Derek’s Substack

We started in London Kensington Palace Then down to our home in Hampshire alongside the sea and the river Some weeks later we set off in an easterly direction on a road trip through our glorious English countryside First we visited the garden at Exbury Then we drove across Sussex To the garden at Charleston Then north to Northamptonshire On to Cambridgeshire and Clare College, Cambridge To Staffordshire To Gloucestershire To Bowood House, Wiltshire On across Wiltshire To Dorset Following...

AT HOME ON BOARD IN MALTA In the mid 1990’s, shortly before closing my interior design business, I was invited to work with a brilliant team of naval architects and related specialists on the construction, in Thailand, of a technically ground breaking 40 metre sloop called Philanderer. The addition of this project to my design portfolio awarded me the opportunity to work on a second nautical design project, one that continues to this day.

The Aeolian Islands, named after Aeolus the ancient Greek God of the Wind, is one of our favourite ‘on board’ destinations. They comprise a chain of volcanic islands lying between 30 to 80 kilometres north of Sicily in the lapis blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The island group includes seven inhabited islands - Vulcano, Lipari, Salina, Filicudi, Alicudi, Panarea and Stromboli. The volcanoes on Vulcano and Stromboli remain active.

Jeremy and I have been a couple for nearly fifty years. We were one of the first British gay couples to become Civil Partners, on the first day allowed by UK law, 21 December 2005. We were also one of the first gay couples to convert our Civil Partnership to a marriage, on the first day allowed by UK law, 10 December 2014. Our Civil Partnership was conducted by a registrar at Westminster City Hall. As required by law two witnesses attended, in our case two male gay friends.

If you’re in London and free you might like to join our excellent friend Dame Dolly van Tulleken on the march to Parliament.

ROUND THE WORLD 69 - BOOKS & POEM - read during Round the World in 200 Days - 26 June 2025 Barrow, Andrew - Tap Dancer Coetzee, J M - The Life and Times of Michael K Crewe, Tom - The New Life Eng, Tan Twan - The Gift of Rain Eng, Tan Twan - House of Doors Forster, E M - Passage to India Galgut, Damon - Artic Summer Hitchens, Christopher - Mortality Isherwood, Christopher - Single Man Leavitt, David - While England Sleeps Levy, Deborah - Real Estate Manning, Olivia - Balkan Trilogy Maugham,...

ROUND THE WORLD 68 - HOME AGAIN, MALTA - 21 June 2025 On the 29th November 2024 we departed Malta for Cape Town. From there we travelled east and then further east. On the 14th June 2025 we returned to Malta arriving from the west and by this completed our circumnavigation of the globe - what we have been calling ‘Round the World in 200 Days’.

ROUND THE WORLD 67 THE UK AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT, TATE MODERN, LONDON - 13 June 2025 The UK Aids Memorial Quilt on display at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall June 2025 Photograph: Neil Hall © EPA ‘People weep in its presence. It began as a simple act of remembrance dedicated to those who lost their lives to AIDS.

ROUND THE WORLD 66 THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, ENGLAND - 12 June 2025 Enter the new main entrance to our National Gallery. Photograph Edmund Sumner - © The National Gallery London When post-modernist architects Robert Venturi and his wife Denise Scott Brown designed the Sainsbury Wing extension of the National Gallery in 1991, the columns they installed in the ground floor entry were part of an intended spatial sequence conceived as a procession from shadow to light.

ROUND THE WORLD 65 - THE FLOOD, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND - 8 June 2025 In early April 2024 the highest surge tide combined with storm force winds caused substantial seawater flooding across the Needsore gardens and the fields beyond. The last time this occurred was in the mid 1980’s. Salt water and a majority of plants do not make happy bed fellows.