BLYTHE HOUSE, an Edwardian Baroque building with hints of St Trinian’s in London’s Olympia, looks like the headquarters of a shadowy secret service—which is exactly what it was cast as in the 2011 film of John le Carré’s espionage thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As ‘The Circus’, it was the centre of British intelligence during the Cold War, a place stuffed with secrets. In real life, its contents are even more mysterious.
The former headquarters of the Post Office Savings Bank is home to the V&A Museum’s archive, which includes some 20,000 pieces of costume not currently on display in the museum, three million photographs and much more besides: a who’s who of fashion, art and performance history.
Dating from 1899, the building is bitterly cold in winter, roasting in the summer, famous for having lifts that barely work and absolutely labyrinthine—to reach for another Hollywood reference point, it feels a bit like the warehouse in which the Ark of the Covenant, rescued by Indiana Jones, is stowed at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Looking for something with royal connections? Here’s an embroidered silk gown made by Norman Hartnell in 1957 for The Queen to wear to a French state banquet (she wore it twice, then gave it to the V&A). How about a West End legend? Behold, a dress that Cecil Beaton designed for the 1958 stage production of My Fair Lady. Dior? Picasso? Tick, tick.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 05, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 05, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
