Christmas Eve greetings

"It is an hour or so before dusk, on Christmas Eve, and the landscape has turned completely monochrome.  Far away to the north-east, at King's College Chapel in Cambridge, a lone chorister is singing the opening notes of 'Once in Royal David's City', a moment for me that always marks the true beginning of Christmas."
Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss

The Adoration of the Magi     Peter Paul Rubens

Altarpiece in King's College Chapel

Wishing all my fellow bloggers a joyous Christmas!

8th November 1947

"Wrote another contribution to my N.T. Guide.  I sold 120 books for £6 to a shop in the Fulham Road, which I happened to pass by; and finished reading Coryat's Crudities.  Also went to the National Gallery to see the pictures which have been recently cleaned.  The exhibition is the ultimate vindication of cleaning.  I do not think any reasonable man could still object to it being done by an expert with the scientific care that the Gallery undoubtedly takes.   I am inclined to think that  the photographs taken after cleaning make the originals look more scraped and chalky than in fact they do.  I reached this conclusion after comparing the detailed photograph of a satyr's face in Rubens's Silenus with the painted face on the canvas."     Saturday, 8th November

Caves of Ice  James Lees-Milne