25th July 2020
Image ©Aliona Adrianova During my first meeting with Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Simon McDonald in March 2019, when we discussed ideas for the portrait of The Queen that he wanted to commission, I was delighted to hear that he wanted it to feel intimate. He wanted to express Her Majesty’s humanity, rather than creating […]
15th November 2017 Vienna, Austria
One of the most beautiful, and enigmatic, artworks in the British Embassy in Vienna is Anne Lucy Grenville, Lady Nugent, by the renowned portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. It dates from 1813, around the time that Anne Lucy Poulett (her maiden name), aged 23, married George Nugent Grenville, second Baron Nugent of Carlanstown. The portrait […]
26th September 2017 Vienna, Austria
I was in the flea-market at the Naschmarkt in Vienna in 1984 when I saw for sale a broken mechanical wall-calendar. With its black, white and gold decoration, it looked like something between Jugendstil (Austrian art nouveau) and Italian Futurism – I was reminded of a work by Umberto Boccioni in The Tate Modern. Further […]
16th March 2017 Vienna, Austria
Which is the most important economic powerhouse in Austria? Amongst the nine Austrian provinces, Vienna has the largest population, followed by Lower Austria and Upper Austria. But more international exports come from Upper Austria than from any other Austrian province. So when I visited Upper Austria recently, my first stop was at Europe’s biggest motor […]
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21st October 2016 Vienna, Austria
A man awakes from a nightmare in the depths of the night. He writes down his fears and illustrates them with a painting. 500 years later, another artist is inspired by the painting to gather together a collection of historical objects, images and treasures from one of the finest collections in the world to “explore […]
29th May 2015
I was delighted to spend a couple of hours recently with top Turkish journalist and photographer Ercan Arslan. Ercan had come across my Twitter account @leighturnerFCO and the series #reasonstolikeIstanbul, now at #373. He asked if we could visit a few of the places I’d tweeted about. The result was a piece published in the […]
21st April 2015
The Holy See’s decision to take part in the Venice Biennale, after its inaugural participation in 2013, reminds us of the extraordinary role played by the Popes in the history and production of art. For much of its history, the Holy See was an undoubted centre of connoisseurship, patronage and artistic endeavour. It is impossible […]
19th December 2014
It’s a delicate business judging how much personal stuff to put in a blog. In the past I’ve written official blogs with a rich mix of personal and work entries. Then Twitter came along and much personal material, such as my famous series #reasonstolikeIstanbul, was swept away into the Twitterverse. I’ve so far tweeted out […]
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13th August 2013 Chicago, USA
The following is a guest post by Sophia Wootton, summer intern at the British Consulate General in Chicago. Sophia is a recent graduate of the University of Birmingham. In only my second week as an intern for the British Consulate General in Chicago, I have been lucky enough to meet British software engineer, Rob Bishop, […]
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4th July 2013
London’s Royal Academy will host the largest exhibition of Australian art ever to leave this country from 21 September to 8 December. It includes many of Australia’s finest historic and current works from the leading public institutions. I attended the media launch at the National Gallery in Canberra last week, and gave an interview to […]