history

Les Tres Riches Heures

~ michaeljhealy ~ Leave a comment

Some experiences really are once-in-a-lifetime experiences. About a year ago it was announced that in mid-2025 one of the rarest and most exquisite medieval manuscripts would go on display to the public. Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is an illuminated book of hours (a book of prayers intended to be read at specific hours of the day) first created between 1412 and 1416 for John, Duke of Berry, the brother of King Charles V of France. The manuscript, believed to be the work of the Limbourg brothers, was left unfinished because the brothers died, most likely victims of plague. Further work was done on the manuscript later in the 15th century by Barthelemy d’Eyck and Jean Colombe.

The manuscript is very rarely displayed because of its fragility and has only been seen by the public twice since the end of the 19th century. Even scholars have been denied access since the 1980s and forced to rely on facsimiles. The need to repair its binding gave an opportunity to exhibit some of the unbound pages at the Chateau de Chantilly where it is usually housed, an event so rare that it was described as one of the cultural highlights of the century. Needless to say, art lovers, historians, and bibliophiles have descended on Chantilly in huge numbers since June, but by the time I arrived in mid-September the crowds had subsided and I was able to see the exhibited pages up close.

Twelve pages were on display the day I visited, each one representing a month of the year. It is hard to describe how vivid, rich, and elaborate the illumination is on these pages, as well as the perfection of the calligraphy. It is a credit not just to the artists, but also those charged with the care and conservation of this treasure, that the illustrations look as if they could have been painted yesterday, such is the depth and brilliance of the color.

Some works of art defy categorization. This precious manuscript, a priceless example of medieval art, is one of them. I feel privileged to have seen it.

Austerity Britain: 1945-1951

~ michaeljhealy ~ Leave a comment

I set myself the challenge some time ago to read David Kynaston’s monumental history of post-war Britain. I thought of it as a challenge not because it’s a difficult read. Far from it. Kynaston writes elegantly and clearly and is never dull. It is, however, a long series, running to some 2,500 pages over the four volumes covering 1945 and 1965. (Further books are planned taking the series to 1979).

I have just finished the first volume, Austerity Britain: 1945-1951 and was mightily impressed by it. Political and social history is rarely as vivid and engaging as this. It begins with Britons celebrating the end of World War 2 and ends with the run-up to the election of 1951 and the return to power of Winston Churchill, by then in his mid-70s. The period was, for the vast majority of British people, one marked by deprivation and hardship. These were years of empty shelves, ration books, shopping coupons, and general drabness. Yet against this background the British people were living through a period of extraordinary innovation and change. These were the years that saw the launch of The National Health Service, the beginnings of comprehensive education, extensive nationalization of key industries, and the rebuilding of much of the country’s urban infrastructure after the devastating destruction of the war and earlier social neglect.

Kynaston’s extraordinary achievement is to compose an utterly convincing “soundscape” of British life in the period by collecting so many voices and stories from such a range of people. This is not history told by the great and the good. The important politicians of the time (Attlee, Bevan, Wilson, and so on) feature, of course, but so do hundreds of ordinary citizens from all over the country. Miners, shopkeepers, factory workers, and housewives are all given a voice here through letters, diaries, and the findings of the Mass-Observation research project started in the 1930s.

In many respects, and perhaps only in the most superficial and obvious respects, Britain today looks, sounds, and feels nothing like the nation of the 1940s, but I was struck most not by the differences but by the similarities of the country eight decades apart. So many of the same problems persist. Managing the consequences of its long gone empire, deep class and wealth divisions, vital social issues such as affordable housing; these were the challenges of the 1940s and continue to be challenges eighty years later.

Nicholas Hawksmoor: London Churches

~ michaeljhealy ~ Leave a comment

I can hear the bell of St. Anne’s, Limehouse tolling as I write. The church is preparing to celebrate its 300th anniversary, and every time I walk past it, I imagine what the local people must have thought back in the 1720s when this monumental structure started to take shape around them. Even today, with Canary Wharf’s glass and steel towers looming in the distance, St. Anne’s holds its place proudly, but three centuries ago it must have been nothing short of astounding.

I was inside St. Anne’s recently to see an exhibition of photographs taken by Helene Binet and displayed to mark a project to restore all of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s extraordinary London churches. Hawksmoor was the great beneficiary of Queen Anne’s so-called Fifty Churches Act of 1711. The grandiose project envisioned originally never came to full fruition. Only twelve churches were completed. Nevertheless, the vision gave us what many today call the Hawksmoor Six: St. Anne’s, Limehouse, St. Alfege in Greenwich, St. George-in-the-East, Christ Church, Spitalfields, St. Mary Woolnoth, and St. George’s, Bloomsbury. We can add the decommissioned church of St. Luke’s, Old Street, and the now demolished St John Horsleydown, but it’s the Six that most people know and that are the subject of the conservation effort.

As I strolled around looking at the huge, imposing photographs, and reading about the restoration appeal, I got talking to a volunteer who alerted me to a wonderful book by Mohsen Mostafavi and Helene Binet, Nicholas Hawksmoor: London Churches. Binet’s sharp black-and-white photographs steal the show here, but the floor plans and stylized outlines of each church are also rendered beautifully, and are accompanied by short essays. No book can do justice to the splendors of these remarkable and precious churches, but when I’m away from London I like to dip in to London Churches to remember them.