From the collections of the Imperial War Museum (© IWM HU 140004), I’ve never seen this photo before. There’s no address on it, but it was taken in Norwich following a Baedeker Raid which took place on 29 April 1942. The man was the owner of the shoe shop which had been destroyed, looking through to see if he could salvage any of his stock.
I’m still rummaging through the Imperial War Museum’s on-line collection of photos (© IWM HU 36206) and this is very much smiling in the face of adversity. Perhaps it’s a little stage-managed, but maybe the home-owner is pleased to be at least able to save their plant and clock. The exact location was never noted, but the photograph was taken in London in 1940.
I’m sure I saw a snake just like this last year when walking near to Hoveton….. They’re everywhere….
I like the sign to the left of this painting by Marcus Gheeraerts (1561/2-1636) which reads “what would you wear in a photo if you really wanted to impress someone?” as this certainly looks like some sort of dare. But, it’s not, it’s very serious and it was the uniform of an Irish soldier, who kept their legs bare for reasons that I’m not sure that I can understand (but is probably related to the need to fight in Irish bogs). The embroidered top isn’t quite part of the uniform, that’s just an indication of how wealthy Captain Thomas Lee (1551-1601) was. The painting is also seen as an attempt by Lee to impress Queen Elizabeth I, although his life plan didn’t quite work out as he was executed at Tyburn in 1601 and the Queen didn’t stop it.
The artwork was painted in 1594, which was the prime of the artist’s career as he fell a little out of favour after this. The museum holds a few paintings by Gheeraerts, but I’d say that this one is the most spectacular looking and the gallery was able to acquire this painting in 1980.
The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….
Hobbledygee
This is quite apt, thinking about my plan to walk the LDWA 100, it’s defined by the dictionary as “a pace between a walk and a run, a dog-trot”. I’m not sure that I walk that fast, as my walk pace tends to be between a walk and a walk, there’s no running involvement. The word origin is sadly a little lost, it can also mean someone who walks with a bit of a limp, which is more like me if I’m tired. If I can work out how to pronounce this, then I might just try and use it in conversation on LDWA walks, as there are a few members who naturally walk at this hobbledygee pace.
This artwork doesn’t make Lady Kytson (1547-1628) look the most glamorous, but it wasn’t the done thing at this time to smile for portraits. She was a brave lady and remained a Catholic at a time when this wasn’t perhaps entirely wise under the Protestant rule of Queen Elizabeth I, meaning that Kytson was arrested and her activities were monitored.
The artist was George Gower (1540-1596) who was a popular portrait painter of the period (there were more P’s there than I initially intended). This artwork was acquired by the Tate in 1952 and is the oldest surviving work by Gower, along with the portrait of her husband, Sir Thomas Kytson. By 1581, Gower had become the Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth, meaning that he had become something of a court favourite. As an aside, the gallery only worked out what the hat she was wearing was meant to look like when the painting was thoroughly cleaned in 1995.
Not all rocks are old…. This exhibit at the Natural History Museum was formed in a coal mine in the 1800s, when the white mineral barium sulphate met coal dust. This only happened when miners were at work, so there’s a wider gap on Sundays, or “a calendar in rock” as the museum calls it.
And my last photo (for today at least) from the Imperial War Museum archive (© IWM H 11689), this is a photograph of Sheringham beach which was taken on 12 July 1941 by Captain Len Puttnam. The military had allowed the public to access the beach, but they were present to ensure that they didn’t stray too far, with the men of 2/5th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment overseeing proceedings.
This is Queen Victoria Street in London following an air raid that took place on 11 May 1941. This is another photo from the Imperial War Museum archive (© IWM HU 1129) and it was taken by the London Fire Brigade to record the moment. The lighting makes it quite an evocative photograph on what transpired to be the last night of heavy bombing during the London Blitz, although no-one in the image would have realised that. The Blitz had wrecked large chunks of the capital and this is evident at the bomb map at http://bombsight.org/.
A plaster cast of Megatherium, one of the largest mammals that has lived, and it’s effectively just a giant ground sloth. This cast was made in 1848 from two different skeletons and it’s been on display in the museum since 1850. I’m sure that, even at this large size, it still looked quite adorable and the animal could be as long as six metres in length from head to tail. They were found in the Americas and one of the reasons thought for their extinction around 12,000 years ago is human movement into the areas where they lived.
