A Photographic exhibition by Mark Playle

Max Ernst, the French Surrealist, died on his birthday, 1 April 1976. He loved the irony. It was, you might say, surreal.

Its rather ugly plinth detracts from this wonderful work of art. It looks rather forlorn. Plonked down in a rather unlovely street. No wonder the half-man, half-bird looks as if it is preparing to take off.

For the last hundred and fifty years or so, visitors to this ancient and beautiful church have pondered over a sculpture of ‘the drowned woman’. Now, thanks to Anna Baydova’s awe inspiring, meticulous research they ponder no more.

There is an absolutely wonderful exhibition on at le Garage Art Centre (ends 30 June 2021) in Amboise. Absolutely wonderful. A real treat. It stirs the senses, emotions even, on so many levels.

In 1970, almost a hundred years after the sculptor Auguste Rodin was in Amboise, Alexander Calder, an entirely new sort of sculptor arrived, not, like Rodin, to sketch the Château, but to oversee the installation of one of his stabiles.

8 May, Victory in Europe Day (VE), Fête de la Victoire, a public holiday in France celebrates the end of the Second World War in Europe.

May 2nd marks the anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci in Amboise.