Patrons of the Arts

We went to a day school on Fra Angelico at San Marco, in Oxford. That was an appropriate venue since the last two panels of the San Marco altarpiece (probably) were found in a spare bedroom of a retired museum curator in the city last year.The best speaker was a Dominican friar and we learned a lot about how what great patrons the Dominicans and Franciscans were.

The mysterious owner of the house in Poliakoff's Capturing Mary was a patron too, in a way. It was the same house as in Joe's Palace and the same main character as in the monologue, A Real Summer, performed so well by Ruth Wilson. But none of it was really any good. There just isn't enough STORY.

I saw Elizabeth: the Golden Age and got very nervous about the late arrival at the Armada Ball of Francis Drake. Was Ralegh going to defeat the Spanish single-handed? Actually he sort of did. Cate Blanchett - not my favourite actor - was terrific in her role and I liked the Mary Queen of Scots and Bess Throckmorden too. But Clive Owen just has too modern a face.Had to hide my face in Stevie during the torture. No shortage of story there.

I've been reading John Julius Norwich's book Shakespeare's Kings , in opreparation for more Stratford plays next month. Stayed awake late one night thinking that Henry Todor really didn't have much claim to the throne at all and we have been reigned over by the wrong lot for hundreds of years. (Realised this was a bit Adrian Moleish). I've also been reading my way through Mark Robson's Dreamweaver Legacy quartet and Celia Rees's extraordinary novel The Stone Testament, which I'm reviewing for the Guardian. Not such a contrast really - all about power and domination.

i wrote and gave a "presentazione" on Elsa Morante's La Storia. And read a short story called "Fortezza" by Edmund de Amicis. It is about heroism rather than strength and I wasn't able to avoid torture after all. I heard Beppe Severgnini lecture on the Italian language in Oxford yesterday. He was utterly charming and very amusing but not profound and I didn't share his attitiudes towards feminism and language (surprise, surprise!). He is also much too interested in football for my taste but then most people are.

We had a huge banquet on Sunday to celebrate husband's and middle daughter's birthdays. And played "Articulate!" - a very noisy board game. And on Wednesday it was the Frances Lincoln 30th birthday party - a real scrum in a deconsecrated church with candles, magic, very loud music and too many people.

Two puzzling fanmails this week - one from a Finnish girl who said several times that she "presuated" me and one, sent on VERY late by Bloomsbury USA from a boy who wanted to know why I "gave Felix a winged horse" in City of Stars. The trouble is, there ISN'T a Felix in that book and no-one was given the flying horse. Now 3 German girls have sent me a plot for a 4th Stravaganza book called City of Ships. But I've written a fourth book and the plot for the fifth, City of Ships, is already sketched out.