Clare Gaylard Glass 

After living overseas (and the kids growing up there) for a decade we still get a kick out of family holidays in the UK. Between Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay and most of it still looking like posters from the golden age of travel.

I didn't know these were a thing until the kids came back from the Tropical Butterfly House with photos. Thanks Ben!

A long time ago I read a Jungian essay exploring the significance of animals in folk tales and the commo...

Hugely looking forward to Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A, I got the book a couple of years ago and can still immerse myself in it. Sometimes the overt drama of his work eclipsed the astonishing detail, texture and sculptural elements for me, but this book put me right.

Told by John Fowles but more remarkable for the extraordinarily fluid, monochromatic illustrations by Sheliah Beckett, who I find died recently. I had a copy of this book as a child and managed to extract permission to colour it in. I did so poised between joy and a sense of vandalism.

My daughter made me 'Death of Rats' last year, inspired by the hilarious 'Reaperman', Sir Terry will be sorely missed by our immediate and extended family.

I'm madly envious of the range, depth and beauty of Chiara Bautista's drawings. She in a maverick Mexican artist with her own iconography, recurring characters and enigmatic story-arc, and an immense and growing following who adore her work but can't buy it as she simply...

Not sure why I haven't seen this amazing image a hundred times before, it is a gloriously scarlet and abundant tribute to the usually washed-out 'Virgin Queen'. we came across it at the Tate while looking at DR Brian May's (yes that other Queen) 'Poor Man's Gallery' of Victorian stereoscope...

My youngest was a blown away by the recent, revisionist version of Maleficent, so her big sister got out the acrylics and duct-tape and got to work on the makeover of an old  Barbie for Christmas. As a tall, thwart, dark-haired child, I had time for Maleficent even in her unreconstruct...

Came and went in an orgy of pumpkin carving and uncanny-valley face-painting. I have had this on my file for Valentines Day but always forget to post it. It is less noir than the infants we launched into the town. The Lovers of Valdaro.

A unique, controlled (one of each) pillaging of wild autumn haws, hips, grasses and flowers on a regular walk.. We saw four dear and remarkable people die in the past year, one very recently so I elected to seize a brief but tangible reminder that the worl...

I found the following Emily Dickinson poem myself, many years ago, and gradually hunted out (without money for books or the wonderful/terrible internet), her considerable canon of poetry. There is a special sense of ownership that comes with personal discovery.

Art by Lizzie Gaylard, I will declare an interest, we are related, Magpie and Me, Market Hill, Framlingham.

I have always been fascinated by what goes on under the surface: substructure, intrigue, undercurrents, architectural underpinnings, skeletons and subtexts. So when I find an object like this partial rabbit skull, it feels like a treasure and a key Also because nature round here usually ...

Three books for my birthday today, gifts that keep giving.

At Easter we visited The Ashmolean in Oxford and found an exhibition of Kenneth Coates art. He is a bit of a Renaissance Man on a fine scale, Jewellery, precious stones and metals, fine drawing, sculpture and the inspiration be...

There is a great little second-hand book shop in Helmsley near Rievaulx Abbey. I beat my daughters to this beautiful little 1945 Penguin hardback edition. I have always been drawn to miniatures and fine detail, I didnt realise that the word for this work: 'limning' derived fro...

Valentino's Spring 2014, I'd almost sell my soul to be twenty again and have the chance to wear a thing like that. 

From a local fund-raiser, those colours.

One of my daughters wanted to go to school on World Book Day as Death from Terry Pratchett's 'Reaper Man'. My other daughter not only made her an amazing skull mask, but on request, a pocket sized Death of Rats. If I do nothing else useful I will have helped to bring this glorious ...

Creatures from El fill me with delight, each character deserves its own story or mythology and Ellen is an artist whose studio I would dearly like to visit.