Last Wednesday my young friend and I left the mooring at about 9.30 for a three hour trip downriver to Marlow. We’d booked lunch at Sindhu’s Indian restaurant. It’s run by Atul Kochhar and is located in the Compleat Angler Hotel. It’s a lovely place to eat, overlooking the river and serves traditional Indian food. […]

I’ve known Princess Azizah since she was a small girl and a member of the Johor royal family. Over the years she’s commissioned many miniature portraits from me – including five of her babies. This was after she married the Tunku Mahkota (Crown Prince) of Pahang in Malaysia. Three years ago she brought this diamond […]

I haven’t advanced very far in the matches I’ve played in so far this year but hopefully that will change next week as I’m determined to play well in the ‘Novices’. We had a Gala day recently. Here’s a shot which shows a variety of colours in the woods. Henley Regatta had a good week […]

We left Slovakia and made our way to Vienna where we had an overnight stay. That evening we went to a Strauss and Mozart concert in the city The opera singers were very good – this lady had a most beautiful voice. Next day we passed this lovely St. Francis of Assisi church on our […]

We chose the right week for our cruise as last week it poured with rain every day, and the week before that it was very cold. After an hour’s delay at Heathrow we were soon on our way to Budapest and were transported to our ship – The Maria Theresa. We discovered there would be […]

On Thursday we took the train to London, dressed in our finery, as we had been invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. During the fifties I served in Malaya and Singapore during the Malayan Emergency. I was a humble sapper in the Royal Engineers and was a cartographer tasked with producing 30 six […]

I’ll soon get back to writing a regular blog – promise – but I really am so totally absorbed in writing my new book that it’s taken over my life in a way. Last weekend my young friend started to convert my layouts to ‘computer speak’ – the intricacies of which are way beyond me. […]

We spent a lovely day at the Savill Gardens near Virginia Water at the weekend. The magnolias were at their best and quite a few of the rhododendrons and azaleas were beginning to bloom. Since its creation in the 1930’s in the grounds of Windsor Great Park it’s become a truly Royal haven of beautifully […]

I know, I know, it’s been nearly five weeks since I wrote my last blog. Sorry RG9 – I’m still here. However I’ve been so absorbed in writing my new book that it’s sort of taken over. If I work hard enough and dedicate the many hundreds of hours I’ll need to not only write […]

Today we visited Bletchley Park – home of the World War Two codebreakers and where the world’s first electronic computers were installed and operated. Many historians estimate that the codebreakers efforts helped to shorten the war by up to two years, thus saving countless lives. At its peak around ten thousand people worked at Bletchley […]