penwithlit

Here is a sketch of St Mary Le Strand, which is the church in the middle of the Strand at Aldwych. I sketched this from outside Somerset House. As you see it was really busy there. The south part of Aldwych is being closed off to motor traffic and made a pedestrian-only route. It will be great when it’s finished, but right now it means that the busy pavements are narrowed with barriers and there are many types of confusion.

The foreground is collage, added after the drawing.

Here is work in progress and a map.

Walter Sickert and the founders of the Camden Town Group restricted its membership to sixteen men, but there were several other men and women artists who were strongly associated with it. One of the more fascinating and productive of the outer circle was Douglas Fox Pitt (1864–1922), son of Augustus Lane Fox who is better known under his later name of Lieutenant-General Fox Pitt Rivers, whose anthropological and archaeological collection formed the basis of the Pitt Rivers Museum in the University of Oxford.

Fox Pitt Rivers, the father, had been born Augustus Lane Fox, and changed his name when he inherited a country estate substantial enough to support him and his family in the style that they desired. Young Douglas Fox Pitt didn’t need to work, and found it hard to choose an occupation. He initially started to train as an architect, then went to Canada and South America to…

Translated by Zaman Stanizai

Oh dear, my month of Afghan culture is nearly over, and I’ve still got quite a lot to write up and have read less than hoped because of work commitments plus half term with the kidlings.

Dancing in the Mosque is a memoir by Homeira Qaderi that was first published in the UK in 2021 by Fourth Estate. Qaderi is a formidable and fiercely intelligent woman, born in war-torn Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, and living for a while as a refugee in Iran.

“Afghanistan is the land of invisible bullets and the land of a death foretold, the land of doomed destinies, and the land of dejected and disgruntled youth, waiting forever for dreams that will never come true. This is how Madar, my mother, Ansari, and Nanah-jan, my grandmother, Firozah, described my homeland to me when I was barely four years old.“

Returning…