Peter McCullough

Ah, yes. ‘Part of BBC’s AI Unpacked Week’.

Is everyone in the UK appreciating R3’s big normalise-AI-in-the-arts push this morning?

I despair.

1510 probate record with a seal depicting the murder of Thomas Becket

Spotted in the searchroom this week was this 1510 probate with a very interesting seal! It appears to depict the murder of Thomas Becket and is in pretty good condition given its age! 📷 D/EBP/E33

Same three here!

Right up there with 'No man is an island' is NOT A POEM.

Warner of Mildenhall? Who was the clergyman he tried to appoint, just out of further interest?

They were soon estranged, so no happy ending, but through their daughter Hengrave came to the Gages of Firle. A+ matrilineal Catholicism.

I wonder whether one of the layers here is the fact that Paget's late sister had been the first wife of Mary Kitson's father . . .

Yes!

This👇(+Alt text) is how to measure ‘impact’.

Will rummage tomorrow!

Working on Suffolk clergy at the moment (quite a bit earlier, but . . . and increasingly impatient with county-wide stereotypes of churchmanship); could you share the name?

Guardian headline: ‘Kuwait mistakenly shoots down three US fighter planes, as US says Iran’s “reckless” attacks threaten regional stability’

Is it a competition to see how much irony can fit in one headline?

Kier Starmer reaches new levels of idiocy. Fool, utter fool. Who in the UK wants to be part of the orange man’s war? And Starmer has, with yet another u- turn, escalated it. Out, out, out with him and his party.

Paperback copy of Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove, on a desktop with glasses.

WHAT a scorcher. (Though I will admit to being glad of the appendix with his notebook sketch so I could check that I had correctly understood what happened.)

Know nothing about his travels, though as a Crewe client I’ve always assumed he made the rounds! Green 291 about ‘my time of residence’ in September?

@markkirby.bsky.social I always wondered whether this gave Fitzherbert Adams any ideas for filling the coffering in the chapel @lincoln.ox.ac.uk

So important, this 👇

Surface of small wildlife pond bulging with frogspawn.

The frogs have really been at it.

Perfect.

Strange. Squirrels usually leave them alone (vs crocuses or tulips). If heavy soil maybe just the wet did for them?

View down a spring border with white plum blossom on right, lots of small yellow narcissi in the middle, yew hedge, gravel path down the left. In middle distance talk ornamental grasses left standing over winter, and bronze dry leaves on hazel hedge.

Some things to be happy about today, cont.

Swift by Charles Jervas (1710, NPG); quotation from Swift's 'Argument Against Abolishing Christianity'.

'my discourse [is] intended only in defence of nominal Christianity, the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent, as utterly inconsistent with all our present schemes of wealth and power'

Jonathan Swift anticipating (1708) what Reform means by a 'Christian country'.

*same*

👉’broad multiethnic coalition’👈

💚

🥰💚

Perfect. Those are wonderful, and new to me.

A very small mahogany chair with rush seat and simple brace latch under for fixing unfolded; displayed in front of a mural blow-up of one of his landscapes in oils.

The Constable vs Turner exhibition @tate.bsky.social is every bit as good as reviews have said. Closes April and booked up well into March.

I was particularly taken with Constable’s little folding outdoor sketching chair.

Absolutely brilliant.