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A first visit to the National Portrait Gallery

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Our visit to the National Portrait Gallery today was fascinating – plenty of portraits from the Tudors onwards, and the perfect amount of information beside each painting to add another layer to our morning of seeing who was who, and why they were there.

The man above is Jem Wharton (1813 -1856) painted by Liverpool artist William Daniels. This little portrait was on one of the top floors of the National Portrait Gallery, just off from rooms full of huge paintings in lavish detail of various Tudors and members of their courts. What caught my eye was the attitude staring out from the frame, the occupant so watchful of the man who would paint him.

Who was the subject? The information beside the painting told me that it was Jem Wharton, one of the ‘most successful boxers in early 19th-century Britain’, winning his first bare knuckle fight in 1833, and retiring undefeated in 1840. He’s been painted wearing boxing gloves but apparently these were only for training sessions and not actual fights. The detail that he had paused in the middle of training for the artist, made sense for me of the impression I had of his reluctance to be still and to be studied.

This was just one of the many paintings that made me pause and really indulge in the irresistible chance to wander up close to the subjects – to stand and stare without having to look away while I tried to see what the artist had seen.

I loved the visit. My two main impressions: first – the powerful propaganda potential of portraits; and second – there were a lot of portraits of men, painted by men. There were women, but they only really started to come into their own as we worked our way down to the lower floors.

If you’re thinking of going, you’ll need at least a couple of hours and you’ll probably want to go back again.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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A one stop trip on the Elizabeth Line

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Lockdown cracked my London Tube habit. I no longer dive underground as soon as a destination is suggested – I walk. However, just occasionally, I run out of time or get tempted, and it’s usually the Elizabeth Line that does the tempting.

Today I had to travel from Farringdon to Tottenham Court Road. My timings were on the edge by the time I reached Farringdon, so I walked down the two, steep and gleaming escalators to the curve of white tunnel that leads out on to the platform. Wide as a beach this stretched into the distance, everything muted, even the trains. I don’t think I heard a single announcement while I was down there, waiting briefly for the next train to hum in and whisk me on to Tottenham Court Road.

My return journey, a couple of hours later, and a few carrier bags heavier, was just as smooth. And empty. And relaxing.

I think the Elizabeth Line is such an achievement, well worth the 13 years it took to tunnel the 73 miles, east to west. It cost around £19bn which I can’t begin to imagine, but perhaps that’s what you have to pay if you want capacity for around 200 million passengers a year.

Thankfully there were not many of them travelling mid-morning with me today.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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What do your trainers remind you of?

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I studied my pair of trainers and considered the question – what do they remind me of? A lady on the radio said that hers reminded her of what she was capable of. Mine do not do that for me.

First they remind me of lockdown. These shoes were the pair that I wore during the first spring of the pandemic. We spent those months in the City in London, when that part of the capital was virtually deserted. On our daily walks we covered miles up and down the empty streets and along the Thames, with one of the few other sounds being the thudding footbeat of the occasional runners who passed us. We loved those walks, and since lockdown the habit of walking across London has stayed, but not in these trainers. They have been retired from that duty, and their place taken by a younger pair, better suited to the hard un-give of the pavements.

However, these particular trainers were not retired completely, and their next outing came immediately after lockdown when I decided to test them, and myself, on a longer rural walk – the Cotswold Way. The aim was to walk a hundred miles in a week, to raise money for the favourite charity of a friend who couldn’t do the walk herself. I thought it would be fine after all the miles done on London streets, but there were two big differences. First it was a hot week, and second, the Cotswold Way is very up and down. By the end of the Way I had blisters as big as bath plugs, plus the late learned knowledge that the trainers were too small for the walking socks I’d chosen.

So … what do these trainers remind me of? That I should never have bought the cheapest pairs of walking socks in the shop. If you’re ever in danger of making the same mistake, remember that you may well end up paying more for blister plasters than the good pairs of socks would have cost you in the first place.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023