Xtra Diary: Lord's Long Room takes a bow - England cricket captain Andrew Strauss pledges support for archery event at 2012 Olympic Games

Published: 26 March 2010

“QUIVERS and arrows, it’s just not cricket” is a grumble that might be heard from the MCC enclosure at Lord’s as the first ball of the season nears.

This week the men in white flannels leant their support to plans to hold archery at the home of cricket during the Olympics.

England cricket captain Andrew Strauss (pictured) pledged his support for the ground to hold the event in 2012, swapping his bat for a bow last week to mark the endorsement.

But Diary understands some of the bacon and egg brigade are not so pleased about the diversification at the NW8 landmark because of plans to build temporary stands on the pitch.

A planning application will be submitted to Westminster City Council in May and opposition is expected to be strong.

Under the plans – which would make Westminster an Olympic borough of sorts – there would be eight days of competition comprising two individual events and two team events, with around 5,000 spectators. The field of play will be positioned so that the archers shoot from the historic Pavilion over the square towards the Media Centre. Residents can view the plans today (Friday) and tomorrow between 11am and 3pm in the President’s Box at the ground.

Andrew Strauss said: “Lord’s will be a first class venue for archery at the London Games, just as it is for cricket. I am very excited at the prospect of watching archery in such a spectacular setting, and it will be great for the profile of Lord’s to be part of such a historic event.”

Eightieth birthday bash for a colourful artist

IT was a book launch, art exhibition and an 80th birthday all rolled into one but felt more like a street party.

In some ways it seemed a little out of place in the almost rarefied atmosphere of the gallery of The Fine Art Society in New Bond Street, Mayfair.

An hour after the scheduled start at 6pm on Tuesday, more and more guests were still turning up, most of them great admirers, close friends or neighbours of David Gentleman who, in the same breath, is able to produce highly acclaimed watercolours and book illustrations, designs of postage stamps, as well as, incredibly enough, radical posters.

Not, Diary suspects, that David Gentleman would wish to be anything else. For more than 50 years he has been accepted as one of Britain’s greatest artists. At the same time, whenever the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had to search for an eye-catching image for a poster it was to the quiet Camden Town artist they turned.

I assume the guest-list reflected the many sides of Gentleman whose 80th birthday it was.

An early guest was writer Michael Frayn who had been a close friend and neighbour for many years until moving in the late 1990s to Richmond.

Other admirers of Gentleman to turn up included Stanley Johnson. A family connection would have also drawn him – his son Jo Johnson is married to Gentleman’s daughter Amelia, both of whom live in the Mornington Crescent area. I heard later that another friend of Gentleman’s, the writer Joanna Trollope, also turned up.

On the walls were dozens of beautifully detailed watercolours, mainly of the countryside in Suffolk where Gentleman has a house. 

Some of them have been reprinted in the book Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, a classic picture of a rural village with transcripts of conversations with local people, recorded by the writer George Ewart Evans.

Gentleman told me: “It’s a wonderful book and required reading.”

How to stage a few surprises

WESTMINSTER City Council leader Colin Barrow looked in on Monday’s Laurence Olivier Awards as established theatre personalities lined up to present prize after prize to the shining stars of London stage. 

Mark Rylance’s best actor triumph for Jerusalem was certainly not unexpected, but a surprise came in the best new play category. 

This had been said to have been a two-horse race between last year’s two Royal Court hits – Jerusalem and Lucy Prebble’s Enron – but it went to The Mountaintop at Battersea’s Theatre503. Diary hears that playwright Katori Hall now plans to take her play to Broadway.

Best musical revival award went to Hello Dolly!, which has been staged at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, while youth entertainment Spring Awakening, which transferred earlier this year to the Novello theatre from the Lyric Hammersmith, was deemed best new musical.