Today's #AdventAngels at St Mary's, Ashby Folville by Christopher Whall is a thoughtful little soul, playing a musical instrument whilst minding someone's pet rabbit.

The beloved classic "A Christmas Carol" was published on this day, December 19, 1843. We are celebrating with a rare look at Charles Dickens’s personal, hand-annotated copy alongside original photographs, first editions, and ephemera that capture the magic of his storytelling.

An Angelic Advent and Anna Lea Merritt, day twenty #ArtistAdventcalendar At Heaven’s gate are two angels – one carrying a scale to weigh the soul, and the other holding a crown of roses to welcome accepted souls. 🖼️ ‘The watchers of the straight gate’, Anna Lea Merritt, 1894.

One of my strongest, vibes-only opinions is that it simply does not and should not cost £15bn to repair the Palace of Westminster. The restoration of Notre Dame cost about 5% of that!

We stopped living in a democracy when the State locked us in our houses.

The Palace of Westminster is already a museum in as much as democracy is a thing of the past.

What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character #Ruskin

We need to revive beauty. And beauty will revive faith.

This will not be permitted but councils are too lazy to enforce regulations. Close it down.

Happy first day of winter! ❄️ Photographer Wilson Alwyn Bentley was a pioneer in photomicrography and the first person to photograph a single snowflake using a microscope fitted to a bellows camera. For over half a century, he documented endless snow crystals, revealing the

Christmas approaches

I am reading love letters. Thomas Jefferson to Maria Conway (from Paris) writes: ‘But why go to Italy? You have seen it, all the world has seen it, and ransacked it a thousand times.’

Cromwell’s silver and gold pocket watch (16th century, Ashmolean Museum)

In 1881,Ernst Klimt along with his brother Gustav and Franz Matsch, founded the Künstler Compagnie and two years later opened the studio for commissions. When Ernst died aged 28 in 1892, Gustav completed many of his unfinished paintings including this work.

I need all eternity to love you in. Jill Furse to Laurence Whistler, November, 1944.