12/1/2022 Getting on in the court of the Sun KingArtists need patrons and who better than Louis the Fourteenth? BBC Radio 3 is featuring several programmes about playwright Moliere on Sunday 16 January 2022 to mark the 400 years since his birth. Don’t miss the evening broadcast of a new adaptation of The Miser with Toby Jones. Lully, the Italian-born musician, whose popularity at court grew as Moliere’s waned, is the subject of Composer of the Week. All programmes can be heard again on demand using BBC Sounds. 12/1/2022 Sharing a wonderful Christmas feastWhat a pleasure to get together to bring and share a delicious buffet thanks, as usual, to Maggie and her helpers. Penny was merciless as ever with her annual quiz where she tested our knowledge of French Art including many Impressionist works. Pauline came out top as a result, she confided, of a misspent youth in art galleries where she hoped to find romance!
12/1/2022 Chance encounters and connectionsIn November 2021 our guest speaker Jack Wotherspoon explained who met whom, where and when, and how it led to the formation of the group of artists we now know as The Impressionists. It was fascinating to go back in time and understand the struggle for change in academic circles and the vital importance of investors from America to the survival of the young painters. Public taste was conditioned to a certain style. Monet, Renoir, and their contemporaries could easily fulfil the demand for academic art but hungered to create something new and fresh. They wanted to capture what they saw, be outdoors, paint the play of light in broad brushstrokes. Jack skilfully put the story into the context of the market forces of the time which almost starved but eventually enriched most of the ‘subversive’ creators of the works that we know and love. We look forward to welcoming Jack again in a future season.
12/1/2022 Annual Bastille Day SupperThe sun shone for our trip to Tyrell’s Ford Inn where we enjoyed drinks in the garden, then tried our very best to give a pre-prandial rendition of La Marseillaise and tested our knowledge of French history with a mini quiz. Our thanks to the club members who made the arrangements.
It is long overdue to say a few words about the very moving presentation given to the group in June 2021 by Jeremy Prescott. Jeremy, who served in the Armed Forces for over 2 decades, spoke about the life of Violette Szabo GC. His talk was based upon years of careful research and illustrated by many of his own photographs.
The story of Violette’s upbringing in Stockwell where she was a confident young girl amongst her 4 brothers hinted at her later willingness for adventure. The children were bilingual thanks to their English father and French mother and at the age of 13 she travelled alone to Paris to stay with her aunt. At 19 she met her future husband Etienne on 14 July 1940, and they were married weeks later. Tragically he was killed in action little over 2 years later and never saw their daughter Tanya. Violette’s decision to train for SOE and undertake missions in occupied France saw her join only a small number of women in this role. The hardships she bore after capture and her eventual death were related with great sensitivity by Jeremy. We cannot know to what extent she was driven by revenge, but Violette’s courage cannot be doubted. Two biographies are available including one by Tanya whom Jeremy has spoken to and hopes one day to meet. There is also the 1958 biopic ‘Carve her name with pride’. We are indebted to Jeremy for an enthralling evening. |
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November 2023
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