David Hockney is a celebrated British artist, who was born and lives in Yorkshire and is well known in the USA after living for many years in California. This summer Hockney has an exhibition at the Royal Academy which was inspired by his trip to Normandy in 2020. It starts on 23 rd May and continues to late September. If it is anything like his show there in 2012 it will be an uplifting experience and not to be missed.

Let me take you back to the Britain of 1951. The Second World War had ended just six years earlier. London, like many other British cities, had been bombed relentlessly and still bore the scars of the Blitz. Surviving buildings were covered in layers of dark sooty dust and rationing was still the order of the day and, for fresh meat, remained in place until 1954.