Not yesterday’s bitter old, we’re promised. And it isn’t. Though warmer and not raining, it is some way away from sunny and warm. Overcast and still wet pavements, but the wind has dropped. Notice, at 12:30 when we are coming back from coffee, that the chap who has the blue sleeping bag next to the Bayswater tube station is still asleep. Or at least still in the sleeping bag and alive, as he moves. Which is better than it might have been, as people sleeping rough in London are sometimes found dead.
In the afternoon to the Victoria and Albert. As usual, something old, something new. The sculptures in the entry hallway are familiar. Include a bust of Oliver Cromwell. J had mentioned earlier that this was the anniversary of his vicious intervention in Ireland (or of becoming Lord Protector, which provided the opposite of protection) and said we should have a drink later. To celebrate what Cromwell did to Ireland? No, no. To celebrate Irish resistance. Well that’s all right then. And we still have a little Irish whisky left.
The “new” is an exhibit on censorship. Fifty years now since the Lord Chamberlain, familiar to Elizabethan theatre companies ceased censorship. The exhibit is mostly more recent, as in post Lord Chamberlain when theatre and film censorship stopped being government imposed and became more a question of self-regulation within the industry. Interesting changes over the past century, particularly in what requires censorship. Sex always more than violence, of course. Heterosexual sex without any kinkiness the least censored. Political censorship seemingly less important except in wartime, where it’s our information and their propaganda. Although a drawing of Harold Wilson sitting in a Christine Keeler position seemed to have crossed a line. (By the brilliant cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Video of interview with him included in the exhibition). Modern sensibilities seem to worry less about sexual diversity but a great deal more about racism - Birth of a Nation, for example, is deeply shocking. Freaks, which showed circus “freaks” as main characters was disturbing at the time it was made, and still is, but the film maker had worked with the people portrayed and was clearly on their side. Currently gender stereotyping as well as racism and stereotypical portrayal of the disabled is considered dubious.
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