Category Archives: London

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A visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum

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“The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose” (Sir Joshua Reynolds)

This photograph is of these words displayed in sections above the Cromwell Road entrance.

I had another adventure in the V&A today. The purpose of the visit this time was to meet friends and to look at ceramics. It was a wonderful day with both missions achieved, although without the time to complete all the ceramics.

Today, just as on each of my other occasional visits to the V&A, I got profoundly lost. However, the getting lost came with the usual bonuses: one, stumbling across treasures I never meant to find, and two, achieving a record number of steps trying to get from A to B. I had no intention of going past Z, or even looking at F, but as soon as I lost sight of A, I found myself lost as a ‘traveller in an antique land’, bumping into Ozymandias and at least another dozen despairing souls at every turn.

In the end, getting lost felt like a necessary part of the whole experience, so unavoidable that it left me wondering whether disorientated guests were now considered an exhibit in their own right – their “excellence” dependent of course, on them achieving the “complete accomplishment” of their purpose.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Feeling the heat in the City

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Who would want to saunter along hot pavements, in heavy feathers? Not these birds. These are City pigeons – they make plans, and they know places.

This last, humid week I came across two pigeon pool parties. The group photographed above were enjoying the relative cool of Postman’s Park, while just across the road, there was a more lofty party in the top tier of the fountain in the courtyard of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. There was much splashing and shaking of tail feathers.

I hope they enjoyed themselves, because there are peregrine falcons about, some thirty pairs of them in London. The closest pair to these pigeons was probably the pair who enjoy the view from the Tate Modern. If either of those deadly birds was in the skies above, I think it could have taken its pick from this party. The pigeons would not have stood a chance, not against a bolt from the blue with a diving speed of around two hundred miles per hour … way too fast for even the most athletic of these splashers to have grabbed their towels and flapped for cover.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Dyslexia – finding a way through ‘word blindness’

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This large image is one of the collection displayed in the courtyard of St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Barts) in London. The hospital is celebrating its 900th year of service, and showcasing various moments from its history.

I never knew that Barts had any connection with dyslexia, and I had never heard of Maisie Holt, a phsycologist and neurologist, born on the Isle of Man in 1900 and educated in Cambridge and in London. It was she who apparently came up with the first effective treatment for what was then known as ‘word blindness’. Part of her treatment involved the children posting simple words through the door of the little house, then collecting them and reading them back. As they got the measure of the words their confidence began to return.

Maisie Holt died in 2003 on the Isle of Wight after a life working in education, pyschology and the arts. I also read that she helped in the selection of bomber and fighter pilots for the Royal Air Force in the Second World War.

Here is a link to her obituary on the Wootton Bridge Historical site. She sounds like quite a woman.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023