1 November 2026

What a great week. As I mentioned last time, we took the train up to London with Annabelle last Saturday to see an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art and then Penny and Annabelle were off to see a stage production of Cabaret as part of our birthday present to her. And, the exhibition and play were every bit as good as we hoped they would be.

The exhibition we went to see was Painting the French Riviera at the Royal Academy. There were more than 160 works, mainly paintings but also including sculptures, drawings, travel posters and film tracing the evolution of modern art along the Côte d’Azur from the 1870s to the 1960s.

It was fascinating to see the ways in which the different artists saw and painted the Côte d’Azur. There were paintings by Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and more, a great selection from all over the world, from private collections as well as museums and galleries – a great opportunity to see them side by side.

A few photos of the ones I particularly enjoyed.

It was a fabulous exhibition and, for some reason, it got me thinking about how one might go about organising such a blockbuster exhibition? Convincing institutions and individuals to loan their paintings? Transport? Security? What a nightmare.

Then, I wondered what might be a “best guess” as to the value of all the exhibits on display? Mr Google promptly provided the following, which seems a reasonable estimate to me. But, what the heck do I know?

While museums never publicly disclose the exact market value or insurance valuations of a live exhibition for security and contractual reasons, we can calculate a realistic baseline based on the market value of the masterworks included:

• The Claude Monet Masterpieces: The show features world-renowned coastal pieces from Monet’s 1888 trip to Antibes. In the current art market, major 1880s Monet landscapes routinely fetch between £30 million and £60 million+ at auction.
• The Paul Cézanne and Paul Signac Pieces: Cézanne’s Bathers paintings and Signac’s pioneering Pointillist landscapes are incredibly rare; individual cornerstone works by these artists are valued anywhere from £20 million to £50 million.
• The Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso Collections: Boasting numerous works spanning Matisse’s Nice era and Picasso’s post-war years on the coast, these segments alone carry hundreds of millions in collective value.
• The Post-War Avant-Garde: High-value pieces by Yves Klein (such as his iconic Anthropometry works) and Nicolas de Staël frequently sell in the £5 million to £15 million range.

With roughly 160 works on display—including heavy hitters from major global institutions like MoMA, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and Tate—the cumulative value required to insure the exhibition is immense. This is why such blockbuster exhibitions rely on the Government Indemnity Scheme to underwrite the cost, as commercial insurance premiums for an exhibition of this scale would be financially impossible for the museum to cover on its own.

We all came away buzzing and energised by the exhibition as we strolled through Picadilly and Trafalgar Square on our way to lunch at an Italian restaurant, a short walk from the theatre.

I dropped the girls at the theatre and made my way to the underground, back to Marylebone and the next train back to Banbury. While the girls were at the show I had originally intended to take in another gallery or two. However, Penelope and I are so well organised these days that we had completely neglected to make arrangements for our Daisy who was home alone. Our lovely neighbour Roger came across to let her out a couple of times during the day but I needed to race home to take her for her afternoon stroll around the surrounding fields and to give her dinner.

So, I raced home and took her out in the sheeting, sheeting rain while the girls were comfortably ensconced in the Kit Kat Club watching and listening to Cabaret. By all accounts, the show was fantastic. When I met them off the train they were both singing and humming the tunes.

Annabelle recognised the actor playing the lead, Sally. It was Sarah Hyland who I am sure is known to many of you as Haley Dunphy in the sitcom Modern Family.

A grand day out!

On Tuesday Penny and I made our way across to The Greyhound at Besselsleigh near Abingdon for lunch with a motley collection of former colleagues. It was great to see everyone looking so young and spritely. We’ve done this for the last couple of years – someone suggests some dates, someone does all the organising. All I have to do is turn up, have a nice lunch and catch up with good friends.

YCNMIU
Liz Truss, the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history, has released a new book. You may remember that she lasted only 49 days as PM during which time she blew up the UK economy, tanked the pound and forced the Bank of England to intervene and save the bond market and pension funds. In her new book she repeats many of the zany assertions outlined in her previous book and in all her public pronouncements – there was a conspiracy of an unelected cabal secretly run by the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility which brought down her government. Always someone else’s fault and making billions of pounds worth of unfunded tax cuts had nothing to do with it.

The Independent’s reviewer called the book “dense, paranoid and peevish”. The Telegraph gave it zero stars and also called it “deranged”. Scottish tabloid the National called it “unhinged”. The Daily Star, which focused on the book’s failure to give an adequate account of the role played by the iceberg lettuce that outlasted Truss’s 49-day tenure, called it “loopy”. Writing on X, Truss’s own former trade minister Conor Burns called her “an international embarrassment with zero self-awareness”, and “financially illiterate”. And so on.

– Emma Brockes, The Guardian

Yep, you couldn’t make it up.

Meanwhile, keep breathing, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And, be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get. And, hold your loved ones close.

Lots of love to you all,

Greg