1926 is one of the happiest years in the life of Geoffrey Pyke, whose biography I’m now writing. Large chunks of this year he spent in London. Here, for the first time, is London in 1926 in colour, and I can’t stop watching it. There’s something about the height of the camera combined with the speed of it all which is hypnotic (I’m also a fan of the hand at 1:38).

There was a curious piece in the Independent yesterday, by the paper’s publisher and occasional columnist, Evgeny Lebedev (see above). What I imagined to be a generic, heart-warming defence of eccentricity turned out to be something more confusing.

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continues to take shape. There’s even a website dedicated to the campaign, which is where I found this picture, a maquette of the proposed statue by Amanda Ward. I like it, especially the visual resonances between it and the statue Haw must have looked at more than any other, that of Churchill, or the ‘old gasbag’ as he liked to call him.

Haw:

Churchill:

and you’ll miss it, but here I am on the NBC Today programme talking about, would you believe it, English Eccentrics. Here’s the full clip. The highlight for me is undoubtedly Professor Elemental. He’s going to be huge.

interesting hearing and reading the reaction to the Olympics Opening Ceremony out here in the States – this in the NYTimes is one of my favourites – not least for the number times the word ‘eccentric’ has popped up. If it was a display of patriotism, here was patriotism at its silliest and most self-deprecating. At the same time it didn’t feel forced. This was not look-at-me-I’m-mad-ism. All those rough edges felt authentic, which is perhaps why any Brits hiding behind their sofas when it began for fear that it would be a three-hour-long cringefest came out of it feeling strangely proud.

The next day I overheard an American here in Washington sum it all up. He was asked how the ceremony was. ‘It wasn’t Beijing,’ he said. ‘It was quirky and a bit nuts. But it was good. It was British, you know.’

And in case you’d forgotten just how different it was, here’s Beijing: