Notes from the North

embroideries (detail) Guadalupe Maravilla David Talbot Rice (1903-1972) has an Edinburgh art gallery named after him. He was an expert in Byzantine art, appointed to the Gordon Watson chair of Fine Art at Edinburgh University at a young age. Like Giles Henry Robertson, his successor in that post, Talbot Rice went through the English public school system (in his case Eton) to Oxford and into the higher reaches of public office by virtue of the openings those institutions gave him. By all accounts he used his advantages of birth and education well, doing important work in various archaeological sites in Turkey, Iraq and Iran before becoming a professor.   A s well as being an archaeologist and scholar Talbot Rice was an innovator. He introduced a new degree combining Fine Arts and Art History and wanted to establish an arts centre in the university. He died before he achieved the second aim. It was left to Giles Robertson to take the project on and the Talbot Rice gallery was finally...