Lambeth Palace gardens, 9 July
Sculpture, 9 July
Violette Szabo featured on SOE Memorial, Albert Embankment, 9 July
Japanese wedding photo shoot, Westminster Bridge, 9 July
White Hart Dock 1, 16 July (as are all below)
White Hart Dock 2
White Hart Dock 3
Lambeth Palace beehives
Dragonfly chair by pond
Rowan berries
Swallows over pond 1
Swallows over pond, 2
One of the loveliest places in London can be found in the gardens of Lambeth Palace. As a member of the Committee of Reference for the Friends Life (originally Friends Provident) stewardship funds, I went there on the evening of 9 July, for a reception celebrating 30 years of Stewardship.
Walking back to Westminster afterwards, I saw for the first time the Special Operations Executive memorial, featuring a wonderful bust of the ill-fated Violette Szabo. Shortly afterwards, I came across a photo shoot for a Japanese couple – poignant, since the key reason why Szabo joined the SOE was that her husband had been killed during the battle of El Alamein in North Africa.
Then back to the Palace today – walking past the evocative White Hart Dock – for a meeting of the Committee of Reference, with the extraordinary Archbishop Justin Welby in the chair.
A very energetic debate ensued, on a range of environmental, social and governance issues related to the investment portfolio managed for the last 10 years by F&C. Afterwards, we had a presentation from the Schroders team who will shortly take over the role.
In the break between the two sessions, a number of us wandered into the gardens, where I ate a number of early ripening mulberries, the sat in the flight paths for the bees from the Palace hives, and finally exchanged the time of day with a delightfully laid-back frog.
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