Bats at Mentmore Towers

It struck me as I was working on this post that the Rothschilds, the great bankers of nineteenth-century Europe and once the focus of a thousand conpiracy theories, have faded from the public consciousness. They got rich by helping the nations of Europe to set up bond markets on the model of the Bank of England, and their own fortune grew so great that they could bail out or sink national treasuries. They were also big in the growing oil business, especially in Baku (Azerbaijan), and got involved in many other businesses. Some branches of the family are still very wealthy, but I guess they have been eclipsed by new waves of wealthy predators: arms magnates, Arab sheiks, Russian oligarchs.

Although the Rothschilds made their money in Europe and Baku, several prominent family members chose to reside in England. I suppose they knew better than anyone about the shaky finances of many nations on the continent, and the political instability that was likely to spawn. Anyway one part of England, the Vale of Aylesbury, ended up with a whole series of Rothschild mansions, inclulding the famous Waddesdon Manor.

Waddesdon Manor is a National Trust property with an adequate trust for maintenance, so it is in no danger. But right down the road is another Rothschild estate, Mentmore or Mentmore Towers, and it is in trouble. A recent survey of the property found evidence that bats are nesting in the attic, which raised concerns both about the preservation of the structure and the situation of the bats, a protected species. Now the Buckinghamshire Council is saying that if the current owners can't clean up the mess it will have to be sold. (NY Times)

Mentmore was built in 1852-1854 for Baron Mayer de Rothschild. It was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (architect of the Crystal Palace) and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, in a mishmash of historical styles known as Jacobethan. Love the huge triple chandelier in the Great Hall.

One of the Staterooms

The estate shrank over the years, including a major sale in 1944, but the mansion and its grounds remained in the ownership of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, until his death in 1974. According to wikipedia:

The Earl's executors explored the possibility of Mentmore Towers along with its contents being preserved intact as a heritage property and opened to the public, as has been the case with some other National Trust properties (including Waddesdon). Despite prolonged discussions between the Executors and Government representatives over the following three years, no agreement to save the house for the nation was reached.

Unable to made a deal with the National Trust and hit by British inheritance taxes nearing $7 million, the family sold the house and got Sotheby's to hold a flash auction of its furnishings. Over nine days in 1977, nearly 3,000 items of Baroque art, gilded furniture and other treasures were sold, fetching more than $10 million.

The following year the empty mansion with its formal gardens and 80 acres were sold to the Maharishi Foundation, an Indian-owned entity that promoted Transcendal Meditation, which strikes me as a perfect image to sum up the decline of Old Britain. But the foundation couldn't afford the upkeep and the house continued to decline.

So in 1999 the house was sold to real estate investor Simon Halabi, of Syrian extraction, who planned to add a new wing and make the place a hotel and conference facility. Halabi was a shady character who was rated by a British magazine one of the ten richest men in the country not long before he went bankrupt. So far as I can tell, the house still belongs to some entity related to Halabi, but the County Council rates it as "abandoned and uninhabited." 

Mentmore has a long history in movies, including serving as Wayne Manor in Christopher Nolan’s 2005 film “Batman Begins”.

I hope the house can be saved, but it not it will make a splendid ruin.

Moscow Refinery, Again

The Moscow oil refinery today, after a massive Ukrainian attack with several different families of drones and cruise missiles. Part of the point has to be for residents of the Moscow urban agglomeration to see that this is happening.

Sebastiano del Piombo

Sebastiano del Piombo ( c. 1485 – 1547) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerist periods. He was born and trained in Venice but ended up doing much famous work in Rome. I was drawn to him by this painting, "Head of a Woman," dated to the early 1530s.

If you have seen anything by him it was probably this, not because it is such a great painting but because the subject is thought to be Cristopher Columbus.

Another somewhat famous work is this, painted on the shutters of an organ in a Venetian church; now they reside in a Venetian museum.

Portrait of Andrea Doria

Two portraits of Pope Clement VII, the lower one on slate

Piombo did many frescoes in both Venice and Rome. This is the judgment of Solomon.

This one is in the Vatican.

And one more, Christ's trip through Limbo.

Laran, the Etruscan God of War

This small bronze statue is identified as Laran, the ancient Etruscan god of war. The Romans equated him straight out with Mars, although some noted that Laran could wield lightning.

Same statue. I wonder about calling this Laran. It certainly could be, but there are lots of these bronze statuettes from the late Bronze Age into the Roman Empire across the whole western Mediterranean. 

We know that some images from Tuscany depict Laran, since they helpfully include his name. This mirror is the most famous.

The rest of these, as far as I am concerned, might be Laran, or Mars, or some local hero. 

You often see the ancient Etruscans described as "mysterious," but thanks to Roman writers we know more about them than most peoples of the first millenium BC, and other than their obsession with reading lightning as omens, they seem much like other peoples of their time.

Links 18 September 2026

Carl Gustav Carus, Morning Bells (Old German City in the Morning Light)

What happened to industrial workers as manufacturing work shifted from artisanal handcraft to managing machines? This paper says, not much; what happened was that younger workers stopped going into the old trades and began going into new disciplines. Few workers actually changed jobs.

The World Bonsai Convention, 13-minute video.

Excellent Scott Siskind meditation on Ludd, from ancient Celtic deity to patron of modern Luddites.

The first known battle between naval drones has taken place in the Black Sea.

Roman gold hoard likely buried in 395 AD.

Inscription marking the site of a lightning strike found at Hadrian's villa.

Chinse "micro drama," made for watching on a phone, each episode about two minutes.

Kiaf Seoul, South Korea's biggest art show.

The American obesity rate peaked around 2021 and has been declining ever since.

Discussion of the new evidence on Dark Energy and the expansion of the universe, 15-minute video.

Richard Hanania, "the vibes of the right are genocidal."

Interesting article from Google on AI in science: scientists are using AI a lot, and report significant productivity gains.

Spitalfields Life, In Search of Roman London.

Re-imagining Himalayan Art.

Preserving the art in a Mexican cave that includes many paintings from the colonial period.

Interesting: "I find that hazardous occupations tend to have higher concentrations of conservative workers, even after controlling for several alternative explanations. Further, using longitudinal data from the Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study, I find that individuals employed in hazardous occupations tended to become more conservative over time relative to their peers in safer occupations."

A new way to detect scientific fraud: fraudsters often rely on sources hallucinated by LLMs.

Daycare pseudoscience: none of the various claims about how daycare hurts children have stood up to scrutiny.

AI regulation and regulatory capture (Marginal Revolution)

A final burial for cold fusion.

Niko McCarty: "We’ve invented microbes that can eat plastic, detect landmines, and extract rare metals. They’ve been swallowed by a (regulatory) black hole."

The history of women in mining.

The Lucas Museum

The latest big new museum is the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which houses the art collection of George Lucas and his wife, Melody Hobson. It looks like a spaceship, but then, what else was it going to look like? The architect was Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, who has done several large museums in China.

Based on the photographs in this NY Times piece, the building has the same problem as others designed around a cool shape: it looks great from a distance, but up close you're just standing next to molded concrete.

Anyway the point of the museum is to display what Lucas calls "narrative art," that is, visual images that tell stories. That includes comic book art (Jim Lee and Scott Williams, Future State: Justice League, 2001)

Book illustrations (Maurice Sendak)

Cover art from fantasy novels, (Julie Bell, The Huntress, 1996)

Stuff that looks like Norman Rockwell, (John Philip Falter, Lunch Counter, 1946, detail)

And historical work (Howard Pyle, Phoenician Traders, 1904)

Of course the museum holds the Lucasfilm archives, including the original art by Ralph McQuarrie, the chief visual designer of the Star Wars universe.

Persusing the museum web site, I mainly get warm feelings. The last big new art museum in Los Angeles, the Broad Museum, seemed to me a product of its patrons' desire to seem really, really cool. With the Lucas Museum I have the sense that this is all stuff the patrons actually like.

I mean, doesn't this classic N.C. Wyeth illustration capture the artistic vision of George Lucas as well as anything? The museum opens September 22.

My Copies of "The Voice from the Darkness" have Arrived

Me, ten days after heart surgery, showing off one of the first printed copies of The Voice from the Darkness. 

I have written about 50 pages of volume II, working title The Red Admiral, but I stalled out and then my wife died, but I will get back to it. I know the whole story because this is my old gaming world that I have been developing since 1980, and I know about not just this generation but their children and grandchildren.

Thinking over this story, there are things I really like about it. I love how the young aristocratic circle came out, both the individual characters and the interactions between them, and I am modifying the story as I first imagined it to give them more time together. I love the city of Calyxia, divided by a rubble wall between a human half and a dark side stalked by monsters. I love the ideas about magic I have been playing with, which I derived from ancient Chinese shamanism. And as always when I write I love some of the minor characters who just spring into my mind, play their small parts and move on.

Here is a question for my readers: would anyone be interested in an audiobook? I could afford to have one made if people would listen.

Today's Place to Daydream About: Cortona, Italy

Cortona is a famous Tuscan town on a hilltop overlooking the Val di Chiana. The place has been occupied since Etruscan times is now a regular part of Tuscan tours.

Remains of the old Etruscan stone walls are still visible in several places.

One of the longest texts in ancient Etruscan, the Cortona Tablet, comes from here; seems to record the settlement of legal dispute.

There is a Roman villa of the Augustan period that survives buried under later rubble, open to tours.

The main piazza is quiet delightful, with its 14-century town hall.

This plain little church has a fresco by Fra Angelico, 

and there is a lovely Annunciation (above) by the same artist in the local museum.

You can climb up to this sixteenth-century church for a better view across the valley.

You can see why several movies have been filmed here, including Under the Tuscan Sun.

As I wait impatiently for my body to recover from surgery, my thoughts go to places like Cortona, where ancient pasts and modern style mingle to create delight.