sitting behind Laetitia and Jeffrey at a lecture by Sir Lawrence Gowing, UCL, 1975 Today I accidentally knocked over a jar of methylated spirit that soaked through a doodle which I have kept in the studio for over half a century. It's just a scrap of notepaper - nothing really except for the memory it brings back whenever I look at it. It takes me back to my first year at the Slade School of Art when I attended lectures in art history given by Sir Lawrence Gowing. Gowing had just been...

The Spiti Valley in northern Himachal Pradesh is a land of superlatives. In the Kinnaur Valley, close to the Chinese/Tibetan border is the 'last village in India', a tiny place called Chitkul. At 3,450 metres above sea level, Chitkul has the cleanest air in the whole of India. Politicians have decided to re-define it as the 'first village in India' which sounds more positive, depending on your direction of travel. Komic Village (4,587 metres) boasts the world's highest restaurant and at...