Autumn, or fall if you’re from across the pond, is prime time for foodies (and anybody that’s never grown out of kicking leaves). And, while heat isn’t a given in the Irish (or English) summer, that evening sun and crisp morning air (and the joys of a well-cut jacket) give a renewed sense of purpose. For us this means a celebration of The Westbury’s 40th anniversary, a chance to (re)discover the wonderful Irish sculptor, Hilary Heron, a paen to the humble (harvest) loaf, and an introduction (for those unfamiliar) to the mayhem of Bonfire night. Oh, and we’re introducing the London Film Festival, too.
LADY GREGORY, WE PRESUME
This autumn we’re celebrating anniversaries of Dublin icons, Lady Gregory (founder of The Abbey, The National Theatre of Ireland, 120 years ago), and relative whippersnapper, The Westbury, created 40 years ago by PV Doyle. And what better way to support The Gregory Project (the Abbey Theatre’s female-led programme to honour her legacy) than with a Lady Gregory Afternoon Tea at The Westbury? It’s possible that a tower of featherlight confections doesn’t have the heft and range of its cultural cousin, the Abbey Theatre’s powerful new production of The Sugar Wife (“exploring the dark side of global commodities …and asking urgent questions
about money, marriage and morality”), but the Lady Gregory Afternoon Tea does pose some of its own. How did our pastry chefs conjure such a delicious Choux au Craquelin, strawberries and mascarpone cream (inspired by the one act comedy from 1904, Spreading the News)? Or, who could resist the Gâteau Opéra, (our tribute to The Rising of the Moon, an exploration of Anglo-Irish relations at the beginning of the 20th century) even after those heavenly sandwiches, scones, et al? (Top tip: Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve NV Champagne and fragrant tea helps). Find out more, and book yourself a table… doylecollection.com/ hotels/the-westbury-hotel/dining/afternoon-tea
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ON THE COVER
Crazy Jane (detail) by Hilary Heron from The Doyle Collection at The Marylebone hotel.
Slice of the City is published on behalf of The Doyle Collection by Rivington Bye Ltd. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. All details correct at the time of publication but may change. For all editorial enquiries: enquire@rivingtonbye.com
THERE BE TREASURE
Calling all kids at The Bloomsbury. We’ve a one-hour treasure hunt featuring 19 clues, with answers to be found in the immediate neighbourhood. Tick them off, hand them in and win your ‘treasure’ (aka, a small surprise gift). instagram. com/hotelbloomsbury/p/ C4x9gTnIf65
JOIN THE AFTERPARTY
WEEKEND WITH A TASTEMAKER
For our third Cork Curator’s Weekend, the itinerary of William Murray (home cook, food writer, artist and one half of Currabinny) entices guests to visit the places he always goes back to. William’s loves (food, history and the arts) will take you to Old Cork City Waterworks, the Butter Museum, Mother Jones Flea Market, Sin é pub and Triskel Arts Centre - a busy weekend at The River Lee. doylecollection. com/hotels/the-river-lee-hotel/slice-of-the-city/weekends-in-cork/meet-our-curators
News & Views
We’re back sponsoring the Bloomsbury Festival (18th-27th October) again this year, and it’s a “world-class cultural line-up with a distinct local twist”. In practice it’s around 130 events (music, literature, performance, lectures, exhibitions) all over the neighbourhood, each just a stone’s throw from The Bloomsbury. Which is where we’re hosting the festival’s official closing party (in The Bloomsbury Club Bar), which is open to all and features live music from a festival performer – watch this space. bloomsburyfestival.org.uk
THE LATE, LATE CLUB
Sitting by a lazy river as evening segues into night, sipping mighty fine (classic) desert-themed cocktails to the smooth sounds of live jazz make for long conversations and memorable nights. The Late Club at The River Lee is open Friday and Saturday from 10 till late. instagram.com/theriverclubcork/?hl=en
A TASTE OF MARYLEBONE
In our latest London Weekend Curators package, food writer Milly Kenny-Ryder has curated a 48-hour itinerary that takes guests through cobbled streets and lush gardens to Marylebone's best artisan producers, galleries, and boutiques. doylecollection. com/hotels/the-marylebonehotel/slice-of-the-city/ weekends-in-marylebone
OOOH, FASHION
We’re celebrating two of the V&A’s top exhibitions (a collection of Elton John’s photographs and a celebration of the life of Naomi Campbell), with our V&A Experience package featuring complimentary tickets to both. doylecollection.com/hotels/thekensington-hotel/packages/the-v-a-experience
THE BEE'S TEAS
In our latest ‘treating the kids’ news we’ve a special afternoon tea to be served in The Coral Room and Dalloway Terrace, just for young folks! Along with our head bee keeper (from Silent Pool), we conjured a sustainable bumble-bee-themed-tea (spot the honey) with a mocktail on arrival. thecoralroom.co.uk/ children-afternoon-tea.
Remember, remember The fifth of November Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
I see no reason, Why Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot
While the Guy Fawkes rhyme might sound like some arcane incantation, summoning a dark curse from the mists of time, in reality it’s as well-known as a nursery rhyme, quotable by pretty much every child from John O’Groats to Land’s End. Brought out, dusted down and recited for about a week at the start of every November and celebrated on the 5th with flaming bonfires and an up to £500m spend on fireworks.
The answer to the question ‘er, why?’ is complex, as it so often is when history is involved. Why has an unsuccessful attempt, over 400 years ago, to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the King on its State opening, by a bunch of disaffected gentlemen proved so enduring?
Why did they do it in 1605 and not before? Why November? How did they gain access to the parliament building? What caused them to be discovered? Why is a gunpowder plot celebrated with what is probably the biggest night of the year for the modern equivalent of the gunpowder industry?
The first factor to help us understand the dynamics of the day is to get a handle on their faith and the right to worship freely at that time. It is widely known that the men who tried to blow up parliament were Catholic. And that since Henry VIII split with the Roman Catholic church to enable his divorce from Catherine of Aragon (to pave the way for his subsequent marriage to Ann Boleyn), aside from the brief reign of Henry and Catherine’s daughter
‘Bloody Mary’, Catholics were pretty much universally terrorised.
A little less so well known is that many Catholics still occupied high office – and there were several powerful, noble Catholic families, most notably the Howard family (Dukes of Norfolk) who simply had to be discreet about it. In the main though, life was not easy for Catholics and they were subject to waves of persecution throughout the reign of Elizabeth I. Upon her death and the accession of James I (and VI of Scotland), who succeeded Elizabeth and was son of the cousin she famously executed (Mary Queen of Scots, herself a Catholic) it was widely expected that a new spirit of religious tolerance would be introduced - as James had indicated
it would. But the widely heralded peacemaking proved to be merely rhetoric. And, while he professed little desire for active persecution, King James made it clear early on that the status quo would stay broadly the same.
At the time, powerful Catholics, while still able with some effort to avoid being terrorised for their faith, were yet tired of being denied opportunities to take up power that, had they been Protestant, would have been theirs by virtue of their birth. And it was from the gentry, unusually, that this revolution came.
The plotters first met in October 1604, at the Duck & Drake pub (now long gone) on The Strand. And despite many the uprising
first mooted in a pub becoming a footnote by closing time, this plot stuck. Perhaps because all 13 of the plotters were devout Catholics. Perhaps because of their class and resources. But the original line-up of Robert Catesby, John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour (unrelated to Anna, incidentally), Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham were detemined.
While Guy Fawkes is the one remembered, his role was as a professional. He had been a soldier, fighting in Spain, and was expert in making explosives. So he was to manage and ignite the colossal amount (36 barrels) of gunpowder they considered necessary
to blow up the Houses of Parliament upon its state opening (attended by most of the ruling class, from Royal Family to Lords), killing everybody there.
Originally Parliament was set to open in February but a bout of the plague gave the plotters more time as the opening was eventually postponed until 5th November. Time they would have needed had the plot gone to its original plan. Their first strategy was to tunnel under the building – something that immediately proved far too difficult. Their second was simplicity itself. At that time the vaults under the House of Lords were rented out for storage. The plotters’ status made it easy for them to secure a space – Guy Fawkes did it, under the alias John Johnson. Though,
A stuffed 'Guy' Fawkes sits atop a huge bonfire as part of the annual celebration on 5th November in Lindfield, Sussex
sadly history does not recall how on earth they dragged their 18 hundredweight of gunpowder and slow burning fuses there, undetected. But install it they did and, guarded by Guy, the plotters counted down the last few days.
As the saying goes “Loose lips sink ships” and it was most likely an unguarded moment of Catholic solidarity that gave the game away. One of the plotters sent an anonymous note to Baron Monteagle – a Catholic nobleman – telling him not to attend the opening as “they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them”. Instead of burning the letter as instructed, Monteagle immediately handed it to Secretary of State, Lord Cecil who took it to the
Privy Council and the King. They then searched the vaults below parliament and discovered Guy Fawkes, booted in spurs, beside 36 barrels of gunpowder, ‘hidden’ behind piles of wood, apochryphally readying himself to light the slow burn touchpaper, though most likely he was just sitting about waiting. To this day the letter writer is unknown – though is considered most likely to be Francis Tresham for two good reasons. He was named by Guy Fawkes under torture after his arrest and Monteagle was Tresham’s brother in law. But there remain almost as many theories as there were plotters, and the writer of the letter - which still exists – has never been proven. Suspects include Cecil himself –there are many theories that the plot was known of and monitored and Monteagle
tested by the letter and proven loyal by his allerting the authorities. Robert Keyes had doubts about the method and ultimately separated himself from the others, so it may have been him. And a servant of Catesby, Thomas Ward, is also suspected as the letter has been said to indicate someone less well educated, and he was recruited unwillingly.
Regardless, they were all rounded up within days, the customary thumbscrews applied and the dread sentence of being hung, drawn and quartered enacted in and around January 1606. And there it would have ended, becoming a footnote in history, had James I not decreed that an effigy of Guy be burned every year on November 5th ‘lest we forget’.
ALLY PALLY
Why is a gunpowder plot celebrated with what is probably the biggest night of the year for the modern equivalent of the gunpowder industry?
What better place to host one of London’s biggest firework displays than the highest point in the capital? Alexandra Palace (colloquially known as Ally Pallyshown left) boasts the city’s oldest display – it’s been running for over 150 years and it really is one of the hottest tickets in town. This year they’re adding a drone show to the mix. Book ahead. fireworks.london/display
BATTERSEA PARK
Right beside the river and in one of London’s loveliest parks, Battersea Park celebrations are legendary and usually feature lots more besides. In 2023, the displays took place over two nights but details for 2024 (beyond confirmation that it’s on) were not yet released at time of going to press. Whatever the format, the fireworks will be epic. And can be viewed just as well from the north bank of the river if you prefer. batterseaparkfireworks.com
Something the British people have obligingly thrown their all into ever since. For centuries bonfires and beacons have been the chosen means of marking the day. During the 20th Century home firework displays became de rigeur. Today, we have moved on considerably from the little boxes of Standard fireworks featuring the sputtering catherine wheel, misfiring roman candle and rocket with a single bang, that typified garden fireworks of yesteryear. Instead, it’s all about the great public display. London’s are famous. While there’s a display in many a neighbourhood park, we have compiled a top five of the big displays. (NB. If you choose another, check it’s definitely on and book ahead. In every display, expect to arrive early for a good spot. Alternatively, every rooftop bar in London will be taking bookings - in all honesty, you’ll see it all in the surrounding technicolour skies, though without that visceral boom and with fewer oohs and aahs).
CORAM FIELDS
Coram fields is delightful little park in Fitzrovia (moments from The Bloomsbury) to which adults can only gain entry with their little ones. And, unsurprisingly, they do just about the most child-friendly fireworks in the capital. This year, along with some fabulous fireworks, they have fairground rides, food trucks and lots to do. Oh, and it’s on 5th itself rather than the nearest weekend. coramsfields.org/event/fireworks
HARROW
With a funfair, performances, food trucks, bars and humungous firework display, Harrow (North West London) fireworks take place in Byron’s park and are pretty fabulous. Parking is non-existent, so they recommend public transport (or a cab of course). Simply follow the hordes (and signs) and enjoy! harrowfireworks.co.uk
WIMBLEDON PARK
Twin displays in Wimbledon and Mordon parks keep the residents of south west London happy with spectacular fireworks, fairgrounds, food stalls, bars and all the usual shenanigans. There are two firework displays (one themed for kids, one for older teens and adults) so it’s quite a night, and the council are working hard with a mix of carbon offsetting and sustainable sourcing, to keep it as eco friendly as possible.
It’s not as OTT as Cannes or downlow as Telluride, but the London Film Festival is well worth a visit…
Founded in 1957, the London Film Festival (LFF) is one of the world’s oldest and this year runs from 9th-20th October 2024. It’s organised by the British Film Institute (BFI) to showcase 12 days of film in over 20 venues for close to 450,000 people. The full programme isn’t revealed until 4th September but the hottest ticket has got to be Steve McQueen’s Blitz a powerfulsounding movie about wartime Londoners with an all-star cast led by Saoirse Ronan, Paul Weller and Stephen Graham. While the festival will close with a LEGO animated biopic of the Renaissance colossus that is Pharrell Williams.
Tickets are released on the 9th (BFI patrons), 10th (members) and 17th (everybody else). With movies recently premiered at the LFF as garlanded as Killers of the Flower Moon , Poor Things and The Holdover (plus featured films including Maestro, The Bikeriders , May December and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget), you can imagine the red carpet calibre. Recent big names to walk it included Martin Scorsese, Daniel Kaluuya, Jessica Chastain, Timothée Chalamet and Florence Pugh, to name but a few.
With awards on offer for best film, first feature, best documentary and best short, there are many ways to tell stories on show. Some films you’ll watch going from Golden Globes to SAG, Baftas to Oscars. Some you may never have the opportunity to see again. So, read through the list and book as many as you can. Put the big hitters in your diary and pop along to rubberneck arrivals, and don’t forget to get tickets for your young people – 16s-25s are actively encouraged with heavily discounted admission, ‘film industry opportunities’ and the chance to see some sensational work. Check out the #londonfilmfestival hashtag on Insta or TikTok. Tickets and programme: whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff
The Festival team use headshots to filter
general public from the stars and crew
then guide them first to a roster of primed press and then to be papped against the film sponsor boards. The volume of international films and new talent requires that photographers often need to to be told by the film companies what and who is worthy of their
Festival bookends with a number of Gala nights: starry screenings in large venues. Low budget and international films can be easier to access. Check the programme, but many screenings conclude with actor/director Q&As.
PHOTOGRAPHS BERND TALASCH
As we visit the IMMA’s overdue retrospective of the work of mid-20th century Irish artist, Hilary Heron - her first exhibition in 70 years - we have questions!
Take a fleeting glance at the life and work of the groundbreaking Dublin-born sculptor, Hilary Heron, who was lauded and applauded throughout her life, who counted titans of global art and literature among her friends and peers, and who sold her work successfully from the off, it’s impossible to believe that just a few decades on she has been almost entirely forgotten.
Here's Curator of Exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), co-curator of Hilary Heron, A Retrospective, Seán Kissane.
Below: Hilary Heron varnishing Crazy Jane III (1958) at IELA 1958. Right: Crazy Jane, now in The Doyle Collection, was inspired by W.B. Yeats’s poem, Hairy Molly, who might be Dublin's Molly Malone.
“It has always been my ambition to organise a restrospective of Hilary Heron - because I knew that her reputation was so huge in the mid-20th century. And that she had represented Ireland in the Venice Biennale (which is sometimes called the Olympics of Art). I knew from looking at her work that her personal vision was extraordinary and her technical innovations unmatched by any artist working in Ireland at the time. But she had been so forgotten and so neglected that I simply couldn’t find enough work.”
Seán has been at the IMMA for 20 years, his research and exhibition programming mainly focused on “the work of women and queer artists, alongside which I explain that through the problem of historiography have been left out of key histories of art and ignored in major studies and the wider art market”. Despite his specialisation in overlooked stories and his determination to somehow put on a Hilary Heron restrospective, it was only when an Irish researcher named Billy Shortall started his thesis on Hilary Heron (for a Masters at Trinity College) that Seán saw a glimmer of hope.
“Billy came to talk to me about his thesis and it included his attempt at a catalogue raisonné, which is a comprehensive list of the artist’s works; what they are and where they are. As soon as Billy had completed that, it was like, Bingo!
He literally made it possible for the first time to attempt the restrospective, simply because he’d done so much towards tracing her works.”
One of the biggest challenges to pulling together Hilary Heron’s work is paradoxical. Because she was so successful and so good at selling her work, very little of it is in the public domain. Instead, much of it was sold into private collections. She didn’t really do conventional likenesses of people – so she didn’t create public statues to commemorate the great and the good. And there wasn’t much of a market for her uncompromising creativity and wit in the public sphere. Plus, she believed in making one-off pieces – so she didn’t do editions, casting identical pieces in numbers –meaning the number of works was limited.
Here's Seán… “Works can disappear into private collections. And many have been passed on, with artworks now in the collections of second or even third generations of the families that bought them. Also, there is a paradox about some artists which is that the more the collectors love the work, the less likely it is to appear on the market - people tend to sell stuff that they don’t really like. And if they know they have a piece that’s really precious and rare, naturally they hold onto it. Sometimes these works only appear in estate sales, so someone has to die for it to come onto the market. But in my experience, the families who owned Hilary Heron’s works have held onto them. It’s a real contradiction. Pieces that are really highly prized don’t tend to appear on the market and it can seem impossible to find them.”
Despite the head start Billy Shortall’s thesis gave him, Seán still needed to do plenty of detective work… “So, we went through various ways to try and locate enough works to show. We did a preview in the Irish Arts Review – back in 2023, I wrote a feature telling people we were planning a retrospective and asking them if they owned a Hilary Heron, to please let us know so that we could include it. And people were just so generous. One lady got in touch; she had bought a portfolio of Heron catalogues and photographs many years ago – and she said she could simply drop them into IMMA, as a gift. And it was amazing – literally hundreds of images with little bits of information. We went through it forensically, discovering more about Heron’s works – and where they might be. Next, we needed to find the pieces that are held in public collections. IMMA has been trying to buy some works from auction in the last few years. Plus, we knew there were some pieces in the Ulster museum. So, we were able to chase those and start to round them up.”
WHATEVER HAPPENED
TO
CRAZY JANE?
“Another challenge was that because Heron had been so successful in her lifetime, many of the works had ended up in North America.”(In fact, Leslie Waddington had expressed concern even then at what he saw as her over reliance on the American market.) “So, we traced a couple of works to what are now public foundations. One in particular named the Emily Tremaine Foundation. It turned out that Emily was a very interesting woman who had been collecting art and commissioning incredible 20th century architects to design and build landmark properties, too. She collected Heron works then set them alongside giants of American Abstract Expressionism, so in one of her homes designed by Philip Johnson, Heron’s Figurehead (1952) is displayed alongside Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Tauschenberg and Jim Dine.”
More breakthroughs came with her family. “Her nephew was Johnny Heron – I had first met him 10 years ago (sadly Johnny passed away in 2023, after which his widow, Emer Brady very kindly continued to work with us on behalf of the family), who were very supportive of the project and keen that it would happen. They had some great examples of the work – however, as well as that they had another gift. From a very young age Hilary Heron had catalogued every single work. Anything exhibited, she photographed well and she described its medium and so on, and collected these in archive albums which the estate still owns and were happy to share with us. So, she herself had kept a very good catalogue, meaning it has become reasonably easy to authenticate a piece of Hilary Heron's work. We have been able to show those records at the start of the exhibition and visitors can go and see and match them to the exhibition records.”
All the detective work involved in even being able to ascertain if the retrospective would be possible, the obsessive hunting for pieces of the puzzle – and the need to focus so forensically on them - made it easy to lose sight of the woman and the life she lived. Yet as her story emerged from the process it makes for fascinating reading.
Hilary Heron was born in 1923, in Dublin, but spent her early childhood in Coleraine in Derry, giving her a lifelong Northern Irish accent and a sense of being able to look at life from the outside in. After school she enrolled at the National College of Art in Dublin, where she studied sculpture. Even this was something of a radical
Shackles (1947), Walnut. Top: Heron's diverse approach to the human form through her lead panel Prophet (1950), carved iroko Man of Action (1949) and abstracted torsos in steel and copper.
Left:
act at the time. While there were many women artists making their names in Ireland, sculpture was seen as more of a male preserve. Despite the existence of globally renowned female sculptors such as Barbara Hepworth and Germaine Richier – and, later, Elisabeth Frink, Heron’s close friend, Heron was always competing for prizes and commissions with men, and Frink later recalled English sculptor Reg Butler arguing a point of view still uncontroversial in the early ‘60s. “A woman couldn’t really be a sculptor, it was impossible for a woman to be a sculptor. If she was a good sculptor, she wasn’t a good woman! You know, you had the choice of either being one or the other really”.
It's hard to see Hilary Heron even remaining in the room for that ridiculous sentence. Although she graduated from art college a rebel, Heron excelled there. She entered and won the prestigious Taylor Art Scholarship Prize three years in a row (1944, ‘45 and ‘46). Today, still, she is one of just three artists to have achieved that. And she spent the money that came with it buying a motorbike on which she took off across Europe, a woman alone in a landscape traumatised by war. In 1948 she entered and won the Mainie Jellett Travelling Scholarship, with a submission of seven works. The response was positive but shows the same innate gendered nonsense as Butler’s comment. Reviewing her submissions, a critic for The Irish Independent wrote, ‘Her seven sculptures in wood and stone possess a strength and robustness which is almost masculine in its vigour.’ And, in 1950, ‘This Dublin girl, who approaches her work with such a masculine vigour of hand and mind, is a creative artist of unusual power.’
Unfussed by anything than getting on, Heron focused on her work, her travel and the funding of it all. While she was a serial entrant for scholarships and bursaries and actively negotiated representation for herself with Waddington’s (Ireland’s most important commercial gallery, which put on her first solo show in 1950, just four years out of college). While a modern sensibility suggests responses to her decision to be a sculptor might be annoying, Heron embraced her differences and parlayed her gender as a poster girl for Pond’s face cream. Between 1946 and 1950, a sketched portrait of her with the title ‘Charm in Irish Life’ featured regularly in Irish newspapers. She even gamely submitted to the following copy,
thinking no doubt of where the Pond’s money could take her…
With tawny hair, deep green eyes and possessing an alluring low-pitched voice. Hilary Heron is indeed a colourful personality. Winner of the Taylor Scholarship for three years in succession, and the Mainie Jellett Travelling Scholarship, Miss Heron has already some fine sculpture work to her credit in one of Dublin’s leading libraries. When asked about her Beauty Care: Miss Heron replied ‘Pond’s Creams and Powders are my favourite. Pond’s creams keep my complexion smooth and fresh at all times.’
Regardless, Heron had always intended to travel to Paris. She had a family connection to Samuel Beckett and initially planned to stay with him and his wife, Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil. The travel award just brought the journey forward and the Pond’s money enabled her to continue. According to Billy Shortall (in the exhibition catalogue), “Heron kept a personal diary of this visit, which records difficulty getting petrol, having aperitifs in Café de Flore and dining in Café Les Deux Magots with Beckett and others. Her diary records that (Beckett) regularly introduced her to artists, critics, galleries and exhibitions, such as art historian Georges Duthuit, and encouraged her to visit contemporary exhibitions including a show at the Galerie Maeght by brothers Bram van Velde (1895–1981) and Gerardus ‘Geer’ van Velde (1898–1977). Heron’s diary shows her voracious appetite for art and notes visits with Beckett to the Louvre, Musée de Cluny, and elsewhere.
Below: Heron was selected to represent Ireland at the 1956 Venice Biennale in a two-person show with Louis le Brocquy. Her steel Rooster (1954) is included in the IMMA exhibition's partial restaging of her presentation.
Right: Anna Liffey (1955) was inspired by James Joyce’s character Anna Livia Plurabelle.
She spent time in artists’ ateliers (such as) modernist sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) whom she described as ‘the maestro surrounded by his disciples’. Some of Heron’s figure carvings of the 1950s and 1960s quote Zadkine’s stylised torsos, as seen in Female Torso (1953) and A Level Headed Man (1965).”
While Heron’s earliest sculptures were carved from wood (with the natural form of the material shaping the piece) or cast in bronze (interestingly, she was unable to work in this medium in Dublin at the time as there were no readily available foundries for artists to use – she was only really able to explore it when she moved to London in the late ‘50s – in advance of her first London solo show in 1960 – and shared a studio and foundry with Elizabeth Frink). In the late ‘40s she taught herself welding and started to use all manner of found metals, bits and bobs. In the words of Kenneth Jamison reviewing a 1961 exhibition, Heron was “a sculptress-adventuress par-excellence; her excursion into the type of welded sculpture complied from objects-trouvés – nuts, bolts, valves, plugs and the like – seems to me highly successful and engaging decoration.” It was a choice of medium that divided critics, but was universally seen as radical and certainly drew her considerable attention.
Despite this already impressive trajectory –including her first commercial solo show (at The Waddington Gallery) in 1950 and long-term involvement in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) and participation in their group shows, all of which were very well reviewed, Hilary Heron’s biggest break came in 1956. Over to Billy Shortall… “Her stature as Ireland’s foremost sculptor was reinforced when she was selected with Louis le Brocquy to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1956. She sent 12 pieces for exhibition, nine carvings in wood and stone and three in welded steel. James White, the Irish commissioner for Venice, described Heron as a young sculptor who avoids the purely decorative, drawing inspiration from Brancusi. White can be seen in a photograph with world-renowned art connoisseur and gallerist, Peggy Guggenheim, examining Heron’s welded sculpture, Cock a doodle do (1956), in Venice. Another welded sculpture from Venice, Rooster (1954), is technically similar to the work of González and expresses the same gesture of movement to his Petite Danseuse II (1935) that she observed in Paris.”
It seems pretty impressive that a woman would be chosen to represent her country at such a prestigious event, way back in 1956, but actually Hilary Heron’s selection was less radical than that of Ireland’s earliest representatives. In 1950, the first artists sent to the Biennale were both women; painters Nora McGuinness and Nano Reid were selected by the then director of the National Gallery, Sir George Furlong. However, her 1956 showing raised Hilary Heron’s profile overnight, opening up new markets and taking much of her work into private collections across the pond. Towards the end of the 1950s Hilary Heron followed the Waddington Galleries to London, where she was represented by Lesley Waddington until her last show in 1964, after which her output slowed as she diversified into applied arts, moved back to Dublin, married, and entered a period of poor health, to which she finally succumbed in April 1977 at the age of just 54. A premature passing that certainly will have impacted on her legacy – not just in the fact that it limited her body of work.
While estate planning might not sound much like art, Seán Kissane addressed the issue at a recent syposium hosted by IMMA at Trinity College Dublin …“The only artists who are remembered in my experience are the ones making money for dealers. It’s a simple formula. Artists need to make sure they’ve done their legacy planning and ensure they make somebody responsible for the ongoing stock. To give someone the right to deal in it and the right to make decisions about the future of it. Hilary Heron had a contract with Waddington Galleries but only for the work they had in their holdings already. So, once that was sold there was no longer any legal relationship between them, meaning they couldn’t continue to deal in her work after her death. Today, any artist can organise their own website and public archives are easy to access digitally and so on. We invited a number of contemporary Irish women sculptors to our symposium – including Niamh O’Malley, who represented Ireland at the last Venice Biennale. And we asked them to reflect on their lack of knowledge of Hilary Heron and on the partial erasure of this important figure they wanted to know about and how it might have affected them as artists.”
As contemporary sculptor Eva Rothschild wrote in the Exhibition Catalogue prior to seeing Heron’s actual work, “This is a text in advance of experience. I’m speculating about my hopes
for a body of work I know only by sight from old, largely black and white, single viewpoint photographs – all with a very specific aura of the times. They show work we associate with this era; they look modern, European, cosmopolitan. These pictures, often with minimal information about scale or materials, intrigue me; I have poured over them. The photographs show works that I didn’t see in Ireland during my development as a sculptor. The images of Heron herself show a woman, self-assured, self-directed, and decisive in her practice, making full use of her independence and freedom to seek out fellow travellers and creative surroundings to learn from – always moving towards a more open, adaptive way of working, while often keeping her subject matter close to home. I’ve never seen an actual piece of Heron’s sculpture though; there has been no opportunity to see one until now, and it’s hard to write about artwork you’ve never experienced in person. I can only guess at the touch and the gesture and the sense of the body in relation to the object that defines a sculptural encounter, but I trust in what I know of her practice. Heron was wholly a sculptor, and it is this that draws me to her work, and so I write in anticipation and expectation.”
While we’ve taken the liberty of a butterfly approach to Hilary Heron’s life and legacy here, the challenge of creating a retrospective of such an important artist with relatively low recognition fell to the IMMA team and they responded by parcelling up her life and work into clearly defined aspects, to tell her story in a focused but not fixed way.
As Seán Kissane explains, “The exhibition is set out over seven rooms, each articulating a different theme and aspect of Heron’s work. It begins with an illustrated biography, including the records we were gifted – followed with the thematics of: Early work, Venice Biennale, Flight, Primitivism, the Male body and the Female body. The displays are comprised of works which articulate the full breadth of Heron’s sculptural practice: of wood carving, stone carving, welding in different metals, lead reliefs, beaten metal reliefs, encased stone assemblages; as well as her graphic practices of drawing and etching. The exhibition highlights how Heron navigated a career in a field dominated by men. Contemporary writers were united in their acclaim of her work, early on, Anna Sheehy hailed Heron as ‘Ireland’s Most
Top: On the left Heron's limestone Bird (1956) is separated from her steel Bird Barking (1959) by a copper Dickey-bird cage (1960).
Right: A Level Headed Man (1965), Walnut.
Promising Sculptor’. Despite her success during her life, her work was largely forgotten after her death due to historical biases and the art market’s lower value on women’s work. These topics and Heron’s impact are being discussed in more detail in our symposium, and in talks to be held throughout 2024.”
We managed to corner Seán Kissane for one minute more to ask about Level Headed Man and Crazy Jane (owned and loaned by The Doyle Collection - regular guests may recognise her from The Marylebone, where she last lived). Here is what he had to say…
“Crazy Jane came into the hotel’s collection via a partnership - in the 1950s the Arts Council was still a new organisation and they had some dynamic ideas about how to get businesses to buy contemporary art – one of which was that they would co-purchase works in partnership, then stipulate that they should be kept in public spaces. In her early days, Crazy Jane used to sit at the entrance to the iconic nightclub, Anabels in Ballsbridge – so you can imagine this fabulous, larger than life figure at the door. People actually thought she was Anabel and kind of a bouncer. She was there until the club closed, before travelling to The Marylebone where she’s not at the door of a nightclub but in the entrance to an events space. And she’s always had this identity as a gatekeeper and a party girl – it’s the perfect place for her as she comes from a WB Yeats poem featuring the character Crazy Jane, who argues with a bishop that only people who have sinned should be ripe for salvation. So, I think that the fact that she guarded a nightclub - there’s a fun alignment there as well.”
“I also love the story of Level Headed Man. The work is a huge male torso with a flat surface where the head should be. It’s a 1950s piece carved from a walnut tree that blew down in the garden of a Dublin estate house (Woodtown House), which was owned by an artist, with many other artists living in outbuildings. The family knew that Hilary was always on the lookout for pieces of wood so they invited her to have a look. She chopped up the fallen walnut and put its huge trunk into the back of her tiny car before driving it back to her studio. The natural form of the wood helped shape this piece – showing her where to carve the collar of the shirt, the line of the buttons, his hand, the trousers and the big fat cigar held between his fingers.”
“When completed, it was sold to Dublin’s greatest theatre impresario, Micheál Mac Liammóir (who, with his partner Hilton Edwards, ran the Gate Theatre, bringing experimental performance to Ireland and mentored one Orson Wells, who acted, directed and produced his plays in Dublin). Micheál Mac Liammóir wrote The Importance of Being Oscar – first staged in the early ‘60s. It was obviously a telling of the story of Oscar Wilde, which was a massively queer and unruly position to take in 1960s Dublin. Yet it turned out to be a global smash hit – he took it to Broadway and it was certainly staged in London. And I think it’s fabulous that he saw himself in the Level Headed Man as this big bon viveur with the cigar and so on. Wonderful that there’s this direct relationship between one of Hilary’s pieces and a figure as big in every sense as Micheál Mac Liammóir – and the fact that you can make this direct connection between two such cultural influencers in Ireland. I love this connection – but what’s ironic is that the current owner of Level Headed Man didn’t know any of this. He bought it just because he liked it and this historiography had been broken between the object and the history. But now we have put that back together.”
Hilary Heron, A Retrospective can be seen at IMMA: Garden Galleries until 28th October 2024 – and we urge everybody who can to see it.
To find out more buy the excellent catalogue –featuring essays on Heron’s life, times, work and influence upon those who followed. imma.ie/ whats-on/hilary-heron-a-retrospective
Below: Romulus and Remus, (1962), was exhibited in Heron’s penultimate solo exhibition in 1963, when the Visual Arts Group of Queen’s University invited her to exhibit in Belfast. Crazy Jane III (1958) and Bird Barking (1959) were also among the works exhibited. Right: Man & Woman (1952) lead
40 YEARS YOUNG
We’re marking our 40th anniversary by sitting down for a chat with legend of The Westbury, Executive Head Concierge, Eddie Burke
1984 might be best remembered for Live Aid, the first untethered spacewalk, the opening of the Thames Barrier, the first Virgin Airways flight, Torvill & Dean’s Bolero, the development of genetic fingerprinting, the premiere of This is Spinal Tap, the launch of the first Apple Macintosh Computer (because that’s what they were called in those days, kids!) and, of course as the setting for George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece; but we’re asking you to take a moment to celebrate 40 years of The Westbury.
Joking aside, it's our flagship hotel, it’s a serial award winner, and it was, in October 2023, named best hotel in Ireland by Condé Nast Traveller readers. Though, of course, we’re extremely proud of every achievement, we have to give credit where
it’s due. Because at our hotels the single most important thing is the people. And the man without whom The Westbury simply wouldn’t be the same is Executive Head Concierge, Eddie Burke.
Eddie’s career has developed in lockstep with The Westbury since our founder, PV Doyle created the hotel. Just 18 when he joined, Eddie has flourished at the Concierge’s Desk (naturally he’s been head of that team for many years) and has helped define and bring to life pretty much everything The Westbury stands for today.
So, we thought, what better way to mark our 40th anniversary than by asking Eddie to recount a few highlights (heavily edited – Eddie is maddeningly discreet) of his 40year career with us…?
comfortable around you. And if you have that, it doesn't matter what age you are, you can learn the rest.”
Looking back, Eddie’s the first to point out how different times were in Dublin in 1984. “The day we opened Dublin obviously was a world away from where it is now. It felt grey, we were deep in a recession and the troubles were raging. Dublin is a very different place now. It’s so vibrant, so diverse, and it’s buzzing. Back then, to be honest, people thought opening a fivestar hotel in Dublin was madness. But our founder, Mr PV Doyle was a real visionary – and a man before his time in many ways. He could see the potential clearly and ever since the hotel opened its doors on 24th April 1984, the people came.”
Top: The restaurant now Wilde and the bar with the entrance to its upper level flanked by two huge china dogs. Left: Eddie (centre) together with the hotel's much loved and respected concierges.
Leaving school and joining The Westbury in the same year must have been something of a culture shock, but Eddie has always taken everything in his stride. “The most important thing in this business is personality - you can’t do this job if you don’t love meeting people and making their stay amazing. You have to be able to communicate and make people feel
Dublin may not have been awash with fancy hotels back in the day, but Eddie’s family had a long, proud history in the industry, so it was inevitable he’d follow them. “My uncle Eddie worked in the Burlington. Uncle Andy worked in Jury’s Hotel and another uncle, Sean was the Hotel Commissioner in Jury’s for a great many years.”
The Westbury as it was in the early 80s and below as it is today. From left: The entrance stairs up from the lobby; the mezzanine lounge; the restaurant - now Balfe's; The Russell Room - now Wilde; cabinets in the mirrored lobby wall have been replaced with art and flowers.
“The
strangest celebrity request I had was to find a tattoo parlour to give Britney Spears and her then husband, Kevin Federline his and hers tattoos...”
“When I walked through the doors of The Westbury on 24th March 1984, I was 18 years old. The hotel was almost ready but there were final touches still to do. It was all hands to the pump – even Mr Doyle was dusting and hoovering. Today the hotel interior looks a million miles away from the original décor, which was very much of its time (plus, back then, we were continually repainting the interiors because guests could smoke everywhere in the hotel). The restaurant was a fancy grill bar with silver service, classical dishes – waiters would carve meat and fillet sole at the table, and the desert trolley and a flaming flambé were the order of the day. Where the concierge desk is today there was a beauty salon and a little shop selling newspapers and sweets. In the restaurant we used to host famous chefs from all over the world – today you’d call them residencies or pop-ups, but then it was extremely unusual to serve Thai food and so on. We also hosted fashion shows with models, who would weave their way between afternoon tea tables – you’d probably not see that today.”
“Although time flew after opening, I’ve always remembered our first guests, Major and Lady McCalmont. And though there have been plenty of characters and famous people, there are some that I’ve never forgotten. As one of Dublin’s premier hotels, we often host celebrities and Hollywood stars. For me, seeing Audrey
Hepburn was just wonderful. She came to a Unicef Ball at The Westbury and she really did have an aura of class and beauty about her. No fuss, she was radiant, elegant and she wore a little black dress exactly like the one from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That was exciting. I’m a big fan of the movies and I had the pleasure of meeting Marlon Brando, too. Especially because when I opened his chauffeur driven car (where he was sitting with his PA) I shook hands with her first then walked round to greet him. He really liked that and made a point of complimenting me for reaching out to her first.”
Somebody who was a bit puzzled by his ‘welcome’ was Bob Dylan. “We had a car
park attendant, Mick Whickham, who was a great character. Bob Dylan was trying not to get spotted by the photographers so he wore a hood over his head and was trying to get in and out via the car park, before feeling Mick’s hand on his collar –thinking he was an intruder. It took quite a while to convince Mick that he really was Bob Dylan.”
Other memorable guests read like a who’s who of Hollywood and Rock and Roll greats. We persuaded Eddie to reel off a quick list and it went something like this… “Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Gregory Peck, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, Gabriel Byrne, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, David
Bowie, Elton John, Celine Dion, Neil Diamond, Guns & Roses, George Best, Pele, Nancy Pelosi... But the strangest celebrity request I had was to find a tattoo parlour to give Britney Spears and her then husband, Kevin Federline his and hers tattoos. I took a call from her manager to recommend someone and I had recently heard about a really good tattooist in Bray, so I phoned, booked them in and they came back very happy!
Despite all the fun and games, Eddie is a consummate professional and always takes his job very seriously. And he was delighted to receive his membership to ‘Les Clefs d’Or’ – the global membership club for the world’s best concierges. Eddie got his
keys 15 years’ ago, and is one of only 4,000 holders worldwide. He’s just as quick to mention chefs that have gone on to be stars in the hotel restaurant scene as far afield as Dubai and USA, and trainees that become GMs. But for Eddie it’s personal.
“When we started, the staff were mainly young (these days, so many of us stay there’s a much wider age span) and many of us are still the best of friends. I even met my wife at The Westbury. It was love at first sight, and we’ve celebrated high days and holidays here ever since. Today, I manage the front of house team, but even now, the part of my job I really enjoy is when I can make the mundane magical for somebody. That’s what I love.”
OUR DAILY BREAD
As harvest time comes round again, we celebrate the humble loaf and its millennia of contribution to life as we know it…
It’s hardly surprising that harvest has been celebrated around the world in one way or another since the dawn of time. Obviously, without food, there’s no life. And bread has been giving us life now for thousands of years. While grains were evidently ground between millstones, mixed with water, baked/ burned/crusted in the sun, and eaten by Natufian hunter/gatherers in the Jordanian desert as many as 30,000 years ago, that’s really not bread!
In all honesty, a comprehensive trawl of the information superhighway yielded conflicting accounts of where bread as we eat it today began. What we do know is that mostly unleavened bread was eaten for millennia by Egyptians – quite likely dating back 10,000 years, though leavened (risen or yeasted) bread is documented as having made a regular appearance in southern Mesopotamia from around 6,000 BC. So, that’s at least 8,024 years we’ve been munching the stuff of life.
As this rather lightweight origin story makes clear, bread is something that popped up all over the world at once, a Universal Discovery, as everybody turned on to the enhanced possibilities of their indigenous grains. So, Mayans turned to corn, source of bread, cake, tortillas and tamales. From the Indian subcontinent (taking in central and southeast Asia, East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and the Caribbean) arose the chapati, rotis made with wholegrain wheat, water and spices, cooked to a puff over an open flame. Millet, rice and legumes were also widely used in flatbreads and pancakes.
The Roman Empire took to baking with gusto. And bread became political, too, as emperors plied the people with cheap bakes to keep them firmly on side (a lesson Marie Antoinette could have done with learning many centuries later). As was their way, the Romans elevated baking. Formerly the preserve of slaves/servants and women, as the job became linked with power it took on the trappings of a profession, immediately more attractive to men. In 168BC, the first Bakers’ Guild was formed, with splendidly Romanesque rules, including that baking was for life – you couldn’t leave and take on another career having been a member of the guild, regardless of wish or circumstance.
As per, we digress. Certainly, a sort of hand-ground grainbased nourishment pre-dates agriculture. How delicious it was
SODA BREAD
A Poem by Timothy Walsh
She said she’d lost the knack—not the recipe, which had never been written down— but the knack of mixing the dough just so, not too much, not too little, so that the moist, buttery loaves rose into their perfectly rounded shapes, the cross impressed in the top revealing itself as the crust hardened, sure as the Annunciation. It was because my father had innocently asked for soda bread, the kind he remembered from Ireland, which she had not made for decades, that the kitchen was transformed into an assembly line, batch after batch of dough, loaves emerging from the oven to cool, be sampled, then discarded behind the garage as not quite right.
Once, she’d baked the loaves in great iron pots suspended over open fireplaces, a glowing turf on the lid, in the thatched cottages at Carane, at Culdalee, at Mass Hill. Once, she’d turned them out effortlessly every day as easily as a pot of tea.
Once, she had bricks of ancient peat turf cut from the living bogs to heat her cottage, cook her food. Now she was inconsolable as she sat down to her sewing. Peat smoke, she said with a sigh. Peat smoke. How could anyone hope to make a good honest loaf without a smoldering turf fire infusing its delicate flavor?
All that week, the squirrels, raccoons, and crows feasted on soda bread, blackbirds and blue jays carrying chunks up into the trees, crumbs raining down like stardust seeding a recalcitrant world.
is impossible to gauge. But the fact is, they started to cultivate it. With cultivation came settlement. And with settlement, civilisation (well, community at least). And as autumn follows spring, harvest.
While the thought of harvest usually turns our minds to Keatsian vines, hedgerows, orchards, fruits, roots, runners and salads, it’s bread that’s linked with our earliest celebrations of harvest. The Anglo Saxon festival, Lammas (historically celebrated a little earlier on 1st of August) comes from the Old English ‘hlaf’ loaf and ‘maesse’, so literally loaf-mass.
While its origins appear to be a Christian evolution of an already centuries-old pagan festival, the ‘harvest festival’ celebrated in churches all over the UK today (who doesn’t love the curious sight of a straw-lined bucolic basket or wooden harvest crates filled to overflowing with a cornucopia of cans - 57 varieties - for charity) is a more modern thing than the pagan-looking wheatsheaf loaf made to celebrate it might suggest and was only introduced into
the church calendar by one Reverend Robert Hawker, a 19thcentury Cornish vicar.
While in Egyptian times working people were often paid in bread, today it’s seriously big business. Especially sourdough. It may seem odd that bread closest to the very earliest origin of baking –requiring only milled wheat, water and time (a commodity at less of a premium back then than it is today) – is the fastest growing, yet there are good reasons why. Proliferation of choice (and for some, quantity over quality) has made us a little jaded and a desire for simplicity and authenticity has taken over from our evolution of needs to a place where our choices give both happiness and health. Which is one reason why the sourdough market today is growing at a CAGR of over 9% and is set to balloon from $2.3bn in 2023 to $3.5bn in 2028.
Yet sourdough making is far from easy - the ‘starter’ is an almost breathing thing that needs to be fed like a beast and kept alive at all costs, fed every day and the process of making takes hours, even
days longer than bread made with added yeast. Perhaps, now that time is so precious, waiting feels more of a luxury? Europe-wide 19th-century migration from rural to urban locations brought many changes, chief among them being mass produced bread. In the UK, it was a gnarly mix of corn laws (pro and anti) and necessity that drove the move, but when you combine the slowness of making methods, the growing demand and the 19th-century introduction of commercial yeasts, change was inevitable.
The health benefits of unrefined wheat flour were widely known well before there was an alternative. Yet when the early 20th-century discovery that milling the germ out of the wheat lengthened the resulting white flour’s shelf life, the stripping of nutrients and heft made it initially more appealing to the wealthy as a novelty or delicacy, while poorer people tended to eat more rustic, less ‘refined’, ironically much healthier bread. (Though this processed white bread was fortified by law in the US and UK pretty much as soon as it first appeared.)
The original death of artisan baking came via that famous best thing, sliced bread. Despite their mastery of and association with rye bread, black bread, seeded bread and all the good German jaw work outs, it was an Iowa man of German descent that invented the mass bread slicing machine back in 1912. And Otto Frederick Rohwedder cemented his status in 1927 with his clever sliced bread wrapping machine – making mass production a real prospect.
But it was only really after the introduction of Chorleywood (a 1961 mechanical bread making method to massively speed up the making) that sliced white became the cheap and cheerful alternative to real bread.
Though white sliced isn’t the healthiest, we’ve always taken a horses for courses approach to bread choices. If you’re eating a bacon sandwich with ketchup you probably want it between two slim-ish slices of a good quality tin loaf. If you’re eating some excellent smoked salmon, a wholewheat soda bread (try a spoon of horseradish) is perfect. And if you’re tucking into smashed avocado and poached eggs, or dunking, crisped, into good soup, sourdough’s your loaf.
It might seem counter-intuitive that a mushrooming of independent bakeries (a sustained nearly 50% surge in numbers year on year, bar the pandemic) took place more or less in step with the rise in gluten-free living, there is some method in that apparent madness. Of course the gluten allergic cannot eat bread. However, many who report bread challenging or bloating to digest have found that switching to artisan bakes made using fewer additives and by older, slower methods makes bread infinitely more munchable, without the slumps or sugar rushes of processing.
White sliced itself, in response to a reassessment of ultra processed foods, is undergoing a healthier reimagination. Regardless, we’re loving the opportunity the artisan bread explosion has gifted us all to enjoy, daily, the classic flavours of our daily bread.
BREADS OF IRELAND - OUR TOP 5
BARMBRACK
A traditional yeasted (rather than sourdough) bread, Barmbrack (see picture below) is a soft crumbed loaf studded with tea-soaked raisins and absolutely delicious slathered in good, Irish butter.
FARL
Made with white wheat or potato flour, farl is like an oversized soft drop scone come pancake quartered. It’s heavenly fried in butter and served with an egg however you like them, mushrooms or a full Irish.
RYE
Good dark rye has a treacly taste and a springy crumb. It’s perfect with pastrami of course, traditional Irish spiced beef or any cured meat or fish, with cream cheese or sour cream and pickles.
SODA
An Irish classic, this is quick to make (the rise comes from bicarb and buttermilk) and surprisingly forgiving. However, once you’ve had it baked by the best there’s no going back. Its mild flavour is often pimped with stout, cheese, dried fruit or treacle and it’s best with good butter. Every one of our kitchens make their own Guinness soda bread (see picture above) to a secret recipe – every day.
SOURDOUGH
The daddy of the breads (see overleaf), a good sourdough is crusty, chewy, slightly sour in flavour and requires a bit of chewing. It’s made using a sourdough starter (flour, water and time), mixed with flour, kneaded and risen over hours. It makes sensational pizza crust too (just ask American artisans).
Events & Happenings
Step out of your hotel and into our pick of this month’s most captivating events
The Kensington
THE TURNER PRIZE
Annually, come September, the public gets the chance to inspect the works of artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Artists are selected on the basis of a specific show (or shows) from the preceding year. It’s always a great exhibition but this year also marks the prize’s 40th anniversary. Turner Prize Exhibition
Tate Britain 25th September 2024 –16th February 2025 tate.org.uk
TENNANT’S EXTRA
You may have seen our piece about the event that was David Tennant’s Macbeth at the Donmar, complete with austere design and astonishing sound. Now the production has been brought back for a second limited run, this time at The Harold Pinter Theatre.
It’s the hottest ticket in town. Macbeth
Harold Pinter Theatre
1st October – 14th December haroldpintertheatre.co.uk
OPEN DOOR POLICY
It’s that time of year again when some of London’s most fascinating facades open their doors for all to enter and see what lies behind.
Spanning large swathes of London, in Kensington we’ve always fancied taking a tour of The Royal Hospital, home of the Chelsea Pensioners. Open House London
All over town
6th-17th September openhouse.org.uk
THE OTHER GALLERY
What with all the museums of Exhibition Road to occupy yourself with, it’s easy to overlook the wonderful Serpentine Gallery. In contrast to the rather bucolic Kensington Gardens, our pick of the season is South Central LA native Lauren Halsey’s immersive installations against gentrification.
Lauren Halsey Serpentine South 4th October 2024 –5th January 2025 serpentinegalleries.org
The Bloomsbury
VIVA DANCE!
On Rosebery Avenue since the 1680s, Sadler’s Wells is the sixth performing arts theatre on the site and (with sister theatre The Peacock), purveyor of some of the best movement and dance on earth. Classical ballet to break dance, contemporary to drag flamenco. You get the picture. Choose your performance Sadler’s Wells Peacock Theatre Open every day sadlerswells.com
FOLLOW THE SILK ROAD
For those of us who vaguely
debut). The Fear of 13 brings the extraordinary true story of Nick Yarris who spent 22 years on Death Row for a crime he didn’t commit to this tiny stage. Book ahead. The Fear of 13
The Donmar Warehouse 4th October – 30th November donmarwarehouse.com
FESTIVAL OF WORDS
Every year the good people of the Bloomsbury Festival put together a programme that links the early 20th Century Bloomsbury Set with modern creators, capturing “the diversity of bright minds connected to these few streets of London”. Go. Get involved. Bloomsbury Festival All around the neighbourhood 18th-27th October bloomsburyfestival.org.uk
The Marylebone
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Established in 2003, for 21 years the London Design
Festival has celebrated the capital’s creativity, “drawing in the country’s greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to a deliver an unmissable celebration of design”. As well as proving quite the tourist attraction, with stuff happening all over the place. London Design Festival All over town 14th-22nd September londondesignfestival.com
SOUTHERN FRIEZE
Frieze London brings the great and the good of the global art market to The Regent’s Park and in 2024 is host to 110 leading galleries. While it’s fun to rubberneck, the art really is the star and Frieze London, Frieze Masters and Cork Street are where it’s at.
Frieze London
The Regent’s Park 9th-13th October frieze.com/fairs/frieze-london
CAMERA, ACTION
From film premieres you don’t want to miss to films you’ll never see unless you catch them here, the BFI London Film Festival showcases around 240 feature and 150 short films and brings some
consider ‘the silk road’ a lineal spice trading route with a beginning, a middle and an end, prepare to be better informed. In fact, ‘silk roads’ ran through spectacular terrain, from Scandinavia to Madagascar, Japan to Britain, and in a complex network all over Asia, Africa and Europe. Silk Roads
The British Museum 26th September 2024 – 23rd February 2025 britishmuseum.org
PRIME OF ADRIEN BRODY
Productions at The Donmar attract an embarrassment of greats, the latest being Adrien Brody (in his London Theatre
Left Open House offers a rare glimpse of the birthplace of television with guided tours of Studios A & B at Alexandra Palace.
Top Right Painting of the Guiding Bodhisattva. Found in Mogao Caves, China, about 851-900 from Silk Roads at The British Museum Right Medusa by Sou Fujimoto & Tin at London Design Festival.
of the film world’s biggest names to the capital. Go, see.
BFI London Film Festival
All over town
9th-20th October bfi.org.uk/lff
IS THAT JAZZ?
The self-described biggest pan-city festival in Europe, the London Jazz Festival, has been running for over 30 years and draws 100,000 people to well over 300 live shows, featuring everyone from international jazz grandees to emerging talent. While the sheer variety of artists and styles stretches the genre boundaries to pinging point, the quality makes every gig memorable.
EFG London Jazz Festival
All over town 15th-24th November efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk
Bristol
WE THE CURIOUS
After a two years closure following a fire, Bristol’s unique marriage of arts and science,
with over 250 interactive exhibits designed to bring science to life is reopening late summer, ready to welcome people of all ages to be amazed and learn a thing or two. We the Curious Millennium Square Tuesday-Sunday wethecurious.org
BATHWARD BOUND
Just 20-minutes on the train, it’s criminal not to visit Bath. Named for its therapeutic waters and Roman baths, it’s the perfectly preserved golden Georgian architecture that saw the whole city named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If Jane Austen is your jam, there’s a festival in September, too. Visit Bath
Wander the city
Open all year visitbath.co.uk
PROJECT OPERA
For an energetic retelling of Mozart’s classic tale where “servants outwit their masters, women outwit their men and true love triumphs against the odds” you can’t do better than The Opera Project’s new production, sung in English, of The Marriage of Figaro. The Marriage of Figaro Tobacco Factory Theatres 2nd – 12th October tobaccofactorytheatres.com
RED LODGE
It’s not often one gets the chance to discover a perfectly preserved Elizabethan city dwelling, but The Red Lodge Museum is set in such a place, originally constructed in 1579 (with additions in the 1730s and early 1800s), with exhbitions that tell its story and those of the people who inhabited it.
Red Lodge Museum
Park Row, Bristol Closed Wednesday/Thursday bristolmuseums.org.uk/ red-lodge-museum
The Westbury
ART OF WOMAN
One of Ireland’s first professional female artists,
Kilkenny-born Mildred Anne Butler exhibited her large, atmospheric watercolours of the natural world widely, and sold them consistently throughout her career. Today her evocative, ethereally lit works are brought together to share. Mildred Anne Butler, At Home in Nature
National Gallery of Ireland 14th September 20245th January 2025 nationalgallery.ie
WOMAN OF LETTERS
Lady Gregory was an early 20th-century theatrical powerhouse, co-founding the Literary and Abbey Theatres with WB Yeats and Edward Martyn. Today, the Abbey Theatre celebrates her 1912 Opus, Grania with a brandnew production, reimagined for 2024 by contemporary theatrical powerhouse, Caitríona McLaughlin. Grania
Abbey Theatre
21st September – 26th October abbeytheatre.ie
FESTIVAL OF THEATRE
In 2023, 38 productions were shown over 18 days in 20 venues, 15 of them world premieres. In 2024 expect more of the same from a festival on a mission to bring ‘world-class theatre to Dublin and showcase the best of Irish theatre to the world’.
Dublin Theatre Festival
Venues all over the city 26th September – 13th October dublintheatrefestival.ie
BUY THE BOOK
Left, Top Following the success of The Barber of Seville (shown), Bristol's The Tobacco Factory tackle Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
Left The Oak Room, one of the three oldest rooms in Bristol to be found at The Red Lodge museum Bristol
Right, Top Nobodaddy, a new work by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Damsa performed as part of Dublin's Festival of Theatre.
Right Shades of Evening by Mildred Anne Butler, 1904 National Gallery of Ireland.
When you’re as known as ‘arguably the literary capital of the world’ you have to host a book festival. Dublin’s is legendary – featuring over 80 readings, launches and talks and all the stellar authors you’d expect; in recent years including Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Graham Norton, Lucy Caldwell, and more. Dublin Book Festival
All over the city 6th-10th November dublinbookfestival.com
The Croke Park
RUNNERS AND RIDERS
Two days of absolutely worldclass racing brings Dublin society out to play alongside a who’s who of racing, to witness eight starts at Leopardstown and seven at iconic racecourse, The Curragh, both well under an hour from Dublin.
Irish Champions Festival
Leopardstown/The Curragh 14th-15th September irishchampionsfestival.ie
ACCESS ALL AREAS
Open House Dublin is a festival of Architecture, but also a great opportunity for everyone from the historically minded to the just plain curious to get out, do a walking tour and/ or step inside seldom seen interiors all around the capital.
Open House Dublin
All over the city 12th – 20th October openhousedublin.com
DEAD INTERESTING
Like most Victorian garden cemeteries, the parklands are beautiful, but Glasnevin holds a trove of history, too.
It’s the resting place for revolutionaries, republicans, martyrs, politicians, Presidents, writers and artists – home to O’Connell tower, setting for some excellent historical tours, and location for Halloween’s spookiest event for children. Tours and strolls
Glasnevin Cemetery
Open all year dctrust.ie/experienceglasnevin.html
THE BORROWERS
For fans of the little people they’re back, in a new production based on Mary Norton’s original adventure novels, following the fortunes of the teeny tiny Clock family
as they seek a new home following the discovery of their 11-year-old daughter Arrietty by a human boy.
8th September 2024 –9th January 2025 nga.gov
of Herbert Mittgang’s timeless play, originally published in 1972, Scott Bakula takes the titular role.
The Borrowers Gate Theatre
9th November 2024 –12th January 2025 gatetheatre.ie
The Dupont Circle
FIRST IMPRESSIONISTS
A full 150 years ago a radical exhibition in Paris launched the Impressionists onto the global stage. Today a celebration of the movement brings together many of the original pieces by Cezanne, Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Renoir, along with critical context from the time. Paris 1874: The Impressionist Movement National Gallery of Art
CYCLE OF LIFE
There’s something just so wonderful about Cirque du Soleil and while Ovo is an arena juggernaut currently circumnavigating the earth, the show (an ecosystem of colourful bugs and the eponymous egg) is infused with surprise, delight, optimism and charm. Go, see! Ovo Cirque du Soleil 11th-15th September cirquedusoleil.com
CALL ME MISTER
This one-man play uses the utterances of President Abraham Lincoln himself to lead the audience through an extraordinary life in two acts. In this new production
The River Lee
INDIE FOREVER
Every Autumn Cork gets taken over by what the Irish Times called a “renegade swaggering through the mainstream”, the annual Indie Cork Film Festival. It’s the largest independent film festival in Ireland and the prize categories reflect their focus on short films. Go! Indie Cork Film Festival Venues around the city 6th-13th October indiecork.com
SHORT STORIES
JAZZ IS ALL AROUND
In its 46 years Cork Jazz Festival has always brought old school icons (such as Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny
Mister Lincoln Ford’s Theatre
26th September – 13th October fords.org
HOCUS POCUS
When Halloween comes a calling DC embraces it with open arms. With Ghost Tours, Boo at the Zoo, Pumpkin Palooza, spooky arts and crafts, graveyard tours, trick or treating and all sorts of shenanigans. There’s something for all ages for days on end. Halloween All over the city 31st October washington.org
Established in 2000 as the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival, today the festival retains its focus on the art of short storytelling, showcasing the writers that choose to work in the medium and celebrating the winner of the globally renowned Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition. Cork International Short Story Festival Arts Theatre/City Library 16th-19th October corkshortstory.net
Left World class horse racing at the Irish Champions' Festival, Leopardstown.
Right, Top Auguste Renoir's The Theatre Box can be seen in Paris 1874: The Impressionist Movement at The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Right The Butter Museum, Cork.
Rollins) to the city, as well as showcasing genre benders from Damon Albarn to Macy Gray. With shows big and small, the city expects to welcome over 100,000 people. Guinness Cork Jazz Festival Venues all over the city 24th-28th October guinnesscorkjazz.com
CORK WITH A FORK
In a county best known for its artisan makers of heavenly produce, why not take a food tour, starting at the English Market and finishing with lunch nearby. Cork Culinary Tours Book one-day or half-day bonner-travel.com/itinerary/ cork-culinary-tour
BUTTER LOVERS
While the French and Irish may disagree over who makes the best butter on earth the fact is that Ireland has traded butter with unprecedented success since the 1700s. And in Cork it’s celebrated with its own museum, sharing methods of production, history, and all things buttery. The Butter Museum O’Connell Square Open Weds-Sun in Winter thebuttermuseum.com
24 HOURS
INDEPENDENT SHOPS IN KENSINGTON
Brompton Cross and Sloane Avenue have always showcased international fashion, but there’s far more to discover than global brands…
8.30 BREAK YOUR FAST
Shopping requires stamina – take your breakfast at Town House. townhousekensington.com
10.30 SHOES FOR LIFE
Twenty minutes down Old Church Street takes you to Sukie’s of King’s Road, with shoes and iconic boots designed in Chelsea and handmade in Italy. sukies.co.uk
11.00 ARTS FOR ALL
Retrace your steps, to Green & Stone – a treasure trove of art supplies plus gallery. greenandstone.com
11.30 READ ALL ABOUT IT
Time to call in to one of the antiquarian trade’s best known dealers in rare books. peterharrington.co.uk
12.00 BLING, BLING!
Butler & Wilson can thank over 50 years in the costume game for their gorgeous crystal and fine jewellery. butlerandwilson.co.uk
12.30 GREETINGS!
To South Kensington station for a quirky little shop bursting with greetings cards and souvenirs. facebook.com/medicisouthken
13.00 CALLING ALL CRAFTERS
Tapisserie is quite simply the home of needlepoint. tapisserie.co.uk
13.30 LUNCH & LINGER
For something different try Ognisko’s Polish fine dining on the Exhibition Road. ogniskorestaurant.co.uk
15.30 FROM SAVILE ROW TO KENSINGTON
Stroll the park to Kensington Church Street, home of antique shops and carpet emporia (amble, browse), and West London outpost of the capital’s star bespoke tailor. carolineandrew.co.uk
16.30 MAKE LIKE CHURCHILL
A short walk away you’ll find a relatively new addition founded to fill a fancy cigar-shaped gap. kensingtoncigarshop.co.uk
6.00 'MIRROR' COCKTAILS AT THE K BAR
It’s a long stroll back across the park and down Queen’s Gate to The Kensington (though you can always find a black cab) for welcome refreshment upon arrival…
THEN
Built by John Nash and originally known as Regent Circus North (as can be seen from the signage between the pilasters on the right), Oxford Circus was initially designed as a thoroughfare, in keeping with its history as part of Via Trinobantina, a Roman road linking present-day Essex with Hampshire. Nash’s original
& NOW
Back in 1932 in her essay, ‘Oxford Street Tide’, Virginia Woolf described “the great rolling ribbon” of Oxford Street where “everything glitters and twinkles”. It’s still true today but on an epic scale. By 2022, stores in Oxford and Regent Streets would be enjoyed by millions – in fact around 72 million people per year
plans were for a larger circus –popular at the time – but they were overruled by Parliament and subsequently scaled back. This photograph was taken 85 years after the Palladian style circus was completed by Nash. By 1900, the new underground station made Oxford Circus the huge shopping destination it is today.
continue to pass through Oxford Circus station. With good reason. Despite the combination of online shopping and the Covid pandemic causing some retailers to shutter for good (RIP Topshop), the area’s mix of big brand flagships, artisan coffee shops and everything in between means it’s hard not to find what you’re looking for.
