Art Appreciation visit to Alnwick Castle

I was disappointed to find that we weren’t allowed to take any photos inside the castle when Vivienne gave us a guided tour of the state apartments and their precious contents, so luckily I had taken a photo from outside that part of the huge castle. I’ll not write about it here - if you are interested Ms Google will be helpful

Vivienne, one of our group members, works on minimum wage to guide visitors around the state rooms which house some magnificent works of art including Titian, Tintoretto, Poussin, Canaletto and Sebastiano. There were stunning pieces of furniture, the most ornate being by Cucci. It was great to have someone with the knowledge pointing out things we might have overlooked.

The Duke of Northumberland, the castle’s owner, has published a book about the Wars of the Roses, for sale in the shop. Apparently staff got invited to the book launch but they had to buy a ticket.

They are selling for £35,000,000 land south of Rothbury and there’s been a lot of speculation about whether there’s some kind of tax avoidance scheme involved. A coincidence was when we were picking David up in a nearby hamlet a very smartly dressed young man was talking to a woman in her garden. He told them he was from Dubai and was interested in finding out more about that land and if it could be bought directly without going through an agent. All very bizarre we thought.

On my way home I stopped to vote. We only have the police commissioner and regional mayor to elect. The Independent candidate used to be Labour, a Corbynite, and left the party when Starmer was elected leader. He is currently mayor of North of Tyne but now Northumberland is being incorporated into that area so the new mayor will be for a bigger area. The Labour and Cooperative candidate is a young woman. It will be interesting to see the outcome. The voting seems to have been steady all day. I hope everyone remembered the required ID.