people-from-london

"If I do decide one day to stop acting, I just hate the idea of people going: 'Oh, did you ever do anything else besides that Twilight thing?'"

"I never really had any aspirations to be an actor when I was young. I wanted to play the piano in a bar, to be the old dude with a whisky glass, all dishevelled."

"I don't really know how to act, I kind of wanted to somehow make it real, and one of the ways I've always thought makes that a little bit easier is if you shake up your physical state just before action. You end up walking into a scene having a different feeling."

"Fabyan's own merits are little more than those of an industrious compiler, who strung together the accounts of his different authorities without any critical capacity. He says expressly that his work was "gaderyd without understandynge," and speaks of himself as "of cunnynge full destitute." Nevertheless he deserves the praise which he has received as an early worker, and for having made public information which through Hall and Holinshed has become the common property of later historians, and has only recently been otherwise accessible."

"Florists' flowers, especially s and tulips, were already popular in the , and a book on the subject, The Florist's Vade Mecum, by the Rev. , son-in-law of the great gardener and gardening writer, , was published on 1683."

"Kynge Henry beynge in Normādy, after some wryters fell from, or with his horse, whereof he caughte his deth: but Ranulphe sayth, he toke a surfet by etynge of a lāprey, & therof dyed...Than the kynges bowellys were drawen out of his body, & than salted with moche salte, & for to auoyde the stēche which had enfected many men, the body was lastly closed in a bulles skynne, & yet it was not all stynted. He yͭ clēsed the hed, dyed of the stench of the brayne. Than lastly the body was brought in to Englonde, & buryed in the abbey of Redynge, yͭ he had before foūded. Than the fame of hym was blowen abrode as it is blowen of other prynses, & sayd yͭ he passed other men in iii thynges, in wytte, in eloquence, & in fortune of bateyll; & other sayde he was ouercomen with iii vyces, with couetyse, wͭ crueltye, and with luste of lechery."

"When men live in small communities, ... they cannot avoid personal participation in some public functions. So it was in the older rural England, before the organic social changes of the last century. Where a family might go without its winter firing, if the Lord of the Manor prohibited the cutting of turf and the collection of wood, every tenant would be a self-appointed member of a Commons Preservation Society. Much satire has been wasted over the Parish Pump; but one can understand the interest that humble installation must have possessed for the little group of households, which had to draw their own water from it daily in their own buckets. There were civic duties to discharge as well as civic rights to vindicate."

"In the days of my early acquaintance with Henley, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I could never look at him without wondering why none of his artist friends had taken him for a model of Pan. They say he was like Johnson, and like Heine; and he had something of both. But to me he was the startling image of Pan come on earth and clothed—the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river, with halting foot and flaming shaggy hair, and arms and shoulders huge and threatening, like those of some Faun or Satyr of the ancient woods, and the brow and eyes of the Olympians. Wellnigh captive to his chair, with the crutch never far from his elbow, dragging himself when he moved, with slow effort, he yet seemed instinct with the life of the germinating elemental earth, when gods and men were vital with the force that throbbed in beast and flower and wandering breeze. The large heart, and the large frame, the broad tolerant smile, the inexhaustible interest in nature and mankind, the brave, unquenchable cheerfulness under afflictions and adversities, the frank appreciation and apology for the animal side of things, all helped to maintain the impression of a kind of Pagan strength and simplicity."

"It is impossible to maintain that these attributes [caution and progress] have been constant in the two great English parties. The Conservatives or Tories have often been progressive; the Liberals or Whigs stationary or retrogressive. Macaulay, in his famous reply to Lord Mahon, maintained that the Whigs had always kept in advance of the Tories, even though the whole nation might have moved onwards, just as the forelegs of the stag are always leading.But in fact both parties have passed and repassed one another, and have frequently exchanged places and influence; each by turn has had its phases of protection and free trade, imperialism and insularity, democracy and oligarchy, socialism and individualism. During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and down to the accession to power of William Pitt, the Tories, with some justice, boasted that they were the representatives of popular rights and national interests as against the aristocratic Whig cliques; and until the outbreak of the great war with France, it was the Whigs who were usually the party of foreign adventure and expansion, while the Tories had rather a stronger leaning towards peace and retrenchment and economic progress. Political reform has never been a Liberal monopoly; and social reform has found its champions at least as often in the Conservative ranks as in those of their rivals. On the other hand, the Conservatives, until the Beaconsfield Ministry of 1874, were not specially identified with the maintenance of the Empire; and in the 'fifties and sixties, under Lord Derby and Disraeli himself, they were less ardent vindicators of English pretensions abroad than the dominant section of the Liberals under Palmerston.Thus it is a difficult, perhaps even an impossible, task to draw a dividing line from age to age between the two parties, on the basis of doctrine. But the fact is that Englishmen, in their public as in their private life, have no great regard for abstract generalisations. They are careless about measures and much more particular about men. Fidelity to persons, rather than to principles, is the spirit of our party life."

"The Great Parterre at , planted by , was abolished by , a priceless piece of history lost."

"His bright spirits and kindly genial ways, the outward expression of a soul which combined with its deep sense of religion a noble and generous disposition, won not only from his personal friends, but from all with whom he came in contact, an admiration and kindly feeling such as only a few have the power to excite."

"Wherever she went, Vita collected seeds and roots and s, and always travelled with a and a few potatoes into which she would put cuttings to keep them moist and fresh."

"The duke of Clarence and seconde brother to the kynge thanne beynge prysoner in the towre, was secretely put to deth and drowned in a barell of maluesye wythin the sayde towre."

"Her second marriage was to the war correspondent and broadcaster , with whom she had a son and a daughter. He liked sport and shooting, while she preferred the arts and literature. Hastings was very rightwing, she liberal in the tradition of . They had a tremendous row over , which she considered an act of barbarism, while he saw as a hero. His remark that "I've got the three things I wanted most, a Churchill gun, a and a beautiful wife" did not go down at all well. She strongly resented "being counted as a chattel with a gun and a rod". When divorce inevitably came, she said they had never shared a close relationship."

"Away from her prison work, divided her time between London and , where she and her husband raised two adopted daughters, Isabella and Esther, at their home, , near . There, they commissioned a celebrated from Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1969, which many consider his finest work."

"I remember more the atmosphere than specific memories — being in the garden and hanging out with both my parents while they were doing things, walking through, smelling the flowers. I was very keen on s from a young age – that very much formed the basis of my love of gardening. Wild collecting dictated what we had in the gardens. On holidays in the Mediterranean, my parents collected plants such as and s – we had them long before they were fashionable. s, too."

"I have six grandchildren and when I have them with me I do love giving them treats — or a . But they are given as a surprise reward for behaving well, not in response to whingeing. One reason so many children are more overweight today could be that they lead less active lives than we did. We walked to school and spent more time playing in the fresh air. Houses were not as warm, so we used up more calories: food was fuel to keep us going. If grandparents are feeding grandchildren the same portions they ate as children, it's probably too much."

"We moved to Perch Hill in 1994 from London and found a rather ramshackle ex- with a lot of concrete, corrugated iron and a small garden with a on the south side of the house. Since then, we converted the farm into an organic 90 acres, putting in new hedges on old lines, trying to encourage wildflowers into the meadows and introducing our own herd of and a flock or Romney-cross sheep."

"Geoffrey Jellicoe was one of the century's greatest landscape architects. His contribution to landscape design — a discipline he credited above building design as the "Mother of all Arts" — has been described as equal to that of one of his great heroes, the 18th-century gardener . Among Jellicoe's triumphs are the grounds of at , in , near , public gardens at and the at , together with many small private commissions."

"I'm on a mission to get more of us to grow British wild flowers in our gardens. As ever-increasing numbers of these plants vanish from the countryside, our own private spaces become more important – and genuinely useful. Between us, our gardens cover more than a million acres, which far exceeds the total area of all our nature reserves. We need to think of our gardens as little reservoirs in which British biodiversity can survive. In time, it will spread out from there, but if we make our gardens wild flower hot spots, then at least we know things aren't disappearing at quite such a rate. There's plenty of evidence from the work of etymologists such as Dr (see her brilliant book Wildlife Of A Garden: A Thirty-Year Study) that gardens can provide rich s, with flowers the key part of that ."

"Let’s start in the garden. This year cookery writers are as happy digging and planting as slicing and braising. Sarah Raven is a great gardener and, on the evidence of her latest book, Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (, £35), she’s a good cook too. This is a book for a lifetime of cooking: there are more than 400 recipes based on fruit and vegetables. It is not vegetarian — she uses fish and meat too — but vegetables and fruit are to the fore. Raven’s recipes are simple, practical and enticing, and there isn’t one I don’t want to cook. The book is divided into two-month chunks and full of suggestions (snip off pea tendrils for salads, or leave a few beetroot in the ground to produce an early spring salad leaf) and tips on the most tasty varieties to grow. Her ten recipes will sort out an impending green avalanche, and she has five good marrow recipes for when the wretched plants have triumphed."

"You can't always predict what will get a child's imagination started, but in my experience they tend to remain absorbed longer with fantasy games."

"For me, the perfect weekend is one spent with the whole family, ideally at the beachside cottage we rent in North Cornwall. I have happy memories of holidays in Cornwall when our children Sophy and were about the age our grandchildren are now. There are 11 of us: me, my husband Rob, Sophy and Hugh and their spouses, and our five grandchildren, and we do all the usual things: build s on and wait for the tide to come in and destroy them. We search for prawns, crabs and sea anemones in rock pools. We might even do some surfing. We'll go mackerel fishing in a boat, and if we catch anything (which everyone always does, that's the great thing about mackerel fishing). Then Hugh ... will whip out his little bottle of home-brewed and we'll all sit there in the middle of the ocean, tucking into fresh mackerel ."

"... Jane, 72, who in the mid-1960s worked as the first secretary of ’s fan club, and her husband, Rob, 76, a retired advertising executive, are far from being stereotypical old buffers. In fact, they were trend-setters in their day — among the first of the “down-shifting” young professionals who had the chutzpah to get off the corporate conveyor belt, sell up in London and go in search of a better quality of life in the sticks. ‘There was a time when people said to , “you must be Jane’s son”, she says wistfully. ‘Then suddenly I was Hugh’s mother’. Their decision to swap the security of a regular salary cheque for life in the freelance lane took considerable courage in 1971, with unemployment hovering at the 7% mark. “We did it for the children, really,” Jane recalls. “Both Rob and I were brought up in the countryside, and we wanted the same for Sophy and Hugh. We were living in at the time, but this was before it became posh. It was lively and multi-ethnic, with around the corner. It was lots of fun, but it was not the best place to bring up children."

"At the you were, of course, first taught to draw. You experienced the pleasure of the , , the , cartridge and , and how to slice off enough of the latter without losing the lot. You were taught about the right pencil and how to rub down ; and how to rub out."

"Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall cooked and ate a root while researching her book Peonies: The Imperial Flower (1999). She described the flavour as 'reminiscent of turnips soaked in wallpaper paste mixed with '."

"The Italians who crossed the by invitation brought with them a technical scenic ability, the s being as well equipped as the ers themselves. Of the former, was probably the greatest. He was a native of , made his name in Rome, and attracted the attention of von Liechtenstein, for whom he built . He appears to have carried out little garden design, but his influence on detail was profound. ... Another architect was , who built the Salesian Nunnery and altered the . Both are as well designed as anything in Austria. Of the scenic designers the working in were the most famous. In Vienna designed theatrical scenery, the monument in the , and the Imperial palace of Favorita (now the ). Of architectural draughtsmen the best was . In the train of the Italians came the craftsmen, men who set a standard of technique as high as at any time."

"'Madame Alfred Carrière' This was the first rose planted by Vita at in 1930, before the deeds were even signed, and it quickly covered most of the south face of the South Cottage and in Vita and Harold's day was left to 'render invisible' most of the front of the house and trained around her bedroom window to pour scent into the house for months at a stretch. It is still there, and now has a huge trunk wider than my husband's thigh."

"There are many good and helpful books worth careful reading—among which may be mentioned: 's How to Lay out a Garden, 's Landscape Gardening, 's Formal Garden in England, 's great work L'Art des Jardins, 's Art and Craft of Garden Making, and from the historical side A History of Gardening in England by the Hon. . The standard work on Japanese gardens is by . Many other books might be mentioned, but the above I have found the most interesting from the design point of view ..."

"... Horticultural Show in the Temple Gardens. I go every year now, and should be sorry to miss it. How odd it seems, that for years and years I never went to a , or knew anything about them, and now they have become one of the interests of my life! The great attraction this year is the revival of what are called old-fashioned late single Tulips—Breeders, Flames, &c. Those who like to buy the bulbs, ordering them carefully by the catalogue, may have their gardens gay with Tulips for over two months, certainly the whole of April and May."

"Many people would say, 'So strict a way of would make life unbearable,' but after a time this strictness so changes the tastes the simpler foods are really enjoyed, and I distinctly think, that when people have dieted for several years, the amount of harm done by an occasional relapse is so small that the social convenience of it makes it worth while, so long as it is acknowledged as a concession to weakness and not a thing to be continued. It is what is done every day that matters."

"Charles and Theresa entertained many friends at ‘Woodlands’ including , , , Henry James, Thomas Croft, and members of the Lushington family who also lived locally. Edward Burne-Jones was particularly keen to visit. He had previously stayed with his friend Stanhope at neighbouring ‘Sandroyd House’ which had been built in 1860 for the pre-Raphaelite painter by the architect , and visited the lovely fir woods in the surrounding area. Theresa’s garden was much admired by those in her circle, it comprised a terrace with planters, beds and borders of hardy plants and a in which she also grew culinary herbs."

"The position of the kitchen garden is largely dependent on the position of the kitchen, and easy and private access should be arranged between them. Size has to be settled. An acre is supposed to be enough to supply ten persons with vegetables and small fruit, and the designer can tell from the type of house how many have to be catered for; and he rules off sufficient space. Then come the s for games. The most naturally level part should be chosen for them, other conditions being satisfactory. A lawn tennis court measures 78 ft. × 36 ft., and to ensure ample running back space, 120 ft. × 60 ft. must be allowed. requires 115 ft. × 84 ft. for a full sized game, and 120 × 90 ft. of levelled lawn should be provided. A fall of 2 in. in the 100 ft. does not affect tennis, but for croquet the lawn must be a true level. A tennis court ought to run north and south in order to avoid the afternoon sun."

"During the first half of the present century those who visited and examined collections of Early Netherlandish Paintings were like explorers voyaging on a wild and unknown ocean without a chart; some of them making careful observations, and jotting down on their maps any land of the existence and extent of which they had acquired certain proof, and noting its characteristic features ; others, however, in their eagerness to make discoveries quickly, and to acquire renown, mistaking sandbanks and rocks seen through the mists for hitherto undiscovered countries, giving them names, dilating in elegant language on their beauties, and for a time obtaining the reputation of having added to the world's knowledge."

"The came in with , and work, already practised, became the vogue. Stiff s, and , with the orange trees in tubs outside during the summer, were in every garden of fashion. ... One of the most charming developments of 's time in topiary work was the long alley bordered by trees, generally , kept clipped up to about 10 ft. and then allowed to feather naturally. During this reign the revolt began towards "nature"."

"… The accepted idea of the of a building, furniture or a painting, as the rehabilitation of an object already in existence, albeit in imperfect form, cannot be applied to gardens which are by their nature organic. They have allotted life spans and have been dug up and refashioned over the centuries. ... At the has been able to restore the garden of the great from original plans, so that the design of the s and seen today is much as Evelyn described it when he visited in 1678. At in the National Trust has restored a from engravings, existing evidence and plant list which have enabled them to use contemporary plants including old cultivars of Turkish irises, apples and pears and old tulips. A current true restoration is being undertaken at , , where the poet 's famous beds, painted by in 1777, are being reinstated with authentic planting. … The ultimate in scholarly garden reconstruction is the Roman garden at executed through excavation and .."

"Mavis fell in love with her future husband, , himself one of the Bletchley “break-in” experts, after he helped her with a particularly difficult code breaking problem: “I was alone on the evening shift in the cottage and I sought the help of what called 'one of the clever Cambridge mathematicians in Hut 6’. We put our heads together and in the calmer light of logic, and much ersatz coffee, solved the problem. Dilly made no objections to my having sought such help and when I told him I was going to marry the 'clever mathematician from hut 6’ he gave us a lovely wedding present.” After the war Mavis Batey brought her indefatigability to the protection of Britain’s historical gardens. Her interest began in the late 1960s, when her husband was appointed the “Secretary of the Chest”, the chief financial officer of Oxford University. They lived in a university-owned house on the park at and she set about ensuring that the overgrown gardens were restored to their original landscaped state."

"In the and the of the , grandiloquent homes were built for the nation's leaders and heroes with great avenues of approach and triumphal arches. Villages which were found to stand in the way of these grandiose undertakings were removed out of sight. Sweeping changes were made at the seat of the , the victor of , which necessitated the moving of the village of in ; was destroyed in the creating of 's dramatic for the ; disappeared in the lay-out for the magnificent seat of the in . The great Whig palaces and extensive gardens at , and overran ancient villages and hamlets that stood in the way of improvements. , who had envisaged an avenue of trees between London and his , began his improvements by removing the village of which lay in the shadow of his house. The village of in was resited to give breathing space to the family of . ... By the middle of the century great gardens were being made, not only to reflect their creator's importance or political beliefs, but to demonstrate the excellence of his taste. The new vogue was not for great avenues, canals, fountains and grand parterres but for naturalized landscape. Wealthy families in every county bought up vast tracts of land to make natural gardens, which would look like landscape paintings; some took the English countryside for these picture gardens and with the help of idealized and, 'improved' it; the with memories of their s revelled in the creation of Italian classical landscapes."

"Once you’ve agreed what makes a in the first place (which isn’t as easy as one might think…), I think the basic measures of quality for children’s fiction are the same as for adult fiction. How well ted, how well imagined, the commitment to a voice and the skill in realizing it, the aliveness of the s, the vividness of the world, the originality and wit and surprise and charm and everything else that demanding readers look for in great writing. Books for younger children tend to be heavily illustrated, in a way that most adult books aren’t (more’s the pity…), a fact that of course brings with it a whole other set of ways in which a book can succeed or fail. (The illustrations and their relationship to the text aren’t, of course, minor factors incidental to the substance of the book, they are among the hardest things to get perfectly right.)"

"There are so many interesting Brazilian writers I’d like to get my hands on. The ' Best Young Brazilian Novelists a few years back identified twenty writers aged under forty, and there’s a lot there still waiting for the to welcome them in. For that collection, I translated short work by two of those writers, and , both of whom deserve full English-language books; there’s another on that list, , who’s bound to be discovered by the English-speaking world before long. And there are a lot of Brazilian writers I have already translated but of whom I’d like to do a lot more — I’ve done one extraordinary short novel by and would love to do a second, I’d like to do more , too, and so many others…"

"has a , and deserves it. But while she doesn’t need any recognition from me, I’ve just given the team behind her book a prize: the £2,000 . Why? Well, I thought was stunning. But my Russian is terrible, so I only read it in 2016, when it was published in English, through the work of translator Bela Shayevich and editor Jacques Testard. Nobody is likely ever to give the literature Nobel to a translator or editor – so my prize has gone to them. One of our shortlisted books, ', was the first work of modern published in the UK. In 2017, working with the and with support from the , I established the TA first translation prize, using my €25,000 (£22,000) winnings from another award, the . Its aim was to highlight the work of translators new to the profession, and of the editors who work with them. Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular , there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk."

"The experience of those who have gone before us, conveyed by instruction, shortens our road to knowledge, and by lifting us over a considerable part of the way, leaves us in fresh vigor and spirits to pursue the rest, or run further lengths beyond. For at our entrance into life everything is new, everything unknown, so there is no ground whereon to build a rational conviction, nor other reason to be had for assenting to anything, than because we were taught it. And the like may be said of any particular art or science, wherein docility is the first requisite enabling us to make a proficiency: for judgment comes from experience, and experience is only gotten by practice."

"More rich, more noble I will ever hold The Muse's laurel, than a crown of gold."

"I willingly accept Cassandra's fate, To speak the truth, although believ'd too late."

"The bloody wolf, the wolf does not pursue; The boar, though fierce, his tusk will not embrue In his own kind, Bears, not on bears do prey: Then art thou, man, more savage far than they."

"The rise of Benin...is closely connected with the European demand for slaves...The profits from the trade with the Europeans gave the rulers and merchants of Benin an incentive and also, in the form of firearms, the means, to extend their rule...By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the continual warfare was destroying the prosperity and even the structure of the state...Large parts of the city were deserted and left to crumble into ruins. Trade, even the trade in slaves, declined, and, as European traders came ever less frequently to the city, so the purpose of slave-raids became increasingly to provide victims for human sacrifices. Eventually, of all the greatness of Benin, all that survived was the unchecked and self-destructive lust of its rulers for power and human booty."

"What! shall Saxon bonds be sundered By the sordid lust of gain? Shall the realms of peace be ravaged By the Rulers of the Main For the greed of gold or glory? No,—forbid it, God the Lord! Young America—Old England— Hand-in-hand, not sword to sword!"

"... pick up one of those superb books such as Private Gardens of England, by , on a wild, wet afternoon in February when the wind is shrilling outside, moaning through the gaps and spattering the window with rain. Turn to a picture of Saling Hall showing blues and silvers against the static severity of s, or see the black and white photographs of roses, cobbles and at , in which there's a table and chairs glimpsed through an open door in the garden wall. Books such as these are indeed a strong element of the whole pleasure of gardening; they need to be devoured and mulled over as well as those which are carried round in an earthy hand as vital advice flows out on what to do with five hundred s at the s."

"What ever happy region is thy place, Cease thy celestial song a little space; (Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, Since Heav'n's eternal year is thine.)"

"We are Diana’s virgin train, Descended of no mortal strain: Our bows and arrows are our goods, Our palaces the lofty woods. * * * If you ask where such wights do dwell, In what blest clime, that so excel, The poets only that can tell."