Advent Challenge Day 3: Glitter - Glittering light

The decorative lights are out at London's South Bank - strings of blue lights creating a "ceiling" in front of the Royal Festival Hall, and twinkling lights on the wooden chalets of the Christmas market, backing on to the river.

Earlier in the day, I visited the Imperial War Museum which currently has an exhibition of war photography by Cecil Beaton. I always thought of Beaton as a celebrity portrait photographer, and I think I knew he did stage design as well. I confess I hadn't realised that he spent the war years documenting Britain, the Middle East and the Far East for the Ministry of Information. Indeed in later life he considered his war photography to be his single most important body of photographic work. The exhibition was extensive and well presented, as was a previous exhibition there of photographs by Don McCullin.