The Sussex Barn

We were planning to walk on the Sussex Downs yesterday. We often go to West Dean College in order to visit the exhibition at the Sussex Barn and to have some refreshments in the restaurant. Unfortunately I found there is no exhibition at present as they are preparing to exhibit some work from students.

St Kilda

I have been watching a television programme about the island of St Kilda, probably the most remote island in the British Isles. New research suggests that the island became less fertile because of the farming methods. Noone has lived there since the 1930s.
St Kilda has a very good web site. I have this site open at present and so I can hear a recording of the waves crashing on the shore there.

The Valley Diary

Broadband has enabled me to make contact with people in different parts of the world. However it was a surprise to make contact with a local newsletter through this blog.
The printed Valley Diary is published monthly in the villages of Singleton, East Dean, West Dean, Charlton & Chilgrove but new items are often added to The Online Valley Diary on a daily basis. I live only a few a miles away and I had not heard about these interesting publications.
My post about Arcimboldi following my visit to West Dean House was "noticed" up the valley and was reproduced in the April 2007 diary. I hope that I will be able to include further items of interest for readers of the Valley Diary in my blog.
I have been following up my interest in the history of the house and its previous owners.
William James, an American millionaire and the father of Edward James bought the West Dean Estate c1893 and built the unique Monkton House in 1902. Some of its contents were on view in the recent exhibition at the barn. The architect was Edward Lutyens.

In 1905 he bought another Lutyens house called Greywalls, Gullane about 15 miles east of Edinburgh. This house was built as a holiday home in 1901 for Alfred Lyttelton, the first sportsman to play both cricket and football for England. It is next to the Muirfield golf course and Alfred was also a keen golfer. The house and gardens were designed by the "dream team" of Edward Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.
Mrs William James was born in the Scottish highlands. It is said that she was the natural daughter King Edward VII. Edward James was born at Greywalls in 1907. He inherited West Dean House when his father died in 1912 and Greywalls was sold to the Horlick family in 1924, who have created one of the best hotels in Scotland there.
I have happy memories of the Greywalls Hotel as I stayed there for a "holiday job" as private tutor to one of the Horlick family in 1958. Much of my time was spent playing golf and tennis and listening to a 78" record of My Fair Lady which had been brought from America and was not yet available in England. Another visitor was Dorothy Sayers who used to come there to write.

The Falklands War

I was not able to visit the Falkland Islands on my trip to Antarctica. We were several hundred miles away. After 25 years I had forgotten much of what we saw on television during the Falklands war. I was therefore very interested when I received a telephone call this evening. My friend thought that I would be interested in the
The Archive Hour on Radio 4 at 8 o'clock as it would be about the Falklands War. Unfortunately we were having our supper at 8 and so after supper I went to the Radio 4 site and the Listen Again for the Archive Hour
This programme is most interesting as you can hear the original radio broadcasts to the Falkland islanders as the war was happening, Rex Hunt, the Governor who had to leave the islands and the radio presenter Patrick Watts.
"Michael Nicholson recalls the night of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 with the help of some astonishing radio archive from the Falkland Island Broadcasting Service. When radio station manager Patrick Watts turned up to present his weekly 60-minute music request show, the programme turned into a marathon 16-hour broadcast as islanders phoned in with their sightings of the invading army."
You can listen again to The Archive Hour for the whole of next week. I hope that you will find that by clicking on this link, you can open up your radio player.

Welcome to my Second Blog.

In my first Blog I reflected upon how I learned to Blog.
In my Second Blog, I will be reflecting upon ways in which using Broadband has changed my activities and indeed my approach to life, how it has helped me to keep in communication with many friends and relatives, how it revived my interests in photography and family history, how it has changed my working practices....
I hope that my readers will be able to share their own reflections upon Broadband with me. I would like to hear about your frustrations, your hopes, your problems as well as your successes.