is the sort of show I'll happily revisit (and now I am a Tate member, it's free as well). I think that Claude Monet's paintings of the Houses of Parliament are as luminous and beautiful as his famous haystacks. I did not realise he painted so many of them. The exhibition shows off a few near the end and they are really magnificent.