Alliances Do Not Last Forever.

 The following little rumination was written in January of this year and then either just not used or forgotten about so it is very interesting to read a few months later. I wrote it early in Trump's second term when his tariff-inclination was at a peak!

 Although one might have been critical of America from time to time, succumbing to the usual British semi-sneer about the frequent vulgarity and frankly often dumb events and people, STILL, America was always there; speaking its own version of easily understood English [so comforting to the linguistically lazy Brits]; different from us but sort of descended from us and with many ways and customs comfortingly familiar to us. It did not occur to me not to send my eldest, when she was just 12 to stay with American friends in a swap with their daughter of similar age. That same daughter and her family now live and work in California and have greatly appreciated their thoroughly enjoyable lives and careers there. One hears so much of the terrifying gun culture of life there and prays that it avoids one’s nearest and dearest. At the same time, we know life here couldn’t get THAT precarious and potentially hideous, could it?

Trump's second inauguration day. J.D.Vance alongside,
with Melania Trump.
Oct 2024.

When the last political decision anyone here wanted, was made and Trump managed to be voted in for a second term as President, disbelief was high. Although it was not the huge majority consistently claimed by the President’s men, he won, in part thanks to the over-large ego of Joe Biden who clung on too long to his intention to run again despite his obvious ageing. And the Democrats, amazingly,  allowed him to stand again But Trump won and we feared the worst. But the imagined worst was nowhere bad enough!

Musk in D.O.G.E. mode.

Trump'a frantic avalanche of legislation and sweeping anti-Constitutional decisions made since his election a few months ago have frightened and outraged many Americans and appalled much of the Western world. He has two loyal lieutenants; J.D. Vance [Vice-President] and Elon Musk, unelected but Trump-selected, as Chief Trouble-shooter and these two have leapt into action; Vance has directed clumsy ignorant insults masquerading as advice to Europe’s leaders, advising that the greatest threat to Western countries came from within those same countries. Musk, Head of the Trump-appointed DOGE [Dept. of Government Efficiency] has recruited bright young men to run around extracting nationally sensitive statistics on population and policy, while incomes to  

Federal workers told to justify their jobs or lose them.

international bodies have been slashed, many thousands of workers in ‘industries’ such as the F.B.I. Education, Health, have been summarily sacked without any apparent understanding of the overall effects of these wide-ranging removals; all in the trumpeted drive to cut Government expenditure.  In addition, Trump has been enraged apparently by D.E.I. initiatives which have been summarily cancelled; he has pardoned Jan 6 rioters including those who seriously injured policemen and banned biological men from women’s sports. This welter of changes has amounted to what Bannon calls, ‘flooding the zone’. The idea is that, by promoting a dizzying array of initiatives and announcements, your opponents are wrong-footed, not knowing what to take seriously. It is interesting to note the terminology used; not ‘fellow Americans’ but ‘opponents.’

Trump and Putin

In the meantime, Donald is trying to create a global trade war through widespread use of tariffs [tariffs being one of his ‘favourite’ words.] Outrage is only now starting in America as Trump’s approval ratings begin to plummet in what one hopes will be a landslide. One tariff example will suffice: Sterling Heights, outside of Detroit, is ‘an auto-industry-dominated city’ that could see massive num
bers of jobs lost if the President makes good on his tariff threats to Canada and Mexico. There are no other local employment possibilities of scale available. Most of the population is in some capacity, ‘in the auto industry’. This is a disaster for ordinary workers and certainly, not a good look for Trump!

Volodymyr Zelensky
President of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Trump has followed up his suspected admiration for Putin with a reportedly productive conversation with Vladimir on February 12 resulting in the proclamation that negotiations to end the war in Ukraine would start ‘immediately’. Ukrainian membership of NATO was ruled out and Ukraine itself accused of starting the war while Zelinsky was labelled a dictator and accused of avoiding national elections. Neither the Ukrainians nor Nato allies had been consulted prior to these decisions and were evidently not considered to be essential to subsequent discussions. Eventually it was conceded that the Ukrainians should be present in discussions about their existential future, though Russia was not keen on a European presence.

Trump refuses to sign the bipartisan Housing Bill which
offers many benefits and safeguards to would-be buyers.
He wants Congress to pass his Save America Act,
voter I.D legislation, first.

The British population overall sees Trump as a criminal, misogynist, egotist with a hugely inflated self-belief; someone who sees national and international life as a business in which he is engaged in a constant search to profit from losers whom he vilifies. There is no special relationship with the Donald only a small opportunity for the other person to persuade him that his suggestion may be in Trump’s own interest. All of the above is an explanation of why the long, long alliance of the U.K. with the U.S.A. since WW2, beneficial to both, comfortable mostly, constant, reliable and comfortably familiar has changed. We can no longer have America, always there as a trusted friend; Perhaps, an occasional co-conspirator and slightly dodgy neighbour which has unsavoury alliances and relationships with gangster states like Russia where opposing political contenders are pursued and murdered. Aka Alexei Navalny among many.

 

 

Sylvia and Her Parisian Bookshop

 

Sylvia Woodbridge Beach.

Sylvia Beach (14 March 1887 – 5 October 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World Wars I and II. Beach was born in her father's parsonage in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, on 14 March 1887, the second of three daughters of Sylvester Beach and Eleanor Thomazine Orbison. She had an older sister, Holly, and a younger sister, Cyprian.  Although named Nancy after her grandmother Orbison, she later decided to change her name to Sylvia. Her maternal grandparents were missionaries in India, and her father, a Presbyterian minister, was descended from several generations of clergymen. Beach's education featured sporadic tutoring, but she had no formal education.  When the girls were young, the family lived in Baltimore and in Bridgeton, New Jersey but, in 1901, the family moved to France upon Sylvester Beach's appointment as assistant minister of the American Church in Paris and                                                                               Director of the American Student Centre.

The organ in the American Church in Paris

Beach spent 1902–1905 in Paris, returning to New Jersey in 1906 when her father became minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton though she returned permanently to Paris in 1916 in an effort to escape American puritanism. She made several return trips to Europe, lived for two years in Spain, and worked for the Balkan Commission of the Red Cross. During the last year of the Great War, she was drawn back to Paris to study contemporary French literature. While conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Beach read in a French literary journal, of a lending library and bookshop, La Maison des Amis des Livres at 7 rue de l'Odéon, Paris VI. There she was welcomed by the owner who, to her surprise, was a plump, fair-haired young woman, Adrienne Monnier who was wearing a garment that

Adrienne Monnier & Sylvia Beach

looked like a cross between a peasant's dress and a nun's habit, "with a long full skirt … and a sort of tight-fitting velvet waistcoat over a white silk blouse. She was clothed in gray and white like her bookshop" Although Beach was dressed in a Spanish cloak and hat, Monnier said later she knew immediately that she Beach, was American. At that first meeting, Monnier declared, "I like America very much".Beach replied that she liked France very much. Their mutual                                                                                             atttraction was obvious. 

Shakespeare & Company opens.

Beach immediately became a member of Monnier's lending library, where she regularly attended readings by authors such as André Gide, Paul Valéry and Jules Romains. Inspired by the literary life of the Left Bank and by Monnier's efforts to promote innovative writing, she dreamed of starting a branch of Monnier's book shop in New York that would offer contemporary French works to American readers. Since her only capital was US$3,000, which her mother had given her from her savings, she could not afford such a venture in New York. 

However, Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Monnier's help, she opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company. Monnier had been among the first women in France to found her own bookstore four years before. Beach's bookstore was located at 8 rue Dupuytren, Paris VI.The shop sign featured a nearly bald, slat-eyed Shakespeare painted by a friend of Monnier's. On either side of the storefront was written, "Lending Library" and "Bookhop", which was thus misspelled initially. Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted French and American readers, including aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality, encouragement, and books. As the franc dropped in value and the favourable exchange rate attracted many Americans to Paris, her book shop flourished and soon needed more space. In May 1921, Shakespeare and Company moved to 12 rue de l'Odéon, just across the street from Monnier's Maison des Amis des Livres. Monnier and Beach also ran two influential literary journals from their shops: Le Navire d'argent and Transition. Their close relationship lasted for 36 years until Monnier's suicide in 1955.

Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beach & James Joyce. 1920

In July 1920, Beach met Irish writer James Joyce at a dinner party hosted by French poet André Spire and soon after, Joyce joined her lending library. He had been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a publisher for his manuscript for his masterpiece, Ulysses, and Beach, seeing his frustration, offered to publish it. She hired M. Maurice Darantière, a master printer from Dijon who did not understand English, to oversee the printing. Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published Ulysses in 1922, which happened partly as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition printed in English-speaking countries In 1932, Joyce sold the publishing rights to Random House for a $45,000 advance but he did not tell Beach of this decision, nor did he offer her a portion of the funds. When asked about the betrayal, Joyce said, "A baby belongs to its mother, not to the midwife, doesn't it?" In the end, Beach was left near bankruptcy with the debt she had bankrolled to publish Ulysses. 

Shakespeare and Company experienced financial difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s but remained supported by wealthy friends. In 1936, when Beach thought she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company and subscribers paid 200 francs a year to attend readings at the bookstore. Although subscriptions were limited to a select group of 200 people (the maximum number the store could accommodate), the renown of the French and American authors participating in readings during those two years attracted considerable attention to the store. Beach recalled that by then, "we were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business". Violette Leduc describes meeting Beach and also pays tribute to the ambiance of the shop in her autobiography La Bâtarde. Shakespeare and Company remained open after the Fall of Paris, but by the end of 1941, Beach was forced to close it. 

Beach and Hemingway outside Shakespeare & Co 1940 

During the Nazi invasion of Paris, (1942-45)Beach was watched by the Gestapo for hiding Jewish
friends to aid them in escaping the city. A member of the Gestapo informed her, "You have a black mark against your name on account of your Jewish friends." She was interned for six months during World War II, briefly at the Bois de Boulogne concentration camp,, and then at Vittel until Tudor Wilkinson managed to secure her release in February 1942. Following her release she occasionally assisted an American member of the French Resistance, Drue Leyton, in sheltering allied airmen shot down in France. Beach kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment in the attic at 12 rue de l'Odeon. Ernest Hemingway symbolically "liberated" the shop in person in 1944, but it never re-opened for business.

In 1956, Beach wrote Shakespeare and Company, a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud, Thornton Wilder, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue, George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Vincent Benét, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others. Truly, an impressive list!

George Whitman 1951.

After Monnier's suicide in 1955, Beach had a relationship with Camilla Steinbrugge. In 1959, the Embassy of the United States in Paris hosted an exhibition titled "The Twenties: American Writers and Their Friends, 1920-1930," which featured Shakespeare and Company's letters, photographs, and first editions. Although Beach's income was modest during the last years of her life, she was widely honoured for her publication of Ulysses and her support of aspiring writers during the 1920s. On 16 June 1962, she opened the Martello Tower in Sandycove in Dublin (where the opening scene of Ulysses is set) as a museum. She remained in Paris until her death in late 1962 and is buried in Princeton Cemetery.  

James Joyce Museum in the Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin.
Opened by Sylvia Beach 
June 16th 1962.

George Whitman opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called Le Mistral, but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honour of Sylvia Beach after she died in Oct 1962 Since his death in 2011, it has been run by his daughter Sylvia Whitman.

 

Bloomsday June 16th 2026

Dublin advertisement

Bloomsday is an annual celebration on June 16th honouring James Joyce and his novel, Ulysses, commemorating the day the book's events take place. Bloomsday is named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Joyce's 1922 novel which chronicles a single day in Dublin on 16 June, 1904 when Joyce met Nora Barnacle, his future wife, and enjoyed his first sexual relations with her. The first mention of such a celebration is found in a letter, written by Joyce, to a Miss Weaver on 27 June 1924, which  refers to "a group of people who observe what they call Bloom's Day --16 June."  What became known as Bloomsday seems to have been celebrated ever since and not only in Dublin, but, following the emigre paths of the wandering Irish as far afield as the U.S. and Australia. Even in France, there are those who follow "dans le pas de James Joyce."

The Ulysses route in Dublin 1954.

The 50^th anniversary in 1954 celebrated the occasion with a day-long pilgrimage along the Ulysses route, organized by John Ryan, an art critic, artist and founder of the Envoy magazine, together with Brian O’Nolan. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh, Antony Cronin, Tom Joyce, (James’ cousin to represent the family interest), and A.J. Leventhal, a lecturer in French at Trinity College, Dublin. Ryan had engaged two horse-drawn cabs, like the old-fashioned models in which Bloom and his friends had driven to Paddy Dignam’s funeral in Ulysses. Each member of the group was assigned roles from the novel. Cronin was Stephen Dedalus; O’Nolan represented Simon Dedalus, Stephen’s father; Ryan was the journalist, Martin Cunningham; and Leventhal, who was Jewish, filled the role of Leopold Bloom. They planned to drive around Dublin throughout the day, starting at the Martello Tower at Sandycove [where the novel begins], visiting, in turn, the scenes portrayed in the novel, ending, at night, in what had once been the brothel area of the city called Nighttown by Joyce. This 1954 literary pilgrimage, important though it was, had to be abandoned halfway through at the Bailey Pub because of drunken quarrelling among group members. Ryan, the pilgrimage organiser, filmed it unofficially so that there is a record of Bloomsday 1954. He also happened to own the Bailey Pub by 1954, and, in 1967, he installed the door to 7 Eccles Street [Leopold Bloom’s front door in the novel] which he had been able to buy at auction, saving it from demolition. 

Bloomsday in Brisbane.

 The festival itself, organized by the James Joyce Centre on behalf of the city of Dublin, involved, and continues to involve, a range of cultural activities including Ulysses readings, community runs and dramatisations, pub crawls and other Joycean events. Enthusiasts often dress up as characters from the book, in Edwardian costumes  to celebrate as they retrace Bloom’s route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne’s pub. Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours. The James Joyce Tower and Museum at Sandycove also hosts many free activities around Bloomsday including musical events, tours of the iconic tower and public readings from Joyce’s masterpiece. On Bloomsday 1982, the centenary of Joyce’s birth, RTE, the Irish State broadcaster, transmitted a continuous 30-hour dramatic performance of the entire Ulysses text on radio.   

Bloomsday devotees in costume and in action!

 A five-month long festival, Rejoyce Dublin 2004, took place in Dublin between 1st April and 31st August 2004. On the Sunday before the hundredth anniversary of the fictional events described, 10,000 Dubliners were treated to an open air, free breakfast of sausages, bacon rashers, toast, beans and black pudding plus white pudding. Joyce enthusiasts in Dublin never do things by halves!  But more Joycean celebration excesses were to come although the 2006 Bloomsday festivities had to be cancelled when its normal day of remembrance coincided with the funeral of Charles Haughey, three times Taoiseach of Ireland. Senator and Joycean scholar, David Norris was not impressed with the cancellation. He said, "He, (Haughey) was a great Joycean. ....  You can't cancel Bloomsday! You can't cancel Sunday. Perhaps you

Hats in the air on Bloomsday!

won't go to Church but it's still Sunday. And in Dublin, the 16th of June is Bloomsday." 

Unusual award in the literary world.
A bronze plaque awarded for being an
outstanding example of an authentic Dublin pub
as described in Ulysses.
The James Joyce Pub Award.

Bloomsday run, Spokane.

Possibly the youngest and smartest
Bloomsday partipant.

Every year, hundreds of Dubliners dress up as Bloom characters though they may never have read Ulysses nor intend to. But their costumed participation suggests a willingness, even an enthusiasm, to be part of the whole popular event. It is impossible to imagine any other modern literary masterpiece having such a striking effect on a day in the life of a city, echoed globally                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Charles Haughey who was the 
Taioseach three times and, reputedly.
a 'great Joycean'.

 

 

 

 

Hockney: A Life in Art

Yorkshire landscape.

Self-portrait in earlier years.

David Hockney died this week, on 9^th June 2026, a sad shock to me as he seemed to have always been around
for most of my life. As I was born on July 28^th, 1934, and he on July 9^th, 1937, that statement does seem to fit with the figures! With him, I never had the picture of an elderly man in my mind; it was always the young open smiling face, adorned with large spectacles and topped by a blond mop of bleached hair. He was the fourth of five children of an accountancy clerk who became a Conscientious Objector during WW2, was an anti-smoking campaigner and a natural anarchist. David's lifelong readiness to go his own way, and his mild contempt for authority, surely originated at home! Perhaps too, his ferocious work ethic grew from similar beginnings.

Between Kilham and Langsoft.
Yorkshire Wolds.

Hockney was lucky in that both his parents strongly supported the development of his artistic abilities and subsequent career choices. After Bradford Grammar School, Hockney attended Bradford College of Art followed by the R.C.A., the Royal College of Art in London, where he featured, along with Peter Blake, in an historically notable exhibition, New Contemporaries, which announced the arrival of British Pop Art, a movement with which he became strongly associated. Towards the end of his student years, the RCA refused to allow him to graduate unless he completed an assignment of a drawing of a model from life. [1962] He painted Life Painting for a Diploma in protest and refused to write an essay also required for the final examination, insisting that he should be assessed on his artwork alone. While still a student, Hockney had begun to exhibit and the RCA recognized his burgeoning talent and his growing reputation by changing its regulations and awarding him the coveted Diploma without the essay! This enabled him to become an art lecturer, which he saw as a means to an end, and he taught briefly at Maidstone College of Art, followed by teaching spells in the University of Iowa [1964]; Uni of Colorado, Boulder [1965]; Uni of California, Los Angeles [1966/7] and Uni of California, Berkeley [1967].     

Tree- and cloud-scape in Normandy.

Hockney had moved to America in 1964, hence his U.S. university placements and art, and he became almost intoxicated with the brilliance of the natural light enhancing the bright colours around him, particularly in California. He had always been open to new ideas and to experimentation in his art, and now he moved to painting in acrylics, using vibrant colours, to portray a series of swimming pool paintings. He spent more than the next decade living in a series of homes in Los Angeles, London and Paris, in 1974 beginning a personal relationship with Gregory Evans who moved to live with him in 1976, remaining for many years as a business partner.       As to his financial affairs, we can see  that he moved, over his life, from modest  beginnings to a greater opulence, operating from a position of privilege. By 1962, the year he graduated from the Royal College of Art, he was already  a 'face', photographed by Anthony Armstrong-Jones for the Sunday Times colour supplement. He never had to struggle for recognition; requests for exhibitions came in and he quickly found an excellent dealer, John, Kasmin. The public loved his art which was, above all, accessible, and over his life, he experienced public acclaim and continuing financial security.

Garrowby Hill.  One of his most famous paintings,
demonstrating his love of experimentation and bright colours.
 Poster  1998

In 1978, he rented a home in the Hollywood Hills which he later bought, incorporating his studio into the main house. He also owned a large beach house on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu which he sold in 1999 for about $1.5 million.

Self portrait in red braces, with brush, in later years

During the 1990s Hockney returned to Yorkshire every few months to visit his mother who died in 1999. Until 1997, his visits were short but in 1999 after her death, persuaded by a friend, he started to portray local surroundings, originally from early memories, some from his boyhood, but in 1998, he completed his important painting from life, of the Yorkshire landmark, Garrowby Hill. 

The Yorkshire landscape continued to exert a strong influence on David and he returned there for increasingly long periods and by 2003, was painting in oils and watercolours en plein air, finally taking up residence in a converted ‘bed and breakfast’ in Bridlington, only about 75 miles from where his life had begun.  He produced a series of watercolours entitled, Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2003/4 following a period of intense study of the medium and began to create works of art comprising paintings of smaller canvases, between 2 and 50, placed together, Some of these were art on a large scale and he used digital photographic reproductions to study and assess the day’s work.

Chair, pool and cactus. Normandy Print
Pleasingly geometric!

The Arrival of Spring in Normandy. 2020. iPad

In 2019 Hockney created a studio at La Grande Cour, a rustic farmhouse near Beuvron-en-Auge in Normandy where he spent a whole year using a sketchpad and iPad to paint the changing seasons in a series of images which became a 90 metre frieze, A Year in Normandie, which he said was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, another Normandy export.He had an extraordinary talent; inventive and exuberant, ever alert to, and receptive of, emerging pop art. and his versatility meant that he could work  happily in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, stage design and in later digital media such as iPad and iPhone drawings. For a time, he developed the habit of sending to a wide circle of friends and admirers, frequent iPad drawings which would pop into their inboxes, unannounced.

 His childhood was a happy one; he was apparently oblivious to the smoke-blackened industrial

Hockney in Washington Square in the Seventies.

landscape outside his door. He seemed unaffected by nostalgia or snobbery and his art, particularly his early art, simply and unselfconsciously depicts modern life, his life as he observed and lived it. His paintings always give a visual pleasure to the observer as he shares his own joy in light and in the beauty of everyday life, especially including the male figure. Hockney was gay but while he was unusually direct in his treatment of gay desire, making it part of his subject matter, it was remarkable in that, in the early 1960s, he felt so comfortable in expressing homosexuality in his art, when it was still illegal with prison a strong probability for ‘offenders’. Being gay was just part of his truth which he lived and painted and thus he unselfconsciously integrated his identity into his art. Both Hockney and his art were insouciant and joyful, but also, innocent and untroubled. His important artistic legacy lies in his innovative approach to light, space and perception with his readiness to integrate both traditional and modern techniques in his highly individual approach to his art.

Pool with two figures
California.

And, below, two more of his swimming pool paintings.

 "A Year in Normandie": This 70-meter-long artwork, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and the changing seasons in Normandy, is the star of a new landmark exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery. The exhibition also includes ten original paintings by Hockney and is part of the first full presentation in the UK of Hockney’s "The Moon Room". 

Spring in Normandie

The Moon Room

Historic and Artistic Seville

 

   

                                                 Torre del Oro, next to the Guadalquivir River.

 Just returned from a holiday week in Seville, Andalucia, and my family and I are full to overflowing after the splendid sights and experiences which even a short break can introduce. My own European experiences seem to have been French and Italian, in both of which languages I can limp along, but Spanish is totally unknown to me and perhaps this heightened for me the slight feelings of perhaps a new reality, underlining the foreign-ness of Seville. But that statement in no way undermines  the sheer delight for the visitor of the sounds accompanying and accentuating the sights of this Spanish city.

Nave of the magnificent Cathedral

Plaza de Espana with a close-up peep at
the decorative blue and white tiles.

Seville's historic centre is compact in layout, with a flat terrain, perfect for exploring on foot, though in my case, in a wheelchair manned by family in a bid to aid my stamina! Small plazas pop up frequently, offering an apparently endless succession of small tapas bars with outdoor tables where visitors may sit and people-watch as they sip companionably together. I particularly
appreciated the wonderful architecture with its Islamic and Christian history visibly blended in a particular harmony. Especially enticing were the frequent decorative  banks and borders featuring the most exquisite tiling. 

Most major attractions sit within a 20 minute walk of each other so that eager tourists can wander from the Cathedral to the Alcazar and over to the Plaza de Espana passing such novelties [to the visiting eye] as bridges, with the parapet, the platform and other pillars ALL lined with the eponymous blue and white tiling. A  continuing feast for the eyes! The Real (Royal) Alcazar of Seville, has overseen centuries of life with its intricate tile work, peaceful courtyards and lush gardens, all off which make the entire complex so special. La Giralda tower stands as Seville's most iconic landmark, rising 104 metres above the city with access to the summit eased by gently sloping ramps, originally designed to allow the guards to ride horses to the top. At the summit, there are panoramic views of the orange-tiled rooftops, winding streets and the Guadalquivir River with its surface so often, glinting and swirling in the sun. On especially clear days, the Santa Cruz area, the Plaza de Espana and even the distant mountains are visible from this vantage point. The tower itself is a unique blend of Muslim and Chrisrian architecture, harmonious and decorative at all times, but especially so in the ever-present sun.

Flamenco includes graceful and 
dramatic hand movements in
time to the rhythm of the music.

The Cathedral is a remarkable architectural achievement, one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world. Built between 1401 and 1528, it was designed to show off the city's wealth and power and contains 80 elaborate chapels while also housing the important tomb of Christopher Columbus. 

As a stunning postscript to this hymn of praise to Seviglia, flamenco must be included! The city claims to be the birthplace of flamenco when this passionate art form took shape in the Triana neighbourhood centuries ago. We witnessed the glory of this ritual with its soulful guitar, powerful singing and dramatic stamping movements: an unforgettable expression of Andalucian culture which brings a shiver to the spine.

 

Moorish arcade and courtyard in the Alcazar

                                                                                                    Views of exquisite tile decor and sun-in-the-eyes family

 

Real Alcazar gardens, Seville.

Sun, shadows and tapas in Seviglia.

Royal Tobacco Factory, Seviglia

     

Islamic architecture, 16th century.
Patio de la Doncellas  Marble pavement, laid 1581-84.