News

David Jeremy Buckland James. 25/7/1949 – 25/9/ 2023

Brigadier John Smales and I set out from Somerset at the crack of dawn on 27th October 2023. It is a long way up to St Mary’s Church, Bromfield, Shropshire. It was hard to think about anything else except that we had both lost a very important friend. St Mary’s Church has a foundation older

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Racing

Farewell Manchester Racecourse

A brief history of Manchester Racecourse.   There is a song, ‘Farwell Manchester composed about 1740 by the Reverend Will Felton, it was also a harpsichord piece known as, ‘Felton Gavotte.’ Thought to have been sung to Prince Charles Edward Stuart as they left the city in December 1745. Farwell Manchester it was eventually to the

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Racing

James Pollard, Epsom Races Preparing to Start

Preparing to Start, was published in 1836, when James was at the height of his career. It is one of a series of six; Saddling in the Warren, Epsom, Betting Post, Grandstand, Race Over, Settling Day at Tattersall. He was the second son of Robert Pollard and Ann Iley, and James was born in Islington.

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Hunting

Henry Alken 1784/5 – 1851 Hunting sketch

This superb sketch was purchased from Crows Auction House. It is beyond delightful, must have been done on the field, a delicate reminder of what might end up in a painting. Henry Alken Snr. (Seffrien) was a Dane by blood and English by birth. In 1772 they somehow go involved in a plot against Christian

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Art

George Morland 1763-1804

George Morland was born in Haymarket, London, the son of an artist and art dealer Henry Robert Morland. His son was so talented he exhibited at the RA at the age of 14. You would have thought a great future lay ahead for this young man.  He married Ann Ward, the sister to James Ward

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Art

Geoffrey Gambado caricaturist

Henry William Bunbury, 1 July 1750 –7th May 1811   William Bunbury was born in Mildenhall, Suffolk, he was the second son of Sir William Bunbury, 5th Baronet of Mildenhall, from an old Norman family. He was educated at Westminster School and then at Cambridge, his talent for drawing humorous subjects was obvious from an

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