In Bruges

I had a short break in Bruges last week. Got to make the most of Europe before we’re banned from travelling there. It’s easy to see how we might be contaminated by their foreign culture. I noticed before Brexit has even happened that a couple of tobacco shops that explicitly catered for the English crowd have disappeared. Perhaps the fall in the value of Sterling had something to do with it.

​As ever I paid a visit to the Groeninge art gallery. Where one of my favourite pictures, or should I say diptych’s hangs. This is the Judgement of Cambyses by Gerard David (above), which relates the demise, being skinned alive of a corrupt Persian magistrate on the order of King Cambyses. The pictures were commissioned by the good burghers of Bruges to hang in their new town hall. I think something similar should hang in No 10 Downing Street, as a little reminder that the occupant there too is not above the law. Of course I am not suggesting that Johnson should be skinned alive, I’m sure with his classical knowledge he could find something equally appropriate from ancient times to fit the crime of his sordid and lamentable political career.