Authors Electric

Exquisite tenderness: Gainsborough's portrait of his daughters Two weeks ago I went to the Gainsborough’s Family Album exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and if you have nothing to do in the next 2 days I urge you to catch it before it closes. (A fat lot of use giving you so little notice, I know. Sorry.)  If your only image of this marvellous 18th century painter is as a highly-skilled, flattering portraitist of wealthy aristocrats, you’ll be bowled over – as I was – by the exquisite tenderness, emotional depth and freshness he achieved in portrait after portrait of his two daughters, captured together at various stages of their lives. His love and fatherly protectiveness burst out of these paintings, making them some of the most beautiful and heartbreaking portraits ever painted. Gainsborough's cousin, the Reverend Henry Burroughs: This portrait may have been done 'to advertise the artist's skills  to potential patrons in his cousin...

Traditional pantomime: Joyfully strewn with terrible puns   The first day of December dawns and, abracadabra , we’re in pantomime season.  For those who’ve never had to sit in a British theatre among a deafening audience of 6 year-olds, dodging penny sweets being hurled from the stage, while gamely shouting ‘He’s behind you!’ to Snow-White, or Aladdin, or Little Red Riding Hood, some explanation is needed.   And my goodness, have I tried to explain this particular loud, brash, clunkily scripted, outrageously overacted, joyfully strewn with terrible puns and altogether much-loved piece of our Christmas tradition to bemused visitors from other countries down the years… never with the slightest success, unfortunately. You just have to be there, really.  And none more surprising than his appearance in a pantomime Or not. But it only struck me a couple of weeks ago (slow, that’s me) what an odd collection of stories makes up the pantomime r...