Take a good look at Iona House Gallery
I first started looking at paintings in an important way during the late 1950s when I was still at North London Collegiate School. In a new experiment, all sixth formers had to host a student swop from abroad.
I was given a girl whose home was in post-war Amsterdam.
Although our relationship was formal, it survived. At the end of term I travelled to her city where I found a gloomy mother always out at work, no father, no friends, small plates of cold, tasteless food, an Amsterdam still trapped in the grey dregs of the horrendous Second World War … and two very different art galleries.
They changed my life.
The first celebrated Vincent van Gogh’s extraordinary landscapes and dazzling sunflowers. The second revealed a Rembrandt whose brilliant dark master-pieces seemed to stretch for ever. I stood transfixed, visiting both galleries several times as a surefire way of avoiding my persistently drab surroundings.
Back home, I wrote my first essay on seeing well-known paintings in their original flesh. I went on to write poems at the many exhibitions I visited throughout my adult life. I also spent five years in Oxford with Phaidon editing and finally publishing The Encyclopaedia of Visual Art. Its ten sparkling and definitive volumes were subsequently bought by Macmillan.
I still and will always find something very special about looking at paintings. And the best way to do it in Woodstock is by visiting Iona House Gallery, a treasure trove of original paintings, prints, sculpture, ceramics, glass, woodwork and contemporary jewellery. The gallery changes its windows and exhibitions regularly, so there is always something new and fresh to look at.
I’ve chosen to illustrate this feature with four different examples of Iona House Gallery treasures that currently hang on my cottage walls, not only because I love looking at them but also because they are brilliant examples of the work of Richard who flits in and out of the gallery every week to take home the prints or paintings people need to have framed.
Richard’s work is beyond compare. He makes everything he touches look immaculate. Here are my own tributes to him.
Elevator to the Land of Nod
Because of the spectacular success of Stairway to Hell which has now sold more than 3 million copies, mostly to Henley-on-Thames, New York and Bosnia, Valerie Mendes has agreed to release its fascinating page-turning sequel, way ahead of schedule. She always enjoys being ahead of the game, particularly tennis.
Elevator to the Land of Nod takes us in one quantum leap to the future life of the beautiful old Oxfordshire town of Woodstock, and what it will be like exactly ten years from today, on 22 September 2036.
After three action-packed weeks of detailed and immaculate research, Valerie can now reveal intimate plans lying in wait for residents and tourists alike, particularly those living in grace and favour cottages within the borders of Blenheim’s marvellous gardens.
In allowing this sequel to be published on Boxing Day 2026, Valerie is fully aware of her growing reputation as an international voice in the wilderness of world politics. Every word she writes is poured over and analysed in the Great Houses of England, Scotland and Wales, especially over enormous gins and tonics at the end of an exhausting day playing bridge. Or tennis.
Stairway to Hell
Local politics is often a nightmare. We can fight our particular corner for years on end, spending time, money and useless patience on our particular cause to no avail.
As a fulltime novelist and poet, I need to guard my time and energy which can quickly dissipate on other things rather than my work. I am my own demanding boss and there are only so many waking hours when my creative energy is clean and fresh.
But the threat of our Woodstock Post Office being closed for good pushed me into my own very special action. I decided to write a short novel, to be published over Christmas 2026 by VMBooks.
And here it is.
I Spy with My Little Eye
At the start of this long hot summer I decided to take a Sabbatical. I began by throwing a party at The Back Lane Tavern in Woodstock to celebrate having lived in my beautiful cottage for ten years. The event was a huge success. At the party, travelling all the way from Edgeware, were Staff from my beloved School, North London Collegiate.
One week later, now nursing a very sore left wrist after a Carpal Tunnel Syndrome operation, thanks to the brilliant Mr Chris Little at The Manor Hospital in Oxford and his equally brilliant Private Secretary Angie Cox, and feeling terribly sorry for myself, the telephone rang. It was the marvellous Sonal Dhadphale, Head of Alumnae and Supporter Relations, from NLCS.
Up to her eyes in work, she asked me not only to visit the School on Tuesday 4 May 2027 to talk to parents and students alike, but to write an article for her magazine under the theme of AMPLIFY.
In the twinkling of an eye, my pain vanished. The journalist in me emerged fully formed and rearing to go.
‘Could I possibly have it by next Friday?’ Sonal asked.
‘You can have it tonight,’ I said.
Two hours later, I had written it, printed it out, edited it, checked it and sent it down the extraordinary line which marks our magical world of high tech miracles.
And here it is.