No picture with this post, but that’s intentional. When the BBC said The History of the World in 100 Objects would be on radio, knee-jerk critics scoffed. “You gotta have telly,” they said. But with the magnificent Neil MacGregor in charge you don’t need pictures. Today it was the Oxus chariot, a model which shows how bigwigs got around the Persian empire, 2500 years ago, in “the Ferrari or Porsche” of its day. Woven into the fifteen-minute broadcast were details of the emperor Cyrus’s enlightened rule (Iran could use him now) and the empire’s astonishing multi-culturalism.
But then both Mrs BB and I believe MacGregor, director of the British Museum, can walk on water. For me he did the impossible. His TV series, Seeing Salvation, drew me into a form of painting (Christian art) I’d regarded as formal, sterile and alien. He’s been offered a knighthood and turned it down, has been approached by New York and turned them down. The Times Online refers to him as Saint Neil but that seriously under-rates him.
NEW SERIES
Hymns Ancient & Modern poetry primer
Who so beset him round/With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound/His strength the more is
The opportunistic rhyme.
Solid joys and lasting pleasures/None but Zion’s children know.
The inept adjective (two of them).
The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ…
The non-sequitur.
There is a green hill faraway/Without a city wall
The planning application.
With salvation's walls surrounded,
Thou may'st smile at all thy foes.
Is that all?
Novel progress 22/2/10. Ch. 16: 0 words. Chs. 1 - 15: 67,628 words. Comments: Hatch in Arcadia.
Monday, 22 February 2010
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