As Secretary of the Independent Turner Society, Dr Selby Whittingham is disconsolate that the birthday of William Shakespeare is being widely celebrated today, while that of J M W Turner, also today, is not. “The Mayor, Boris Johnson, included a chapter on Turner in his recent book on significant Londoners,” Whittingham tells me. “Australians too are celebrating Turner’s birthday”.
The Society will setting the record straight by holding a party at Turner House in Cromwell Road. Among the guests will be Charlie Rowe, who plays the eponymous hero in Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy at the Old Vic — and whose birthday it is as well.