Tomás Murray

A stack of paperbacks: Confusion, All Change, Casting Off, and Mr Wrong.

Took me four shops, but I did complete my Elizabeth Jane Howard collection.

Another shot of Wendy Hiller & some of the cast of ‘All Passion Spent’ (1986)

Maurice Denham, Wendy Hiller, & Harry Andrews in the 1986 BBC adaptation of Sackville-West’s ‘All Passion Spent’

Not convinced by The Bride!? Try James Whale’s imperishable Bride of Frankenstein instead New film starring Jessie Buckley, a giant riff on Whale’s horror, might send audiences back to 1935 classic

I wrote a little about first encountering my favourite film. You hardly need to be told why.

www.irishtimes.com/culture/film...

(I think Martin Kershaw was on guitar on at least one track.)

Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West

📸 Howard Coster (c. 1927) & Antony Armstrong-Jones (1961)

Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst

(Still on the bucket list. Long list.)

In her library at Sissinghurst Castle

📸 Norman Parkinson (1949)

🎨 William Strang’s ‘Lady with a Red Hat (Vita Sackville-West)’ (1918), Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow

Vita Sackville-West, Writer, Garden Designer, #BornOnThisDay in 1892, in Knole House, Kent, England

🎨 William Strang (1918)

Three parakeets sitting on a large tree in Kew Gardens. One of them is nicely ensconced in a hole in the trunk, just its head sticking out, while the others are near that one, looking as if they’d perhaps like to trade places.

Good morning, friends, from London!

To whoever it was that rubbed a balloon on this duck’s head- Not Cool.

(Alt for photo - it’s a beautiful little duck with very spiky head feathers)

Murder on the Orient Express with cast to die for- Finney, Bacall, Connery, Redgrave, Gielgud etc! Thank you RTE TV +1!

(Best photographer of place & moment I know*.

*I realise I’m stretching “know” more than a little, but I choose to use it just the same.)

Initially mistook this for a John Atkinson Grimshaw painting and not a photo by my talented brother, @kmale.bsky.social.

“You never smile, Madame la Princesse?”
“My doctor has advised against it.”

With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, & Edward G. Robinson on the set on ‘Key Largo’ (1948)

At work in the studio of her New York apartment

“‘But let’s face it,’ she smiles, ‘the parts I would have given my soul for—real women, real parts—Bette Davis got.’”

www.architecturaldigest.com/story/claire...

Claire Trevor

Olivia de Havilland

(Aside: Claire & Olivia wearing the same necklace.)

With Joanne Woodward in ‘The Stripper’ (1963)

With Fred MacMurray in ‘Borderline’ (1950)

Map in Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’, drawn by E. H. Shepard

“He presently reappeared, somewhat dusty, with a bottle of beer in each paw and another under each arm.”

“‘Shove that under your feet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat.”

“The Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and the Rat was very pleased to indulge him.”

“The Badger’s winter stores, which indeed were visible everywhere, took up half the room.”

Some of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations:

In ‘The Desperadoes’ (1943)

With Bogart in ‘Dead End’ (1937)

With Basil Rathbone & William Powell in ‘Crossroads’ (1942)

With Dick Powell in ‘Murder, My Sweet’ (1944)

With Thomas Mitchell in ‘Stagecoach’ (1939)

E. H. Shepard illustration for ‘The Wind in the Willows’

E. H. Shepard illustration for ‘The Wind in the Willows’

Kenneth Grahame, Writer, #BornOnThisDay in 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland