June 14 2026
Dear All,
With happy memories of the beautiful house in Arles where we met last month to “Come to our Senses” I’m writing on a cold wet London morning. What a change: this is hardly weather for June. But these days, there’s not much point in talking about weather, we’ve messed it up so completely. I arrived in London via Paris on a day of broiling heat – 90 + degree Fahrenheit – and then we went cold again. Go figure, as one of my favorite American expressions has it.
London, where I was born a long time ago, is a great city, and I’ve been enjoying some of its cultural events: the ever-wonderful Ralph Fiennes playing Henry Irving in David Hare’s play at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, “Grace Pervades.” The National Gallery, where you can pop in and out and visit a few Cézannes and Van Goghs, a Vermeer or two, take in the current Zurbaran exhibition (such attention to glowing detail, amazing work by Zurbaran and his 19-year-old son, both) and then go for lunch in the restaurant and taste various Italian delicacies with a glass of wine (as I did, invited by my step-daughter). We agreed over lunch that Samuel Johnson was right, “He (or she) who is bored by London is bored by life.” And it has a great mayor too, Sadiq Khan.
I’ve just been listening to Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester until a couple of weeks ago, who is running (standing, in UK terms – more dignified?) for MP in a bye-election this week, with hopes for replacing Keir Starmer as Prime minister. Everybody knows now that Andy is going for the PM’s job, and most people I know would back him. The UK, like the US, is not in a good place either economically or politically. Andy Burnham promises change – and yet how many times have we heard a promise of change that only ushered in more, and worse, of the same? But hearing the north-western accent coming from a would-be premier is somehow both refreshing and encouraging, after the drawling tones of so many old Etonians, often so ‘economical with the truth’ as my mother used to say. Starmer isn’t an Etonian, but he still sounds like a southern toff – a well-intentioned lawyer, maybe, marginally out of his depth.
So – this turns out not to be much about the writing life, except that the writing life has to be about the rest of life, or it has no roots. I’m editing, proof-reading, filling in finicky forms for my publisher, watching the rain. I remind myself that books still matter: I’m reading a novel I hadn’t read by the great Edna O’Brien, “Time and Tide.” She’s such an expert on the moments of misery in women’s lives, yet always seems to find ironic humor in their situations too. And she lived into her 90’s, kicking up her heels – a great example to us all.
So, let’s go on kicking up our heels, weather or no weather, politics or no politics. And having great lunches – as I did again yesterday, with two friends linked by their knowledge and love of the Camino in Spain - great food and wine on a wet and chilly day. And treasuring, as we did in Arles last month, the accurate evidence of our sense and senses, and the delights of being human – as the Pope did not quite say recently.
Affectionately, Ros