On Sunday I drove from north London to Wiltshire. Just after Stonehenge I turned off the A303 and continued for a short distance until I came into a village.
As I had been told to expect, there was scaffolding on the front of the first house on the left and a cattle grid at the gates.
I drove across, then along the driveway.
I had come to this house to start work on a new portrait.
(I call this series Portraits of Interesting People in their Offices, or Poipitos.)
The Interesting Person in question is a woman, author of a terrific book, formerly a very senior editor on The Times and presenter of simply oodles of BBC radio programs, including flagships on Radio 4 and the World Service.
On the drive, I listened to her discussing her book on a 90-minute podcast.
I arrived full of questions and observations.
After getting a cup of coffee in the kitchen, we went into her office.
I stood by the garden door making drawings directly on the iPad. Rough sketches of the room, of the last cherry blossoms in the garden outside:
And of her desk, where her own book lay beside a vase of daffodils:
While I sketched she worked at her desk. As you see, the laptop was piled on top of books, with a camera on a tripod behind it. I guessed that was the arrangement she used to record the podcast I listened to.
As I sketched, she read aloud occasionally from something new she had found, relating to the subject of her book.
The book has already been published, but she keeps on top of the research because occasionally she is challenged by someone (a man, typically) who will insist that evidence supporting the case the book makes is out of date.
“I’m able to tell them the very latest,” she said.
Then we went to the kitchen to join her husband for lunch: Greek-style stuffed chicken (lots of oregano).
And after lunch I drove home. As usual, traffic on the A303 was very slow near Stonehenge.
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