Powys Castle and terraces from the southeast in fine weather, Powys, Wales. n.d. Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Friday, Jan. 16, 2026: A getaway

The spectacle of America’s at first slow, then rapid descent into fascism is both irresistible and unavoidable – like the proverbial slow motion train crash. Here in the UK, the BBC is now all-Trump, all the time, with occasional breaks to report on the departure of leading politicians from benighted Tory-dom to the sunny lands of Reform U.K., Britain’s leading fascist party. Apart from Trump, the politician whose voice is heard most often on The Beeb is his epigone, Nigel Farage.

My wife Harriet and I need a break from media and the daily outrages of Trump and Farage, so we’ve decided to drive west, about 250 miles to visit the remote studio of a potter/sculptor I learned about, Charles Bound, near Welshpool, in Powys, the largest and least populated county in Wales. The trip by car takes about five hours. We’ll leave early on Sunday to give us time to first visit Powys Castle, the ancestral home of the Herbert family, now a property of the National Trust. I frankly doubt the getaway will ease my mind, but it may give me space and time to reflect for a while about things other than the ongoing catastrophe.

Sunday, January 18, 2026: Castle Powys

We didn’t at first realize we arrived. The driving rain obscured everything, and the castle is nestled on a hillside among trees and terraced gardens. But when I turned to park, there it was, a great, hulking, mass of red stone with round towers and crenelations. A castle! One thing didn’t fit, however: three rows of large windows with architraves vulnerable to medieval weaponry: battering rams, catapults, crossbows, and even slingshots! Sometime in the late 16th Century, the 13th C. castle must have been turned into a manor house. I imagined processions of knights in armor and then three centuries later, courtiers in doublets and women in long, flowing skirts; what we saw was British tourists in Barbour coats and Wellington boots, holding dogs on leads.

Pevsner described the interior of Powys Castle as “the most magnificent in Wales”; that may be true, but I found it dark and dreary. The 16th and 17th C. ceiling paintings were feeble imitations of Veronese, and the early 18th C. portraits – mostly of the Herbert family – were dolls heads on well-dressed, mannikin bodies. The British were good at drama and poetry, but terrible at painting until William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough came along in the middle of the century.

The exception that proves the rule at Castle Powys is Isaac Oliver’s miniature Portrait of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron of Cherbury (c. 1613-4). The baron is shown reclining on the ground beneath a tree, head propped up by right hand and bent arm. An armorial shield covers his side, but not his long-fingered left hand. His retinue is visible at right, and distant mountains are glimpsed between framing trees. Do we see, in Oliver’s portrait, an evocation of the renowned lover, duelist, philosopher and poet? In “An Ode Upon a Question Moved, Whether Love Should Continue Forever,” Herbert rejects the suggestion that humans must seek only the spiritual:

Isaac Oliver, Portrait of Edward Herbert, c. 1613-14. Powys Castle

No sure, for if none can ascend
Even to the visible degree
Of things created, how should we
The invisible comprehend?

The Baron’s doublet and chemise are unbuttoned at the top, opening him to “things created” – plants and trees, mountains and rivers, and the invisible lover at whom he longingly gazes. That attraction is as tangible as the world of nature:

Nor here on earth then, nor above,
Our good affection can impair,
For where God doth admit the fair,
Think you that he excludeth love?

There are few more beautiful or evocative portraits in Britain than Oliver’s.

The other highlight of the Powys Castle collection is less romantic. It’s the imperial plunder amassed by Robert Clive (“Clive of India”) and his son Edward Clive. The former established British control of Bengal, via the East India Company, and the latter served as Governor of Madras and later parliamentarian from Shropshire. Edward’s marriage in 1784 to Henrietta Herbert made him Baron of Powys (she had the title; he had the money) and thus lord of the manor. The exhibited spolia include material seized by Clive (I) during the decisive Battle of Plassey (1757), and by Clive (II) following the killing of the enlightened Tīpū Sultān at the conclusion of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799. There are Indian weapons, armor, and most remarkably, a bejeweled tiger’s head finial from the Sultan’s throne, Tipi’s traveling couch, or “palanquin,” and a field tent. The tent is made up........

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