Journal

Spoke yesterday at IESE, the Madrid-based business school. An annual event for their 50,000-strong alumni network, this time focusing on sustainability. Some time since I have been to their campus and was impressed by their new complex of buildings, in which the event was housed. Met some great people who I plan to follow up with.

Then today I went walkabout in Madrid. Among the places I visited were CentroCentro (whose exhibitions I found somewhat muddy and disappointing), the Prado Museum (whose collection blew me away) and the Sorolla Museum (ditto).

Looking at the Prado exhibits through the eyes of Asian visitors I was following around at one point, it struck just how much of a death cult Catholicism has been, with assorted martyrdoms including everything from crucifixions, to arrows and rocks.

Pieter Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death was a painful reminder of just how brutish life could be in medieval times. And Goya’s execution images and Black Paintings rubbed the point in for recently modern times.

The religious painter whose work has always leaped out for me – and did so again today – is El Greco. Weird, extruded, exquisite. Plus I liked Flevit Super Ilam by Enrique Simonet Lobado. Plus some of the royal portraits, amid all the assorted thuggery and ugliness, were striking – including the Velasquez renderings of Philippe III and Felipe IV.

But there were real delights in the midst of it all, too, including several Sorolla paintings, with Boys on a Beach particularly eye-catching. I was so taken by them that, having turned away from a long queue outside the Sorolla Museum in the morning (it is only 7 minutes from my hotel), I went back there – to find no queue at all around 16.00, and entry free.

A really joyous place with a stunning collection of his paintings, including the bathing horse and women walking on a beach.

COPO26 proved to be an extraordinary gathering of the tribes. In one session alone, hosted by Federated Hermes, there were six people I had worked with over the years, from Julia Hailes and Fran(cesura) Dixon van Dijk, through Char(mian) Love and Clover Hogan, to two present-day members of the team: Louise Kjellerup Roper and Richard Roberts.

The buzz from all of that helped offset the impact of the helicopter that hovered directly overhead throughout my session. Here’s one I took later, during the Fridays4Future march.

Louise (Kjellerup) Roper and I joined the COP26 Fridays4Future march through Glasgow today, in fairly intense rain at times. Wonderful experience, everyone in good spirits and very friendly. Tremendous drumming. Organisers estimated 100,000 people took part – the striking thing was how it was all age groups, all in this together. As indeed we are.

GreenBiz published my latest column today, focusing on the role of awards and prizes in the next phase of change.

Maybe it’s the continuing saga of my eye surgery, with a couple of recent trips to Moorfields, that has me seeing the world in a slightly kaleidoscopic way? But I think it’s more a question of the general acceleration ahead of COP26, opening this week.

While cleaning up my computer desktop ahead of leaving for Glasgow, I came across these images from recent weeks. The Sacha one came through today from Conservation Without Borders, ahead of the ITV documentary this evening on Sacha’s flight, led by Joanna Lumley, filmed before the tragic crash on 18 September.

The next two images link to a presentation I did to senior partners at lawyers Slaughter And May, and then I did another session for lawyers Mission de Reya, this time spotlighting the work of young environmental activists.

The goose reflects the fact that all around the signs of autumn are pressing in. In that spirit, we have had three new windows put into the house, one on each floor, to better insulate, thermally and acoustically.

The last two images are from an evening out we had with the team, at the Conduit Club – the first time we had been there since the move from Mayfair to Covent Garden. A delightful evening.

Among things that have been in my mind recently have been my first air trip, this one to Zürich, to present to bankers Julius Bär, with a frenzy of form-filling before I went; a continuing series of talks (e.g. one for chairs of Deloitte client companies, another involving moderating a panel of CEOs for WBCSD); and thinking about the next book, which suddenly seems to have got itself together after a number of abortive starts.