Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 10: Nick Ross - Art History Abroad

Transcript

Ep 10: Nick Ross - Art History Abroad · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
• 0:04
  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
• 0:09
  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
• 0:14
  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
• 0:19
  and most importantly, find joy.
• 0:22
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
• 0:24
  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
• 0:27
  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
• 0:31
  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
• 0:37
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free.
• 0:40
  I've got someone really amazing and wonderful, as all my livery
• 0:44
  ride free people are today.
• 0:46
  It's Nick Ross.
• 0:48
  , Nick Ross is not a household name.
• 0:50
  You do not need to be a household name in order to live a self-actualized life.
• 0:56
  , you just have to go live one.
• 0:58
  And of the many people I know who've really achieved this,
• 1:03
  Nick's one of my heroes.
• 1:04
  I've known Nick, since he and I were of university age, so this was a.
• 1:11
  40 or 50,000 years ago, I think in the younger driest ice age, in between the
• 1:17
  masteron and the Mammoth, evolution.
• 1:20
  And in that time, Nick was, always famous among our
• 1:25
  peer group for two things.
• 1:27
  , one was his passion for art and art history, which he had then he has now
• 1:33
  and has lived through and has managed to make a living out of, in a way that
• 1:40
  people would always say to him, well, you can't make a living out of that.
• 1:42
  Oh, it's all very well studying that, but you can't make a living out of that.
• 1:44
  You know, you never make a living out of that and you certainly can't bring
• 1:47
  up your kids and educate them on that.
• 1:48
  No Bloody Charlie well has, and he hasn't done it in a
• 1:52
  boring, academic sort of way.
• 1:54
  Not that there's anything wrong with being a professor of, art history.
• 1:58
  In fact, we love the fact that people are.
• 2:01
  But no, he's done it completely honest in own terms, in a really interesting way.
• 2:05
  Those of you who are familiar with the romantic period of, British and
• 2:10
  indeed European history will probably know something called the Grand Tour.
• 2:15
  And, those of you who don't know what the Grand Tour is, well now I'm gonna
• 2:18
  tell you, there was a time, and it really started, in the Renaissance when the
• 2:24
  sons of the nobility of Europe were encouraged to go and educate themselves,
• 2:32
  by traveling around the ancient sites of Italy, Roman Renaissance and so on.
• 2:40
  And later on to some degree Greece as well, and learned the humanities and
• 2:44
  basically learn to appreciate culture and learn a certain sort of humility and a
• 2:51
  certain sort of, emotional regulation.
• 2:56
  In the face of the grand passions of the arts and, the idea of standing
• 3:02
  on the shoulders of giants and so on.
• 3:04
  And some people saw this as a self-indulgent exercise of, you know,
• 3:08
  rich young men sort of drinking and whoing and fighting their way around,
• 3:12
  the flesh pits of, of the Mediterranean.
• 3:14
  And although it's not that, that never happened cuz you were
• 3:17
  dealing with young men here.
• 3:18
  much of the literature and art that we take for granted that came out of the
• 3:23
  particularly early 19th century period, like Byron, like Shelly, like Keets,
• 3:30
  or it came out of these experiences.
• 3:32
  and that's just, that's just the, the handful that spring to my mind these days.
• 3:38
  Nick has taken that idea and made it much more democratic and also not strictly
• 3:45
  male and not strictly for the rich and.
• 3:50
  Has opened this idea of going to these places and, and imbibing this culture
• 3:57
  as a way to mature the young minds who will become the leaders of tomorrow.
• 4:03
  And has made an extraordinarily good go of it and has had an enormous amount
• 4:08
  of fun along the way and has indeed, I would say, trained some of the leaders
• 4:12
  of today, because we're going back a whole generation now when this began.
• 4:17
  So, Nick Ross is really a, an example of if you have a passion and you wanna follow
• 4:23
  it, don't let anybody talk you out of it.
• 4:26
  Don't let anybody say you can't make doing that, because what they mean is
• 4:30
  they can't make a living doing that.
• 4:32
  And if you make a living doing that well, it makes them feel
• 4:35
  a bit bad about themselves.
• 4:36
  So you want to sort of do what Nick did and sort of jolly
• 4:39
  well go ahead and do it now.
• 4:40
  There were two things I said that stood out about Nick.
• 4:43
  That was one, his passion for art.
• 4:46
  For showing people this art.
• 4:48
  The other thing was his bio capes that he would wear and still
• 4:53
  does, and his elegantly striding.
• 4:58
  Yet at the same time, heroically limping gait, which came as a result of a broken
• 5:05
  neck while doing something he wrote while playing rugby as a very young
• 5:10
  man while actually still at school.
• 5:12
  And again, having been told that perhaps his prospects weren't so good
• 5:16
  and that certainly spending the next 50 years, leading, groups of, high
• 5:22
  spirited you young leaders of the next generation around kilometers
• 5:28
  and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers
• 5:30
  and kilometers of ancient cities and sight wouldn't really be possible.
• 5:34
  Well, he beat those odds.
• 5:36
  , so I want to shut up now and let you meet Nick.
• 5:42
  So without further ado, Nick, hello and thanks for coming on Live Free Ride for,
• 5:47
  Nick Ross: hi there, Ru.
• 5:48
  Thank you very much.
• 5:49
  That's, yes.
• 5:50
  I didn't know you knew that much about me.
• 5:52
  , Rupert Isaacson: well, you know, it's been a few years.
• 5:54
  Yeah.
• 5:54
  , and obviously I'm a huge fan.
• 5:56
  Always have been.
• 5:57
  tell us who you are, where'd you come from, and what kicked
• 6:00
  your life off along this path?
• 6:03
  Nick Ross: Oh, , so, father, father was a, , naval officer mother.
• 6:08
  Joan had polio when she was ju just after they were engaged.
• 6:11
  So, in a way, , my difficulties physically were, were I, I
• 6:17
  ended up mirroring my mother.
• 6:19
  Interesting, many respect that I didn't know.
• 6:21
  And, and, so she had Beba Polio in 1947 and didn't have the use of her left arm.
• 6:28
  and, and actually she was probably about 20% of any other physically able person.
• 6:34
  So the idea of growing up with disability was, was, was, completely
• 6:39
  normal for us as, so that's, that's sort of kind of where I came from.
• 6:43
  , and, why, why did I end up doing what I'm doing now?
• 6:47
  Well, there's two reasons.
• 6:48
  , as you point out, the, the first one was that I ended up breaking my spine,
• 6:53
  playing rugby, and, and I wound up in, in a hospital bed at Stoke Mandeville.
• 7:00
  And, , and then I, I, , I remember being there and, , and realizing that.
• 7:05
  What I had hoped would be a career in the Navy was never gonna happen.
• 7:10
  And that until that point in my life when I was 16, I'd, , I'd been Mr.
• 7:16
  Sporty if you, if you could define me.
• 7:18
  It was that I was fast at running and I loved, , rugby and stuff like that.
• 7:23
  And, and, , and I'd shown no signs of having a brain.
• 7:26
  And, , and I remember lying there in bed thinking, I've gotta change the Braun
• 7:30
  into brain now if I'm gonna be left with only my mind and no physical presence
• 7:36
  or, you know, no, no activity, then I would, I would have to employ my mind.
• 7:42
  At
• 7:42
  Rupert Isaacson: what age, how, what, what age were you
• 7:44
  when you had this realization?
• 7:46
  , Nick Ross: I was 16.
• 7:47
  Okay.
• 7:48
  And, And, , so I started reading, , which I, I had, really tried to
• 7:53
  avoid up until, until that point.
• 7:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Did they, did they actually have to teach
• 7:56
  you to read in the hospital?
• 7:58
  Nick Ross: Pretty well?
• 7:59
  Very well.
• 8:00
  Anyway.
• 8:00
  The, the, but the, the other thing was that my, my parents, they
• 8:05
  had, when they first married, they didn't have very much money.
• 8:08
  It was that sort of post-war period.
• 8:11
  And, they, they worked really hard and they didn't go on holiday.
• 8:14
  They never left the farm that they took up because my father left the Navy in
• 8:18
  order to look after my mother, and he needed a job where he could work at home.
• 8:23
  So he thought, all I know about is the sea and managing men and fighting.
• 8:28
  , and, so he thought, well, I, I do also know a lot about the weather,
• 8:32
  and so I'll take up farming.
• 8:34
  And so he did farming.
• 8:37
  And, what sort of farmer was he?
• 8:39
  Well started off mixed.
• 8:41
  Mixed an arable, but then ended up just doing dairy.
• 8:44
  But, but he, they, they didn't go away for 18 years, because they
• 8:48
  were building the farm, building family, all of those sorts of things.
• 8:51
  And when I was seven they went, they took us all to Florence and my parents
• 8:57
  did an awful lot of work before we went so that they always knew where, wherever
• 9:02
  we were, whatever building we were in, they kind of knew some story about it.
• 9:06
  And, and that's sort of where it all came from.
• 9:09
  So, jumped 10 years, or jumped nine years to, to the day
• 9:13
  that I ended up in hospital.
• 9:15
  If you'd asked me then what else are you interested in?
• 9:18
  It was art.
• 9:19
  And it was entirely because my parents had made sure that whenever we went
• 9:24
  somewhere that they weren't dragging us around, that they had something
• 9:28
  to say, you know, they were informed.
• 9:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, that's interesting that, given that your dad was ex-military
• 9:35
  and then became a farmer and then you were growing up as a, a farm boy when
• 9:40
  you weren't at school and when you were at school being a jock, art would seem
• 9:45
  a little bit of a guilty secret to have.
• 9:47
  Was that something that you kept to yourself or was that something
• 9:51
  you willingly shared with the other jocks and would pop them on the
• 9:55
  nose if they teased you about it?
• 9:56
  Or how did that, because those are two, those are normally two
• 10:00
  exclusive cultures within the school.
• 10:02
  There'd be the jocks and the Fs.
• 10:03
  Right.
• 10:04
  And so you were, you were sort of an equal hybrid there.
• 10:06
  Yeah.
• 10:07
  How, how did that happen?
• 10:09
  Nick Ross: oh, the, no, I think, I think, people generally
• 10:12
  knew I was interested enough.
• 10:14
  I was always around the art school, and put on, I remember we did,
• 10:19
  we did something on, on futurism.
• 10:22
  When I was about 13 and, and we just transformed the, we, we built
• 10:26
  a structure inside the art school.
• 10:28
  and it was a sort of passage through war.
• 10:30
  And yeah, no, so I think people knew I was interested in art.
• 10:33
  Yeah.
• 10:33
  So that wasn't a conflict, that wasn't a problem, if you see what I mean.
• 10:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:37
  But I take your point.
• 10:38
  It, it, it doesn't sit, it doesn't sit, , conveniently together.
• 10:43
  Rupert Isaacson: So you're lying in this hospital bed in Stoke Mandeville.
• 10:45
  But for those listeners who don't know Stoke Mandeville is if you have
• 10:49
  a really bad spinal injury in the uk, you're gonna end up in Stok, Mandeville.
• 10:53
  and when I was at school, there was a boy who, , broke his neck on
• 10:58
  the rugby field as well, who ended up there and he didn't make it.
• 11:01
  So, it just, if you ended up there, it meant that it was pretty serious.
• 11:05
  so you are lying there.
• 11:06
  you are thinking, oh God, you know, there go my dreams.
• 11:10
  I'm only 16.
• 11:11
  But I love art.
• 11:12
  And you haven't been back to Italy since you were seven, or have you at this point?
• 11:19
  No.
• 11:20
  Right.
• 11:20
  No.
• 11:21
  So, so this is a cherish memory.
• 11:23
  A a de and a decade old, which is a long time for somebody that young,
• 11:27
  obviously that's half your life.
• 11:29
  more, you begin to read.
• 11:32
  What are you
• 11:32
  Nick Ross: reading?
• 11:34
  Oh, everything about two thirds through, because I started reading
• 11:38
  the story, Gore's story of art.
• 11:40
  and then I started reading other books.
• 11:42
  But the thing was that, because at the time I had very little movement, I could
• 11:47
  only rarely ro move my, rotate my wrist.
• 11:50
  I couldn't, I, I had no, I had no biceps.
• 11:53
  And I didn't have anything else.
• 11:55
  Stomach, muscles, legs stalled the rest, none of them worked.
• 11:58
  And, but I could rotate my wrist.
• 12:01
  so rather like a royal wave, I could, I could do this, which meant that
• 12:06
  the, there was a, I had a leather strap around my hand, which, upon
• 12:10
  which or into which was stuck.
• 12:12
  an aluminum stick with a pat post office, you know, one of those, , finger po po
• 12:18
  rubber things that you put at the end of the finger to, to turn pages quickly.
• 12:22
  Okay.
• 12:23
  And, and, with this peculiar, this royal wave, I could, I could just flick
• 12:30
  the top of the, Left hand page, having read the, the spread, I could flick
• 12:36
  the top of the left hand page and then sh and then, and then push it under
• 12:40
  the keeper of the right hand keeper.
• 12:42
  Okay.
• 12:42
  Show me.
• 12:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:43
  So I've got, I've got this lectin with a book over
• 12:46
  Rupert Isaacson: my head.
• 12:46
  So you are lying on your back looking up at the book.
• 12:49
  Yeah.
• 12:49
  And the book is suspended over your face at this point?
• 12:52
  Nick Ross: Yes.
• 12:52
  And, and, I had to bite my thumb, because if my arm spasmed, it would
• 12:58
  spasm away from my face, which would take my hand away from the book.
• 13:03
  And I didn't have the biceps to get their arm back again.
• 13:07
  So I had to bite my thumb in order to keep hold of it.
• 13:10
  And then, and then flick one page and then, and then if you see what I mean,
• 13:16
  Push it under the keeper the other side.
• 13:19
  As the book got heavier on the right hand side, the more I read, it became
• 13:24
  unstable from its left hand tethering.
• 13:28
  And so every so often it would just collapse.
• 13:31
  As I got towards the, the, it got further through the book, it would
• 13:34
  get heavier on the right hand side and it would keep on collapsing.
• 13:37
  So I am, I'm really shit after about 1900 in terms of art, because that
• 13:42
  was in the last third of the book.
• 13:44
  so, so kept you, kept you in the Renaissance?
• 13:47
  Kept me in the Renaissance.
• 13:47
  That's the only reason I know anything about it.
• 13:49
  Rupert Isaacson: and how long did this level of disability last?
• 13:54
  Nick Ross: I was, I was in there for about eight, well nine months.
• 13:57
  and I, I was just walking, by the time I left I could just
• 14:01
  about bear my own weight.
• 14:03
  And, and yeah, I could walk.
• 14:05
  I wasn't, it wasn't totally unaided, but, but then, but then I went
• 14:09
  straight back to school cuz I'd missed my lower sixth year, so my
• 14:12
  penultimate year at secondary school.
• 14:16
  And, so I went back straight back to school to my A levels in a year.
• 14:20
  which wasn't a good idea.
• 14:22
  Well, it was actually in one sense because it meant that I
• 14:25
  kept up with ev all of my mates.
• 14:27
  but it wasn't long enough to do three A levels and besides, I,
• 14:32
  I was running the school bar, which was really quite good fun.
• 14:35
  Of course you were.
• 14:36
  Yeah.
• 14:37
  And, and
• 14:38
  Rupert Isaacson: delegating the hefting of the crates and barrels.
• 14:40
  Nick Ross: Yes.
• 14:41
  All but, but the long and the short of it was today.
• 14:44
  I ended up, with really, really appalling A levels and, and said, so
• 14:49
  I did all sorts of other things for a while, but always wanted to get back
• 14:54
  towards art history in some way or form.
• 14:58
  Rupert Isaacson: So just quickly before, while you're still there
• 15:01
  in state mander, was there any point, were you really despaired?
• 15:04
  Nick Ross: yes.
• 15:05
  Yeah, there was one, one point when my spine wasn't.
• 15:09
  it's a peculiarity of spinal injuries that, in, in where, where normally
• 15:14
  children, when you break a bone, you fix really quickly when you break your
• 15:19
  neck, you don't, you do, you do break the bones, but it's, but it's the cartilage in
• 15:26
  between as you dislocate, you know, things that, that's the problem and that's where.
• 15:32
  You get severance of the spinal cord and, and that's what
• 15:35
  leads to the paralysis weirdly.
• 15:38
  For younger people, it doesn't fix so well.
• 15:41
  And, and that's exactly what happened to me.
• 15:43
  So after, after about, 12 weeks, my spine actually hadn't fused in any way.
• 15:49
  It hadn't joined up.
• 15:51
  And, , so they had to do an operation on me, and I had very limited movement.
• 15:55
  That movement that I had was how I was reading and so on.
• 15:59
  Anyway, I heard the, the orthopedic, because all I could see was the ceiling.
• 16:03
  I couldn't feel anything.
• 16:05
  And so my ear, my hearing got really good and I could overhear.
• 16:09
  The orthopedic surgeon who thought he was out of earshot, say, you know, it's, it's,
• 16:14
  we've very rarely done this operation.
• 16:16
  It's very dangerous.
• 16:17
  He may lose everything that he's got so far and we may do more damage than good.
• 16:23
  And, and the next morning I projectile putte all over the, the male
• 16:28
  nurse who was giving me breakfast.
• 16:30
  And I projectile puked everything for the next two and a half weeks.
• 16:34
  And what it was, was that I was shit scared.
• 16:36
  I was deeply, deeply frightened, that I was gonna, I was gonna lose everything and
• 16:41
  I was going to be finally without options.
• 16:45
  And,
• 16:46
  Rupert Isaacson: and did you keep all this to yourself or did you share this
• 16:49
  Nick Ross: with anybody?
• 16:50
  Well, the thing was that I was sharing so much vomit with everybody
• 16:53
  that, that, everybody knew I, you know, they, everybody else around
• 16:58
  me knew that the only reason I was throwing up like this was cuz I was.
• 17:02
  I was, I was terrified.
• 17:04
  Rupert Isaacson: And you had to live in suspense then for two weeks or
• 17:07
  so after having heard this with, with the uncertainty of the outcome.
• 17:12
  Nick Ross: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:12
  And the problem was that, I was losing so much weight.
• 17:15
  I went in at about 13, 13 and a half stone and six foot, and
• 17:20
  I was down below six stone.
• 17:22
  And they were, and, and I was getting so thin that they thought that, I
• 17:28
  wouldn't be able to sustain an operation.
• 17:30
  Rupert Isaacson: And again, for those, for those, listeners who don't know
• 17:33
  the English, weight measurements, he is, you're ba he's basically
• 17:37
  gone in there, as a teenager of about 130, 140 pounds, at six foot,
• 17:42
  which is, you know, light athletic.
• 17:44
  And gone down to 50, 60 pounds at six foot, which is not healthy at all.
• 17:49
  Why did they decide to operate when you had lost so much weight?
• 17:52
  oh, well, the,
• 17:52
  Nick Ross: the, if they didn't operate, my spine would just be kind
• 17:56
  of floating in the, the vertebrae would've been floating in jelly.
• 18:00
  Okay.
• 18:00
  So to speak.
• 18:01
  And so it was
• 18:02
  Rupert Isaacson: do or die at that point?
• 18:03
  Yes.
• 18:04
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 18:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 18:05
  okay.
• 18:06
  Then you wake up from the operation.
• 18:08
  Yes.
• 18:09
  do you think, oh shit, I've, I've actually lost everything because
• 18:14
  you're feeling, lying there, feeling weak or do you, does some part
• 18:17
  of, you know, okay, this is good.
• 18:20
  Oh,
• 18:20
  Nick Ross: well, no, actually, do you know, I haven't
• 18:22
  thought about this since ever.
• 18:26
  Actually, I do remember coming round and, you know, the, my physiotherapist.
• 18:31
  senior consultant were all shouting at me trying to get
• 18:33
  me to move and, and just see.
• 18:36
  Anyway, so I did, I did have the bicep.
• 18:39
  That was the, it was my right bicep that I wanted back, most of all.
• 18:43
  Cuz if I had that, I knew that I had a chance of getting my fingers back.
• 18:46
  And if I had one hand and one arm, I'd be the same as my mom.
• 18:52
  And if she, the, and that was my focus was that if I had, if I just had that, I knew
• 18:58
  that she'd had four children on one arm.
• 19:01
  So, so why couldn't I, you know, it would all be fine.
• 19:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 19:06
  fast forward, how many kids have you had?
• 19:08
  three.
• 19:08
  All right.
• 19:09
  So you, you, well you've maybe got time to make up one more.
• 19:11
  We'll see.
• 19:12
  Unless there's any out there that you dunno of.
• 19:15
  okay.
• 19:16
  So, how quickly from then.
• 19:18
  From that operation?
• 19:20
  Are you up and walking and, are you, do you continue to read and
• 19:24
  do you read more voraciously at
• 19:26
  Nick Ross: that point?
• 19:27
  Yeah, no, so I'm, I'm now, it took me another six months to, to be walking
• 19:32
  six, seven months to be walking.
• 19:34
  And then I was reading, I was reading all the time.
• 19:37
  Rupert Isaacson: what, what was the, what's the book that
• 19:40
  really stands out from that time?
• 19:43
  Nick Ross: ooh, oh.
• 19:45
  Prob probably Bax Sandal who wrote Painting and Experience
• 19:50
  in 15th Century Florence
• 19:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Bax, Sendal.
• 19:54
  How do we spell
• 19:54
  Nick Ross: that?
• 19:55
  B A X A N D A
• 19:59
  Rupert Isaacson: double L.
• 20:01
  Bax Sinal.
• 20:02
  B A X A N D A L L.
• 20:04
  Yeah.
• 20:05
  And the, the title of the book.
• 20:07
  Nick Ross: Painting and experience in 15th century Florence
• 20:12
  Rupert Isaacson: painting and experience in 15th.
• 20:16
  And why does that book, why did that book stand out?
• 20:19
  , Nick Ross: cause it's, it's all about, , context.
• 20:22
  So he talks about, , weights and measures.
• 20:25
  He talks about, , you know, who, who may, who made paint.
• 20:28
  he's, he's talking about the current, he's talking about currency.
• 20:31
  , he's talking about all of those little aspects of life that
• 20:34
  people tend to forget, that have a bearing on the way things appear.
• 20:37
  Right.
• 20:37
  and, , what was it the other day?
• 20:39
  I, I was, something was going around the internet the other day
• 20:43
  about the gauge of railway lines.
• 20:46
  , the distance between railway tracks and it being related to.
• 20:53
  Which is a, which is a measurement that's now spread around the world.
• 20:57
  , but it relates to a tunnel in, in South Wales, something like that.
• 21:02
  I'm probably getting this wrong, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's
• 21:06
  just an explanation of why something is ordinary and as common as the size
• 21:12
  of a train is related to something that happened in the 18th century.
• 21:17
  That was some, some engineer somewhere just said, oh, well there's a problem.
• 21:23
  This is a solution.
• 21:25
  And then it's get, it gets stuck in the system.
• 21:28
  It's rather like laws that stuck on the statute books.
• 21:31
  I'm kind of interested in the detri of history that may that explains
• 21:35
  why things are the way they are.
• 21:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 21:38
  Got it.
• 21:38
  And you, and you picked that up while lying there on your back trying to go
• 21:42
  from one bicep to the rest of your body.
• 21:45
  Yes.
• 21:46
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 21:47
  Rupert Isaacson: So you, you.
• 21:50
  Fuel the fire of your passion while lying there.
• 21:54
  you go back to school, you run a bar, why not?
• 21:58
  Yeah.
• 21:58
  you, your A levels are okay, but I, when I met you, a, a levels
• 22:03
  again, by the way, for readers not familiar with the English, system.
• 22:06
  You must have a levels at the end of school if you want to get to university.
• 22:09
  Now, when I met you, of course you had gone to university, so
• 22:12
  you said you did stuff in between.
• 22:14
  So, so fill us in.
• 22:16
  You, you don't go straight to university to do art history at this point.
• 22:19
  You, you leave school and you do what?
• 22:22
  Nick Ross: so, so I, then, I then, okay, so at school, cause they broke my spine,
• 22:27
  I was, I, I I, I became very well known.
• 22:30
  Everybody knew who I was.
• 22:31
  So, so in a, which is a weird place to be because at 16, 17, you're
• 22:37
  trying to work out who you are, right?
• 22:39
  But if you are surrounded by people who already know who you are, it's a,
• 22:43
  it's a, it's a curious place to be in.
• 22:46
  Okay.
• 22:47
  And, and, so when I left school, I didn't wanna have anything to do with
• 22:51
  connections or anybody, any, any friends.
• 22:53
  Okay.
• 22:54
  I just wanted to find my own job, my own place to live, my own life.
• 22:58
  I wanted to work out, find out if I could exist, if I could work, if I was,
• 23:03
  if I was socially adept, as opposed to just being the bloke who broke his
• 23:08
  neck, who everybody knows who he is.
• 23:10
  I dunno if that makes any sense.
• 23:12
  It does.
• 23:12
  And
• 23:12
  Rupert Isaacson: or, and or the bloke who get you get free drinks off
• 23:14
  Nick Ross: in the bar.
• 23:15
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:17
  So I ended up, I ended up in a shitty little bed, sit in Fulham.
• 23:20
  and, where I could, I could sit on the edge of my bed, wash, dress,
• 23:25
  and sleep all in the same place.
• 23:27
  Take 1 1, 1 stride and I'd be out the door.
• 23:29
  It was tiny.
• 23:30
  Okay.
• 23:30
  I got my j my myself, a job at Liberties, which is a, a big
• 23:35
  haberdasher's, big department store.
• 23:37
  One of the earliest department stores in London.
• 23:40
  And then, and then I ended up working as a bank clerk, doing anything, doing
• 23:44
  nights, you know, you know how it is, you know, 18, 19, you just, you need money,
• 23:49
  you gotta go and find it somewhere.
• 23:52
  And then I ended up working as a, as a volunteer in a museum in Manchester.
• 23:57
  and, because I wanted to get somewhere towards the arts, but I, I, I, didn't
• 24:01
  have the A levels, I needed some something to go to a university interview with.
• 24:07
  And so I ended up working in Manchester and I was also quite
• 24:11
  interested in photography.
• 24:12
  So I started taking photographs of, Of, pubs on the way, on the
• 24:17
  way home from the art gallery.
• 24:19
  And, there's a theme running here.
• 24:21
  and,
• 24:22
  Rupert Isaacson: and it's good to know that you're dedicated to research.
• 24:24
  Yes.
• 24:25
  Yeah.
• 24:26
  Nick Ross: And if, if you know about, developing or printing,
• 24:29
  black, white photographs, so I take these rather dramatic images
• 24:32
  and then I print them myself.
• 24:34
  But, but if you know the old-fashioned process, I would under fixx them in the
• 24:38
  dark room so that they would then, when they would dry and put in a black bag.
• 24:42
  If you opened the bag and exposed it to light, then the print would
• 24:45
  disappear in about five minutes.
• 24:48
  Okay.
• 24:48
  And the reason I did this, It's simply that if you take a photograph and try
• 24:53
  to sell it to anybody, it's really difficult to get the money outta them.
• 24:56
  so I would, I would under fix the photograph, dry it, stick it in the
• 25:01
  black bag, and stick on the outside.
• 25:03
  A sort of mission impossible types.
• 25:05
  Sticker had them express, especially printed, which said, in this
• 25:09
  bag is a photograph of your pub.
• 25:11
  It will self destruct in five minutes.
• 25:14
  If you want it, ring this number and I'll bring it around to
• 25:18
  you and you give me the money.
• 25:19
  That sort of thing.
• 25:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Anyway, anyone give you that idea?
• 25:22
  It's a brilliant idea.
• 25:23
  Why didn't you spend No, no, no.
• 25:24
  Well, it was just doing that,
• 25:26
  Nick Ross: you know how well in those days if you went to a party, people
• 25:29
  would, take your photograph outside.
• 25:31
  Yeah.
• 25:31
  And, and, but they never, I never got it.
• 25:34
  I never understood how they made it any money because people would
• 25:37
  take the photograph and never pay.
• 25:39
  So anyway, so I just thought if I, if you novel the photograph from the outset,
• 25:43
  then, then, Then, so then they would open the photograph when, you know, I'd, I'd
• 25:48
  encouraged them to open the photograph when there were others around and and
• 25:52
  they loved the photographs and they'd give me a call and say, great, we'd like it.
• 25:56
  So I printed up, on really fine paper and then take it round mounted and everything.
• 26:00
  And they loved the photographs cause they were sort of gritty, urban, you
• 26:04
  know, reflections in puddles type images, you know, the ones, and,
• 26:09
  Rupert Isaacson: and, and the pub owners liked that.
• 26:10
  They didn't want you to take chocolate boxy things, that they thought No,
• 26:14
  Nick Ross: they loved the black and white grainy thing and the, but
• 26:17
  then the thing was that people would ask me to photograph their kids and
• 26:20
  that was the, that was the thing.
• 26:23
  So then I'd spend all weekends photographing people's families and
• 26:26
  printing them up on black and white.
• 26:28
  Okay.
• 26:28
  And and that's how I made a living cuz I was working.
• 26:31
  And you were doing all
• 26:32
  Rupert Isaacson: this in Manchester?
• 26:33
  Yeah.
• 26:34
  Okay.
• 26:35
  So you are taking photographs of disappearing pubs and children.
• 26:39
  Yes.
• 26:39
  I'd rather like that y your kids will self distract in five minutes.
• 26:44
  Yeah, no.
• 26:44
  Great.
• 26:45
  On that image there.
• 26:46
  Yes, I will.
• 26:47
  I will buy.
• 26:47
  How much, then, you're at this museum.
• 26:50
  What's going on in this museum?
• 26:52
  How's this get you to
• 26:53
  Nick Ross: university?
• 26:54
  a really amazing museum director who, who, what's in the museum?
• 26:59
  Sorry?
• 27:00
  What's in the museum?
• 27:02
  Oh, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a great, Manchester City Art Gallery
• 27:05
  is one of the great collections of prera flight paintings.
• 27:08
  Okay.
• 27:09
  It's Manchester City Art Gallery.
• 27:10
  Yeah.
• 27:11
  And, and the director there, a guy called Tim Clifford, said, listen, please don't
• 27:15
  come and work for an afternoon or a day a week like most volunteers, because it's
• 27:19
  difficult to find things for people to do.
• 27:21
  come and work full-time.
• 27:22
  If you're young, come and work full-time, and I promise I'll
• 27:26
  buy you lunch every Monday.
• 27:29
  And and I didn't, I didn't really realize, until much later in life how
• 27:34
  valuable that was cuz it meant I had an hour with this supremely ambitious
• 27:38
  man and he would ch chat about what I was doing and what he was doing.
• 27:44
  And I learned so much from him.
• 27:45
  He mentored you basically.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:48
  And, and also I now realize that in that sort of position, lunch
• 27:54
  is a really valuable tool lunch.
• 27:57
  And he was giving me one of his five lunches a week, so he was
• 28:01
  giving up a lot to mentor me.
• 28:04
  Rupert Isaacson: And you have now reminded me that, so, for
• 28:07
  readers, art History abroad, which is which is Nick's, company, which
• 28:11
  we're gonna go into in a minute.
• 28:13
  One of the things that everybody who's ever done anything connected
• 28:18
  with this incredible company, which.
• 28:20
  Has affected people's lives around the world.
• 28:23
  there, there are people in power around the world who know art history abroad
• 28:28
  and the art history abroad lunches.
• 28:31
  and the power of those lunches is very interesting that, this lunch
• 28:35
  thing to some degree begins there.
• 28:38
  Yeah.
• 28:39
  even to the point that, our, our dear mutual friend, Tom Parsons, who I
• 28:42
  hope to get on here as well, did you invent this or did he invent this?
• 28:46
  that, the cure for depression is to take a song with the word
• 28:49
  love in the title and replace the
• 28:52
  Nick Ross: word love with the word lunch.
• 28:53
  That's more Tom than That's that.
• 28:55
  I think that's Tom.
• 28:56
  Yeah.
• 28:57
  Rupert Isaacson: It's good.
• 28:57
  I tried it.
• 28:58
  It works.
• 28:58
  It works completely.
• 28:59
  Nick Ross: every time I feel about, can you gimme an example?
• 29:01
  Can
• 29:01
  Rupert Isaacson: you, yeah.
• 29:01
  I wanna know what lunch is.
• 29:04
  I want you to show me.
• 29:06
  I feel so passion about this, you know, that, brilliant.
• 29:09
  Yeah.
• 29:10
  to you bear leave in lunch after all.
• 29:14
  Nick Ross: Okay.
• 29:15
  Lunch.
• 29:15
  We do.
• 29:16
  Yeah.
• 29:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Lunch.
• 29:16
  Lunch We do.
• 29:17
  All you need is lunch.
• 29:19
  Yep.
• 29:19
  So there's something in innately cheerful about lunch.
• 29:22
  Is something innately optimistic about lunch.
• 29:24
  Yes.
• 29:25
  Yeah.
• 29:25
  But, and as we know, innately cheerful.
• 29:26
  Yeah.
• 29:27
  It, it's, it's where deals are made.
• 29:29
  because you're
• 29:29
  Nick Ross: not winding, you know, my, my dad's victims on this.
• 29:33
  Tell me, the, his, okay.
• 29:35
  Robert Woodward, another big figure in our lives said, lunch is not
• 29:39
  lunch unless you have a glass of wine.
• 29:42
  Anything if no glass of wine, anything less is a snack.
• 29:46
  Yes.
• 29:47
  Okay.
• 29:47
  And
• 29:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Robert Woodward again for readers, I wish we could
• 29:51
  have Robert Woodward on this show.
• 29:53
  because in terms of one of the great self actualizes of
• 29:57
  Western history, he stands out.
• 30:00
  those of us who knew him, and we'll, we'll talk about him a bit,
• 30:02
  hopefully, maybe you'll talk about him, Nick, cuz he, he's obviously
• 30:05
  very relevant to this story.
• 30:07
  But meanwhile, you are being, you are being mentored by this,
• 30:10
  very amazing, museum director.
• 30:12
  Even though you've, you're living in a bed seat, you're, you're taking some pictures.
• 30:16
  You're working as a, as a, as a volunteer.
• 30:19
  his name again is
• 30:20
  Nick Ross: Tim Clifford.
• 30:21
  Timothy Clifford.
• 30:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Tim.
• 30:22
  Tim Clifford.
• 30:23
  Did he, then, what did he go on to
• 30:24
  Nick Ross: do?
• 30:25
  he then became director of National Galleries of Scotland.
• 30:29
  And, and he was, he was kind of the, the, the best national, you know, he
• 30:34
  should, he, it would've been lovely if he got the V N A or the National
• 30:37
  Gallery, or the Met in New York.
• 30:40
  All, all of which, he was touted for at different times.
• 30:44
  but it is quite a tr controversial figure.
• 30:46
  and, and he's sort of, I, I always rather feel that he's the best
• 30:49
  museum director of a major, major national museum that we never had.
• 30:55
  Okay.
• 30:55
  Okay.
• 30:56
  I think he, he was, he was very, very good.
• 30:58
  and I was, you know, I was very lucky to spend time with him.
• 31:02
  And, for example, he would give me, so he would give me, display cases.
• 31:08
  He'd say, what's in, what do you find interesting in the collection?
• 31:11
  Cause I knew the basement, I knew all of the stuff that wasn't on display.
• 31:14
  Okay.
• 31:14
  He said, find me something by next week.
• 31:17
  That you want, you want to talk to me about something that's never been seen.
• 31:21
  And Dan, there, there was some something, you've probably seen them there.
• 31:26
  The, the bone ships, Napoleonic ships or sort of Nelson,
• 31:30
  Rupert Isaacson: made by the prisoners of war.
• 31:32
  Yeah.
• 31:33
  In the, the French Napoleonic prisoners of war in the internment campus in the uk.
• 31:38
  I have seen some of those, yes.
• 31:39
  Yeah.
• 31:39
  So
• 31:40
  Nick Ross: he's in makes detail.
• 31:41
  Yeah, he's, he said, I came back and I said, oh, I'm interested in this.
• 31:44
  And he said, great.
• 31:45
  Okay.
• 31:45
  I'll give you two display cases in the main gallery.
• 31:48
  but from, you know, six weeks from now.
• 31:51
  So, you know, and, and it's up to you.
• 31:54
  It's up to you to curate it, tell people about it, write about it, whatever.
• 31:58
  And he just gave me that, that is a problem.
• 32:00
  Rupert Isaacson: And so he started basically grooming
• 32:03
  you to become a curator.
• 32:05
  Why did he take such a shine to you?
• 32:06
  What, what, what was going, did, did he do this kind of with every intern that came.
• 32:12
  Nick Ross: No, no, I think, I think, you know, he was, he was just, no, I dunno.
• 32:16
  He, he, he, I knew he, I, I, the reason I kind of got in the door was
• 32:23
  that, he had worked a very old cousin of, of minus man called Trench Cox,
• 32:28
  after whom we named the scholarship.
• 32:32
  And, and, and, Trenchard was the museum director when
• 32:35
  Tim Clifford was a young man.
• 32:37
  And so when I subsequently wrote to Tim Clifford and said, I'm a cousin of
• 32:41
  Trench Cox, you may remember, that was, I think that possibly opened the door.
• 32:46
  I dunno,
• 32:47
  Rupert Isaacson: perhaps Bob perhaps to the initial say, okay, I'll give
• 32:50
  it, I'll give the kid a, a shot.
• 32:53
  But he didn't have to go the extra mile.
• 32:54
  And, and have you begin to curate things?
• 32:56
  Nick Ross: No.
• 32:57
  No.
• 32:58
  And by, and by that stage, one of the other jobs he gave me was
• 33:01
  to, to organize, The friends of the Manchester City Art Gallery.
• 33:05
  So this, this, this, you know, if you like a membership, I used to
• 33:08
  organize events for them, and I think he go, you know, they went well.
• 33:12
  So I think he, he quite liked me for that.
• 33:15
  Is that the story of the cheetahs?
• 33:17
  Oh yeah.
• 33:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us the story of the cheetah.
• 33:22
  Okay.
• 33:23
  Drum roll everybody.
• 33:24
  The story of
• 33:26
  Nick Ross: the cheetahs.
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:28
  Okay.
• 33:28
  So, okay.
• 33:29
  I've gotta be careful.
• 33:30
  So, so, so there are the, at Manchester, there's the, there's the
• 33:35
  very, there's now very famous Stubbs, 18th century painter called Stubbs.
• 33:39
  Who's for, who is, who's better known for, for painting horses.
• 33:45
  But Stubbs did at one point a, a picture of two cheetah and two, two Moors,
• 33:51
  two, handlers, dressed beautifully in turbines and, and, north African
• 33:56
  Rupert Isaacson: dress tame cheetah being used for coursing for hunting.
• 34:00
  Yes.
• 34:00
  As they used to be used in the courts of Asia and the Middle
• 34:04
  East, right?
• 34:05
  Yeah.
• 34:06
  Nick Ross: And sorting.
• 34:06
  Great picture.
• 34:07
  Sort of, eight 12 feet square, something like that.
• 34:11
  And Tim Clifford bought it.
• 34:13
  And, and it's one of the, it's, it's a, you know, and this was
• 34:16
  what he was really good at.
• 34:17
  He was really good at finding pictures that had otherwise missed people's
• 34:21
  attention and buying them in anyway, so they were, they raised the money,
• 34:25
  they bought this picture and they were gonna have the big opening.
• 34:29
  And Tim got him in those days what was probably the best caterers in Manchester.
• 34:35
  And these, these two fantastic caterers came in and they looked at the pictures
• 34:40
  and they, they looked at the contents of the bit and they said, boys, we have
• 34:44
  got to have, Ethiopians as the waiters.
• 34:48
  And I don't think anybody would get away with this now, I have to say.
• 34:52
  But, but there's another era.
• 34:54
  Yeah.
• 34:54
  Yeah.
• 34:55
  So there was caviar, there was, there were these, Ethiopian men, beared to the
• 35:00
  waist wearing great pantaloons and so on.
• 35:03
  And he hired two Cheetah.
• 35:06
  Of course he did.
• 35:07
  Of course he did.
• 35:08
  And, and it was, it was due on a, on a Monday night.
• 35:11
  And, and the la the Manchester is, is, is a, a fantastic area of the world.
• 35:17
  It's brilliant, amazing city.
• 35:19
  And, the, it was bang in the middle of the minors strike.
• 35:24
  So in English history, British history, it was at a point when there
• 35:28
  was such social division, fostered, let's say by, by Margaret Thatcher.
• 35:34
  And, and a clash of the unions and the clash of ideologies.
• 35:38
  And, if you can imagine the.
• 35:41
  The, the, the, the left wing counselors in the town
• 35:44
  Rupert Isaacson: hall across the Yeah, it was class war, basically.
• 35:46
  Full on
• 35:47
  Nick Ross: class war.
• 35:47
  Yeah.
• 35:48
  And, and it was like the battleship Kin, they, they stormed the building
• 35:52
  and, and I was upstairs, so people
• 35:54
  Rupert Isaacson: with pitchforks and and torches outside,
• 35:57
  Nick Ross: roaring in and rushing up the stairs where they were met.
• 36:00
  Halfway up the steps by all of the conservative counselors
• 36:03
  who were in the party.
• 36:05
  And there was this handbag swinging, you know, fy casts, lots of wrestling
• 36:10
  in that slightly sort of drunk, posh English way of doing it.
• 36:15
  And, falling
• 36:16
  Rupert Isaacson: down the stairs in Tweed jackets.
• 36:17
  Yeah.
• 36:17
  Nick Ross: Tugging of shirts, everything.
• 36:19
  Anyway, the battle continued upstairs and, and, lots of pushing and shoving.
• 36:23
  And then at one point, somebody fell backwards into a plinth holding a,
• 36:28
  sporting an amazing Barack sculpture.
• 36:33
  By a man called Algar Algar, who's a sort of pupil of benini.
• 36:37
  And this thing wobbled.
• 36:39
  And you probably know that sensation if, if you tap, you tap something and,
• 36:44
  and whatever is unsecured on top will wobble and, and, and you know that
• 36:48
  it's probably best not to interfere.
• 36:50
  And, and, and, you can only watch, you can
• 36:52
  Rupert Isaacson: only watch in Ara.
• 36:54
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 36:55
  And, and anyway, instead of settling back down, there came a dreadful
• 36:59
  point when all of us realized because the fight had stopped.
• 37:02
  There was silence in the room as we all watched this wobble
• 37:06
  and, and it started to go.
• 37:09
  And, and this was priceless.
• 37:12
  And into that space left, one of the waiters who, who like a diving
• 37:19
  superman, but without a shirt on, dived across the, a great.
• 37:25
  Saved this thing.
• 37:27
  Wow.
• 37:27
  Yeah, no, it was a great night.
• 37:29
  It was a great night.
• 37:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Eh, then did all, did the counselors that had tried to storm
• 37:32
  the party then accept a drink and Yeah, it all gone down after that and that
• 37:36
  Nick Ross: brought everybody,
• 37:37
  Rupert Isaacson: everyone was mates again.
• 37:38
  Yeah.
• 37:39
  No.
• 37:40
  And the cheaters, how did they far,
• 37:42
  Nick Ross: you know, they, they kind of, nobody kind of took
• 37:45
  any notice of that anymore.
• 37:46
  It was, the party had created its own drama.
• 37:51
  Ah.
• 37:51
  Rupert Isaacson: there are, there are parties.
• 37:53
  And parties.
• 37:53
  That was a party.
• 37:54
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 37:54
  That was a great party.
• 37:56
  Yeah.
• 37:56
  Rupert Isaacson: okay, so you, you are there at the, at the museum now.
• 38:01
  For how long?
• 38:01
  How long do you
• 38:02
  Nick Ross: stay there for?
• 38:03
  For a year and then, and then, but, but, but, but it did its thing you see,
• 38:07
  because I wanted to get to university and, and, and so off the back of that,
• 38:12
  that, that being at the museum, I got an interview at, at University of Visa
• 38:16
  Sanger to go and read History of Art.
• 38:19
  Okay.
• 38:20
  Okay.
• 38:20
  So they saw me for an interview, and then during the interview I didn't
• 38:24
  really have, you know, a lot to go on.
• 38:27
  Not in terms of, results or qualifications, but they, they, in
• 38:31
  those days, and I think they still do a bit bit now, as quite often
• 38:35
  you'll just show somebody photographs of artifacts or things and, and
• 38:38
  say, you know, tell me about it.
• 38:40
  And, and, and it's a good system and you're trying to register
• 38:43
  somebody's visual acuity.
• 38:45
  And, anyway, I was shown a photograph of a painting, that I didn't know
• 38:50
  what it was, wh when it was painted, and I didn't know who it was by.
• 38:54
  and I didn't even really know the subject, but I knew where it was.
• 38:57
  And, and so I told this to a man called Eric Furney who was interviewing me.
• 39:01
  I said, I.
• 39:02
  Can't tell you anything about it, but I'll tell you where it is.
• 39:05
  And he said, oh, right, where is it?
• 39:07
  And I said, oh, well, you go to Florence and you go to the biggest square in
• 39:10
  Florence and there's a, there's a building in there with a huge, great
• 39:13
  tower, I dunno what it's called.
• 39:15
  But anyway, you go in there and you go in through the courtyard and you go to the
• 39:18
  staircase, you go out three flights of stairs and there's a door on your left.
• 39:21
  You go in that door and you're in a so great hall, and you take a a right,
• 39:26
  and you go to the right backhand corner and there are some steps.
• 39:29
  You go up there and it's a small room and it's the first painting on the left.
• 39:33
  And you remember this from when you were seven years old?
• 39:36
  Yeah.
• 39:37
  And, because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a study for a guy called Francesco Mechi.
• 39:44
  And, and I was, and it is, and it's, it's hard to get into.
• 39:47
  And my dad got permission to get in there.
• 39:49
  And so we looked at, and, and now I know it's a, it's a story of Perus Ndro
• 39:55
  and, and it's the mythological reason why we had have red Coral, cuz Perus,
• 40:02
  when fighting Andromeda or fighting for Andromeda, is fighting a great dragon.
• 40:07
  And he whips out Medusa's head and to turn the dragon stone and he puts the
• 40:13
  head down, having turned the dragon stone and blood dribbles out of the neck, the
• 40:18
  severed neck of Medusa's head and dribbles into the sea and turns red and solidifies.
• 40:24
  And that's how he get, despite the fact that
• 40:25
  Rupert Isaacson: he's been carrying this stripping head
• 40:27
  around for quite a long time.
• 40:29
  It's stripped on other things, but
• 40:30
  Nick Ross: doesn't seem to have, yeah, he probably left all
• 40:33
  sorts of things, but, but that's
• 40:34
  Rupert Isaacson: why we have red poppies and red Yeah, red rocks.
• 40:36
  So
• 40:37
  Nick Ross: anything red?
• 40:37
  That's where we have it.
• 40:38
  Okay.
• 40:38
  Ah, well that's perfect.
• 40:39
  That's, yeah.
• 40:40
  Put it on somebody's pullover.
• 40:41
  But, but, but as a result of that, Furney said, well, if you can remember that,
• 40:44
  you can, you can, you can come here.
• 40:48
  Rupert Isaacson: And why did that picture stand out so much for you?
• 40:51
  Nick Ross: Oh, I think it was because my dad told me the story.
• 40:53
  I just happened to know.
• 40:56
  I couldn't remember any of the names, any of any, anything like that.
• 40:59
  But
• 40:59
  Rupert Isaacson: I couldn't remember.
• 41:00
  It wasn't, it wasn't the image so much as the story.
• 41:03
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 41:03
  And that was what my dad was really good at.
• 41:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I mean that, that's something which I'd
• 41:07
  say marks out what you've done.
• 41:10
  So again, just for listeners back in the day, I was lucky enough
• 41:15
  to, teach a couple of history, sessions on some of Nick's,
• 41:20
  epic journeys around healthy, the best.
• 41:23
  yes.
• 41:24
  I dunno how we survived.
• 41:25
  but what I can tell you is that the story surrounding each painting, each
• 41:31
  sculpture, each building, each quarter of the city that Nick and his people would
• 41:38
  take us to, would come magically alive in a way that you can't say to a God.
• 41:44
  You can't say teacher, you can't say.
• 41:47
  And it's not, there's anything wrong with those.
• 41:49
  And it's not that those can't be fascinating, but story and Mythos
• 41:56
  story as its own art form is normally, separated from visual arts.
• 42:04
  It's normally the, the, the, the power of the visual art has a story.
• 42:07
  They talk about the story.
• 42:08
  They say in this cigar painting, he's talking about this and the story is
• 42:11
  this, but really what we want you to look at is his amazing composition or
• 42:15
  his amazing use of color or this or this.
• 42:18
  and for that reason, I've often found art, his, the way people
• 42:21
  present art history a bit boring rather than the Game of Thrones.
• 42:25
  Who was boning who, who was killing who, who was torturing who and therefore why
• 42:30
  this street looks like it does, or, or why this painting hangs on that particular
• 42:34
  war because somebody did this, something outrageous and funny and cruel and
• 42:39
  bananas and whoa, that's interesting.
• 42:43
  And I think that you have to have a special.
• 42:46
  Talent for this.
• 42:47
  and you know, some people put this down on the printed form and other
• 42:54
  people tell it as oral history.
• 42:57
  And one of the things which I think really stands out with art history abroad
• 43:02
  is it's really the art of oral history, in our modern day in a way that I don't
• 43:08
  think I've seen outside of some of the indigenous areas that I've worked in,
• 43:12
  where they passed mythologies on that way.
• 43:15
  So, okay.
• 43:17
  You are, you are off to university.
• 43:19
  I meet you because, you know, you are the cousin of someone
• 43:23
  I was at university with.
• 43:25
  There's Oh, yes.
• 43:25
  Yeah.
• 43:25
  Marion.
• 43:26
  Marion, yeah.
• 43:27
  There's, there's drunkenness, there's hilarity, there's the usual university
• 43:31
  stuff when you come to visit Marion and you and my friend Tom become chums
• 43:36
  because of a mutual love of art history.
• 43:38
  He's doing art history as well.
• 43:40
  At what point?
• 43:42
  Do you become a hha art history abroad and start taking people and revolutionizing
• 43:50
  the idea of the grand tour?
• 43:53
  How do you go from that student to that person making your
• 43:57
  Nick Ross: lesson doing this?
• 43:59
  so I started doing a, I started doing a PhD after I
• 44:02
  finished, after I got my degree.
• 44:04
  And, , and I've just realized, Ruth, that, I've got, if, if you can, if,
• 44:11
  and I may stick out on the recording.
• 44:14
  There's the, there's the dog at my feet snoring and, right
• 44:19
  Rupert Isaacson: now cuz I can hear my dog through the, through the door.
• 44:22
  Right.
• 44:22
  Okay.
• 44:22
  Okay.
• 44:23
  And I'm hoping that's not coming into the , Well, it may, it
• 44:25
  Nick Ross: may, it may show,
• 44:26
  Rupert Isaacson: does that show the power of oral history?
• 44:28
  If we can send, if we can send your dog to sleep, then you
• 44:31
  know, you can tell a story.
• 44:33
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 44:33
  No, it's, it's a, it's a pug called Doug.
• 44:36
  And, and the thing is that he, he finds enough di difficult enough
• 44:40
  breathing anyway, but when he is asleep, it's really noisy.
• 44:44
  And if I put him out of the door, he'll make so much bloody
• 44:47
  noise trying to get back in.
• 44:48
  Yes.
• 44:48
  That it's actually easier just to put up with
• 44:50
  Rupert Isaacson: him.
• 44:50
  So, passively resistance, I think I, I sadly I can't hear him now.
• 44:54
  All the now all the, now all the, we can, can you do it, can you give us
• 44:57
  a quick impression before you go on
• 44:59
  Nick Ross: to just leave him to it?
• 45:00
  Listen, not coming through on my microphone.
• 45:04
  No, he's not.
• 45:06
  I know he is just stopped.
• 45:07
  You'll have to listen anyway.
• 45:09
  Can you give us
• 45:10
  Rupert Isaacson: just a quick, give us your version of it
• 45:12
  quickly before you go on.
• 45:14
  Nick Ross: Oh, God, I can't even, it's so it's, I haven't got a cold.
• 45:18
  If I hadn't cold, I, I could do it.
• 45:20
  It's right up here in the, in
• 45:23
  Rupert Isaacson: the sinus.
• 45:24
  Yeah.
• 45:25
  Anyway.
• 45:26
  Oh, well, we'll have to, we'll have to imagine it.
• 45:27
  Okay.
• 45:28
  So you, you get your degree, you get, now you're on to do your PhD.
• 45:32
  Yeah.
• 45:33
  Nick Ross: So, so do doing the PhD and, , and I'm going backwards
• 45:37
  and forwards to, to do research.
• 45:40
  What do you think your PhD on?
• 45:42
  It, well, officially it was on, an quarian studies in
• 45:45
  early 17th century Rome.
• 45:46
  Okay.
• 45:47
  But what it's, what it is really is it's about a man called Kapok.
• 45:53
  And, but the important thing is that he's the publisher of
• 45:56
  Galileo, Galileo's Treatises.
• 46:01
  I see.
• 46:01
  And that's a risky thing to be,
• 46:03
  Rupert Isaacson: that's a risky thing to you.
• 46:04
  That gets you in trouble with the inquisition.
• 46:06
  Nick Ross: I should think.
• 46:07
  Yeah, but he was also papa secretary to Urban the aids.
• 46:11
  Okay.
• 46:12
  So he is got a foot in, in both corners, and that makes
• 46:16
  him fundamentally interesting.
• 46:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 46:20
  And so when they tortured Galileo, did they not torture his publisher
• 46:25
  because his publisher could say, well, I don't, this doesn't necessarily
• 46:29
  reflect the views of the publisher.
• 46:32
  Disclaimer.
• 46:33
  Yeah.
• 46:33
  Nick Ross: That sort of thing.
• 46:34
  Yeah.
• 46:35
  Okay.
• 46:35
  That's why
• 46:36
  Rupert Isaacson: we have these disclaimers.
• 46:37
  Nick Ross: Got it.
• 46:38
  Yeah.
• 46:39
  And, and, oh, now I can hear your doc.
• 46:41
  Yeah, that was
• 46:44
  Rupert Isaacson: a good one, isn't it?
• 46:45
  It was a very good one.
• 46:45
  Yeah.
• 46:47
  Very good.
• 46:48
  Nick Ross: so, so anyway, so no, it's just that he, he, KA commissioned, people
• 46:53
  like Pusa and Salvador Ross and all sorts of really interesting artists and
• 46:58
  period to go off and draw antiquities.
• 47:02
  Okay.
• 47:03
  And, and geological specimens and flora, fauna, citrus
• 47:08
  Rupert Isaacson: fruit.
• 47:08
  So basically he, he's commissioning the anti ecclesiastical arts and sciences.
• 47:16
  Yes.
• 47:17
  And even to some degree the metaphysical ones, cuz we know Pusa, had his foot in
• 47:21
  the pagan, door as well to some degree in the sort of preason Rosa Crucian.
• 47:27
  Therefore, all of these things will get you locked up by
• 47:30
  the inquisition and worse.
• 47:32
  Yes.
• 47:32
  And you've got the, the popes, what is he
• 47:36
  Nick Ross: to the pope people secretary?
• 47:37
  Yeah, the papa secretary
• 47:39
  Rupert Isaacson: is commissioning these people.
• 47:41
  Yeah.
• 47:41
  Fascinating.
• 47:42
  Nick Ross: Okay.
• 47:43
  It's, it's like, I dunno what, what, what would it be
• 47:45
  in US terms, but certainly in.
• 47:47
  in the cabinet office, in, in UK terms, if somebody was in the cabinet office.
• 47:52
  Yeah.
• 47:52
  so your major, major, dip, yes.
• 47:55
  Rupert Isaacson: You'd be like, you'd be like a permanent secretary.
• 47:58
  Nick Ross: Yes.
• 47:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:59
  Exactly.
• 48:00
  That's it.
• 48:01
  Rupert Isaacson: okay, so you're doing, so doing, you're doing your
• 48:05
  PhD in, in 17th century Roman?
• 48:07
  Yes.
• 48:07
  Minister.
• 48:08
  Yes.
• 48:10
  And do you then go on and finish this PhD?
• 48:14
  Nick Ross: No.
• 48:15
  cause because, the, with with, somebody called Donna, it's a, it's
• 48:21
  very largely her, her, her achievements.
• 48:23
  So I helped her a bit, found a huge archive and, and
• 48:29
  when we made that, Public.
• 48:31
  It changed the, the, it changed the rule.
• 48:34
  It changed the game really because the, the whole idea of a PhD is to find
• 48:39
  something that nobody else knows about.
• 48:42
  Certainly for, for a British PhD, cuz it has to be a real
• 48:46
  contribution to knowledge.
• 48:48
  So, it's not, it's a, and and the trouble was that others, other
• 48:52
  academics, much greater figures than me were taking an interest in
• 48:56
  the same field and then publishing.
• 48:59
  And that what that would do is it would take a large body of my research
• 49:04
  and turn it not from being a chapter in my PhD to being a footnote.
• 49:09
  Okay.
• 49:09
  Because I, I would effectively be a footnote to somebody else's
• 49:14
  research as opposed to You were ga
• 49:17
  Rupert Isaacson: basically.
• 49:18
  Yeah.
• 49:19
  Yeah.
• 49:20
  Okay.
• 49:20
  And how, how far into your PhD was, was this?
• 49:23
  Three years.
• 49:24
  So again, that moment of despair probably.
• 49:28
  Nick Ross: Oh, yeah.
• 49:28
  But, but yes.
• 49:30
  And the thing is that if Donatella could read, could read Latin, like, reading
• 49:36
  the, the Times, you know, she, she, and she was a friend of me, I presume.
• 49:41
  Yeah.
• 49:41
  And, the most remarkable, remarkable mind.
• 49:44
  And so, and, and I, and I wasn't good enough.
• 49:47
  Quite simply, I, my Latin, my Italian wasn't good enough.
• 49:51
  And I would never, I would never, you know, it was pointed out to me by a
• 49:55
  very nice guy at the British Museum that in the nicest possible ways,
• 49:58
  he said, he said, Nick, you, you're not, you're just not good enough.
• 50:02
  You're not bright enough.
• 50:03
  and you will never keep up.
• 50:05
  And he was absolutely right.
• 50:07
  But there
• 50:07
  Rupert Isaacson: are lots of people out there getting PhDs
• 50:09
  who don't speak fluent Latin.
• 50:10
  So he, he, he meant just in this
• 50:12
  Nick Ross: field that, yeah, that what I needed was, was to be able
• 50:16
  to really pretty, pretty tricky documents really, really quickly.
• 50:21
  Okay.
• 50:21
  And I couldn't do it.
• 50:22
  Rupert Isaacson: So at that point, do you give up.
• 50:25
  Nick Ross: Sorry, at that point.
• 50:26
  At that point, do you give up?
• 50:28
  Yeah.
• 50:28
  Yeah.
• 50:29
  And but, but, but also by that stage, I'd been teaching for Aha
• 50:33
  for a couple of years because I was, I was doing my research and I
• 50:37
  needed money, so I taught for a hha.
• 50:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 50:40
  So how did you discover a HHA artist?
• 50:43
  Nick Ross: a friend mentioned it, I can't remember who mentioned it.
• 50:46
  And then put me in touch with Sarah Carum, who was the original founder with
• 50:50
  Robert Woodward, who he mentioned earlier.
• 50:52
  Yeah.
• 50:53
  And a guy called Rodney Portman.
• 50:55
  Okay.
• 50:56
  And, and the, the, there was another partner, but they, they kind of ran
• 51:00
  it and they ran one course a year.
• 51:03
  And, and I was teaching on that.
• 51:04
  And then I did some lecturing around schools, drumming up trade
• 51:10
  while doing my own research.
• 51:12
  And, and, and it was a sort of more or less balanced life and, and, And
• 51:17
  then I, I really began to enjoy being a generalist, as opposed to a specialist.
• 51:23
  And that's what the, and then when somebody said, actually, you're not clever
• 51:27
  enough to be a specialist, I thought, well, actually stuff being a specialist,
• 51:31
  I'm really enjoying being a generalist.
• 51:33
  I want to know about everything.
• 51:35
  That's
• 51:35
  Rupert Isaacson: a very positive, way to look at it.
• 51:37
  In retrospect, at the time, did you wanna chuck yourself off a bridge or think shit?
• 51:41
  You know, I'm here I am again, starting again.
• 51:44
  Here I am three years into a PhD.
• 51:47
  I've spent all this money, I've, you know, I, I, I've got to, you know,
• 51:51
  and now I've got to be a generalist.
• 51:54
  What is this?
• 51:54
  You know, I mean, there must be,
• 51:56
  Nick Ross: okay, so I'm sure in that little period after lunch at about three
• 52:00
  o'clock, In most people's lives, there is a point at which you think to yourself,
• 52:06
  why, why on earth am I doing this?
• 52:08
  Yeah.
• 52:08
  And and, and and I was having lots of three o'clock moments
• 52:12
  thinking, what am I, what am I doing?
• 52:15
  Sitting in the North Library at the British Museum trying to catalog drawings.
• 52:18
  So I, there aren't really very interesting.
• 52:21
  Some of them are fascinating, but quite a lot of the time it's rather hard work.
• 52:24
  Yeah.
• 52:25
  And, and, and I thought nobody, you know, I'm not going to, I'm
• 52:28
  not, I'm not gonna solve cancer.
• 52:30
  I'm not going to, you know, I, me and about six other people are really
• 52:35
  interested in this and that's it.
• 52:37
  Right.
• 52:37
  And it's not gonna change the world.
• 52:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 52:40
  I'm not gonna bring major joy to millions of people this way.
• 52:44
  Nick Ross: No, no.
• 52:45
  Or, or solve anything.
• 52:46
  So, so do it.
• 52:48
  Sounds dramatic to give it up after three years.
• 52:50
  But, but I really enjoyed the three years.
• 52:53
  I learned a hell of a lot, I learned a lot about how to
• 52:55
  research and things like that.
• 52:57
  There's lots of pluses.
• 52:58
  I just didn't come away with a doctorate.
• 53:01
  Rupert Isaacson: So at what point do you flip from there to
• 53:05
  full-time and then to running?
• 53:08
  Aha.
• 53:09
  Nick Ross: So, so then, then, Robert and Sarah Kagan asked me
• 53:13
  if I'd be a director at a hha.
• 53:16
  And I said, great.
• 53:17
  And I put a little bit of money in and, then quite soon we went bust and I don't
• 53:22
  think it was me, but it, there was, there was a snap procession, I don't
• 53:26
  know if you remember early nineties.
• 53:29
  Yeah.
• 53:29
  And Norman Lamont and Yes, I do remember that.
• 53:32
  Or that whole business about,
• 53:34
  Rupert Isaacson: that's right.
• 53:34
  When we all came out of university and there were no jobs.
• 53:36
  Yeah, yeah,
• 53:37
  Nick Ross: yeah, yeah.
• 53:37
  Exactly.
• 53:38
  Yeah.
• 53:39
  And, and that happened.
• 53:42
  So a HHA ran outta students.
• 53:45
  Got it.
• 53:45
  We were effectively bused.
• 53:47
  And the only way out of it was for Sarah and me to go uns salaried for
• 53:52
  a year, or, you know, in perpetuity.
• 53:55
  We had no idea how long it would last.
• 53:58
  And the, and quite by chance, a publishing house called Studio Editions
• 54:03
  asked if I'd write a book on Canto.
• 54:06
  And I wrote back and I said, well, I dunno very much about him, but, and they
• 54:09
  said, we actually, we don't really care.
• 54:11
  All we need is 32,000 words in six weeks.
• 54:14
  Could you do it?
• 54:15
  And and I did, and it was about the only thing I've ever done on time.
• 54:18
  And, they were so impressed.
• 54:20
  They gave me lots of other things to write, which I couldn't fit in.
• 54:24
  So, Sarah wrote some of them and then Tom Parsons wrote others.
• 54:29
  and that kept you afloat and that, and that sort of, we turned
• 54:32
  it into this writing machine.
• 54:34
  And, We weren't working closely together, but, but I, I think between
• 54:38
  the three or four of us, we produced, I dunno, 8, 9, 10 books, in a year.
• 54:44
  Rupert Isaacson: So the universe came in just when you were thinking, okay,
• 54:47
  here's this un unlikely way to make a living, which is taking people on the
• 54:52
  17th Century Grand tour and opening their brains and minds and spirits
• 54:59
  up to the arts and the metaphysics of the Renaissance and classical period.
• 55:05
  And then everything goes bust.
• 55:08
  And then the universe says, well, but how about becoming a writing
• 55:11
  machine for this same thing out of the blue in the middle of a recession?
• 55:15
  That's very interesting.
• 55:16
  Oh, and by the way, here's so much of this work that you can't even cope with
• 55:20
  it, that you're gonna have to give it to all your mates to keep them afloat too.
• 55:23
  Yeah.
• 55:23
  Nick Ross: And then we are all get, and then we Yeah.
• 55:25
  No, the the, it's a good odd universe.
• 55:27
  Yeah,
• 55:28
  Rupert Isaacson: but I mean, if, if that's not, if that's not providence
• 55:30
  at work, I don't know what is.
• 55:31
  And if that's not.
• 55:33
  Fortune favoring the brave, I dunno what is, because, again, just back to
• 55:36
  that thing, the listeners, you know, that's the whole point really of this,
• 55:40
  of this podcast is, those of us who were brought up like me, with lots
• 55:45
  of different passions and interests, constantly being told you're never
• 55:48
  gonna make a living doing that.
• 55:49
  And that's all I've ever done is making a living doing those things.
• 55:54
  I love these stories when it, it's those things where you say, out of
• 55:57
  the blue came this series of book contracts because I mean, getting a
• 56:03
  book contract, we know getting a book contract is a dash difficult thing to do.
• 56:08
  It's not an easy thing.
• 56:09
  You don't just go around getting book contracts.
• 56:12
  I'm a, I've been a writer for decades and I don't just go around getting book pump
• 56:16
  contracts every time I have to get one.
• 56:18
  I have to get one from scratch.
• 56:19
  It's a whole process.
• 56:20
  I might not get one.
• 56:21
  Not every idea that I have gets accepted, even though I've written bestsellers.
• 56:24
  It's just not like that.
• 56:25
  It's, you know, it's a business like any other.
• 56:28
  And, So for that to drop out of Providence, like
• 56:32
  that is interesting to me.
• 56:35
  So clearly you guys had made some sort of leap of faith.
• 56:38
  So in the meantime, you continue to run the business
• 56:42
  while then writing these books.
• 56:44
  Is that right?
• 56:44
  And yeah.
• 56:45
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 56:45
  And then, and then at, at some point we try and sell the business,
• 56:50
  but it, it's got no assets.
• 56:52
  It's got, it's only got goodwill.
• 56:54
  And so the accountants said, look, there's enough room for one of you
• 56:58
  to do it, but, but it will, you know, so, so Sarah who had been at the
• 57:03
  beginning, was offered and she, she said that she didn't want to run it.
• 57:07
  And I said, well, if nobody else wants to run it, I'll give it a go.
• 57:11
  I had no, no children, no girlfriend, no wife, no responsibilities.
• 57:16
  So I thought, well, let's, let's just give it a try.
• 57:19
  I seem to
• 57:20
  Rupert Isaacson: remember actually this jogs a memory that you were
• 57:22
  sleeping in a corridor at this point.
• 57:24
  Nick Ross: Yeah, no, I, I then, I then moved to live with my
• 57:27
  brother in Devon in the corridor.
• 57:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that's right.
• 57:30
  I remember the corridor.
• 57:31
  Nick Ross: Yep.
• 57:31
  Yeah.
• 57:32
  And the, the, the desk a few places.
• 57:34
  Yeah.
• 57:35
  And the desk was, by a sheet pen in one of his bands.
• 57:39
  So quite often if I was on the blower on the phone, you know, you had the,
• 57:43
  the, the, the barring of sheep in the background and stuff like that.
• 57:47
  Not, not unlike dog now.
• 57:48
  Yeah.
• 57:49
  Really,
• 57:49
  Rupert Isaacson: really, it's bucolic.
• 57:51
  you could sort of a po sound like, aesthetic to the, to the thing.
• 57:55
  Yeah.
• 57:55
  Just a little church bell in the distance perhaps.
• 57:58
  at what point did it start working
• 58:00
  Nick Ross: for you?
• 58:03
  Ooh.
• 58:03
  Rupert Isaacson: and how, how did you get it to start working?
• 58:06
  Nick Ross: Oh, well, I think, I think, we diversified.
• 58:09
  It started looking at schools, doing school strips.
• 58:12
  To be honest, we, I didn't have any money for advertising or marketing.
• 58:17
  So the, the only thing,
• 58:19
  Rupert Isaacson: and this is all pre-social media, right?
• 58:21
  Oh yeah,
• 58:21
  Nick Ross: yeah.
• 58:23
  And and, so we thought, we thought the only thing to do is to, or
• 58:26
  I thought, just run everything.
• 58:28
  So I even one trip, I remember a family, it was a trip that was
• 58:33
  advertised to go to, Florence, and there was only one couple who signed up.
• 58:38
  And, so I said, I rang them about two weeks before and I said, look, I'm
• 58:43
  really sorry, but it's only you and me.
• 58:45
  I'll, I'll give you your money back, you know, it's fine.
• 58:48
  And they said, no, no, we're sharing a bed.
• 58:50
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 58:52
  Anyway, they said, that's fine, that's great.
• 58:54
  In fact, we'd much prefer it that way anyway, it turned out
• 58:57
  that they were, really very significant, manufacturers in Europe.
• 59:03
  and, from a huge family.
• 59:05
  And, and I have quite simply lost count of the hun, how many hundreds of
• 59:10
  thousands of pounds of trade over the last 30 years we've had through them.
• 59:15
  I, in fact, one of their grandchildren or great grandchildren
• 59:21
  I took on a trip only last week.
• 59:23
  so, so, again, you know, universe, whatever you like, you know, just,
• 59:28
  just plays into your hands sometimes.
• 59:30
  And, I didn't wanna let them down.
• 59:32
  and they didn't, and they wanted to do something exclusive, and they got it.
• 59:36
  And, and yet it turned into a, a really big story in the end.
• 59:41
  And I think your, your, your overall point is that history is a series of paradox.
• 59:46
  is, is, the, the, the, the, the, the, the trouble with life is that we tend
• 59:51
  to try and make things neat and tidy.
• 59:55
  And, and also the problem with text is that, and that's why I haven't, I've
• 59:59
  haven't written anything for a long time, is that text is inevitably sequential.
• 1:00:05
  Music fortunately is less sequential.
• 1:00:09
  Our thoughts are certainly not sequential.
• 1:00:12
  We tend to think of several things all at the same time.
• 1:00:15
  And, and we feel several things all at the same time.
• 1:00:21
  And the problem with text is that it means that everything has to be laid
• 1:00:24
  out in an orderly way, but, but actually the way life works, the way we operate
• 1:00:30
  isn't in straight lines and doesn't one and one thing doesn't follow another.
• 1:00:35
  It's a series of threads jumbled up in a, in a sort of rather, delicious mess.
• 1:00:42
  And that's half the fun.
• 1:00:43
  That's, that's the point.
• 1:00:45
  and, and I don't think a usual academic training of arranging everything into
• 1:00:51
  logical lines is necessarily very helpful.
• 1:00:54
  It's just a, an effective way of teaching.
• 1:00:58
  But actually, if you are going to be in the position of managing, events
• 1:01:03
  around you or people, or marshaling, others to try and go forward, the
• 1:01:08
  best way to do it is in a mess.
• 1:01:11
  Because that's the way we all think to, to
• 1:01:14
  Rupert Isaacson: find your order through
• 1:01:15
  Nick Ross: chaos.
• 1:01:16
  Yes.
• 1:01:17
  So when, if I give somebody responsibility, I don't, I want, I want,
• 1:01:21
  I, I'm quite happy with it being messy.
• 1:01:25
  Do you see what I mean?
• 1:01:25
  I, because, because that is a sort of a reflection of
• 1:01:29
  the way we all behave anyway.
• 1:01:32
  I don't want somebody, because it's imagination comes out of mess outta chaos.
• 1:01:38
  Primal chaos doesn't come outta,
• 1:01:41
  Rupert Isaacson: you know, I'm just thinking, you know.
• 1:01:44
  Here you are.
• 1:01:45
  why would one want to send one's young people out on a journey apart
• 1:01:53
  from the educational aspect of it through, for example, your company.
• 1:01:59
  What life lessons are they going to learn?
• 1:02:01
  But I, I think that that's exactly it.
• 1:02:03
  And I think that that's what people were aiming for 300 years ago on the
• 1:02:09
  grand tour too, was to understand the complexities of life, understand
• 1:02:13
  the ambivalences of life, understand that things are not black and white.
• 1:02:17
  Understand that things are paradoxical and how to become comfortable with discomfort
• 1:02:23
  and can you find ordering chaos?
• 1:02:27
  Can you find, entertaining chaos when there's too much order?
• 1:02:31
  Can you dance that dance in between?
• 1:02:33
  And that dance of life is quality of life and the difference between
• 1:02:37
  mere survival and thriving.
• 1:02:39
  Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  and that's what producers culture, that's what producers are.
• 1:02:42
  That's what, you know, when you, when you said, well, you know, I had to give up
• 1:02:45
  the PhD, but what's the point of being a specialist in something that isn't going
• 1:02:52
  to really positively affect the lives of.
• 1:02:56
  Many, but to go out and get those sorts of life lessons.
• 1:02:59
  And I know that some of the people who have gone on your trips over
• 1:03:04
  the years have ended up in public office and as you know, captains
• 1:03:09
  of industry and that sort of thing.
• 1:03:11
  And I would want those people cuz they affect my life to have some
• 1:03:17
  sort of humanistic perspective.
• 1:03:20
  and this idea of the humanities is something which you go
• 1:03:24
  and study academically.
• 1:03:26
  I don't think you can, you, you, you can say, well that piece of art is called
• 1:03:32
  that anymore than you can learn history by saying Battle of cause in 1415.
• 1:03:38
  Well, okay, but why was it and what did it mean?
• 1:03:44
  Was it just some sort of trade skirmish or did it actually affect.
• 1:03:50
  You know, the way we think about things right now is that why we've
• 1:03:53
  remembered it and we didn't remember the one that happened the week
• 1:03:55
  before, which, which got forgotten.
• 1:03:58
  Someone has to open one's eyes to this.
• 1:04:01
  Nick Ross: Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah.
• 1:04:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, Nick It seems to me, from my experience with AHA,
• 1:04:06
  that I experienced a great sense of freedom when I attended the course, and
• 1:04:15
  I Heard this from the other people on the course, and I've been hearing this
• 1:04:21
  ever since, and it's counterintuitive.
• 1:04:23
  You wouldn't have thought it's paradoxical again.
• 1:04:26
  We talked about paradox, that going to see art and experiencing
• 1:04:31
  art in this way gives one freedom.
• 1:04:37
  You'd think freedom is walking in the mountains or flying an airplane or riding
• 1:04:41
  a horse or something, but yet there seems to be a freedom that gets unlocked.
• 1:04:51
  In the human imagination, which is our greatest freedom through the
• 1:04:58
  physical journeys, through the art.
• 1:05:02
  And I just wondered if you could speak to that a little bit.
• 1:05:05
  What have you noticed?
• 1:05:06
  What have you, how has this happened for you?
• 1:05:10
  And then how have you, what made you then think, Oh yeah, I could, I could,
• 1:05:14
  I could give this to other people.
• 1:05:15
  Because it's, it's not something that people would normally
• 1:05:19
  think of as a route to freedom.
• 1:05:24
  Nick Ross: Interesting.
• 1:05:24
  Okay.
• 1:05:25
  So, so yes if you, if you take, take the point that, you know, what we do
• 1:05:32
  at Art History Abroad usually happens after people have finished one big
• 1:05:36
  section of their formal education.
• 1:05:39
  So they're 18 or 19, all of which is about doing the intellectual
• 1:05:44
  gymnastics, in order to pole vault through examinations to matriculate
• 1:05:51
  and, and get onto university.
• 1:05:55
  We have an opportunity which is to run a course which is essentially
• 1:06:00
  educational, but it has no reading list, it has no essays, it has no marking,
• 1:06:06
  it has no examination at the end of it.
• 1:06:08
  It is learning quite simply for the love of learning.
• 1:06:11
  Now, of course, I can't, in a way, I can't really say that on a website because
• 1:06:16
  people would never buy our courses.
• 1:06:18
  Because it's, you know, that sounds a little bit watery, let's say.
• 1:06:23
  But to me, it's a very real thing.
• 1:06:25
  And I think it is for anybody who's experienced teaching in that way and
• 1:06:29
  being at the receiving end of it.
• 1:06:31
  And the reason I think it's so is that the very, the very point about being
• 1:06:36
  on site is an all round experience.
• 1:06:41
  You're getting there.
• 1:06:43
  You're seeing things in life size as opposed to on a tiny image on a phone.
• 1:06:48
  There are the smells, there's the sound, there's the stepping around other
• 1:06:52
  people who may be praying in a church trying to do things to avoid mass.
• 1:06:57
  And all of those things.
• 1:06:58
  So you are super aware of everybody else and your
• 1:07:02
  environment when you're doing this.
• 1:07:05
  And then you get in front of the thing that you've, the, the, the,
• 1:07:09
  the, the quest you get there.
• 1:07:12
  And at that point, it's can be thrilling, especially if it's a really well known
• 1:07:17
  thing that people have heard about.
• 1:07:19
  And, and so to finally get there to the end of it is, as I say, it's thrilling.
• 1:07:25
  It's really exciting.
• 1:07:26
  People get really excited, burst into tears every so often, but
• 1:07:30
  oddly enough, people cry more in Rome than anywhere else.
• 1:07:33
  But, but that, that that, that I think is because it's a uniquely emotional
• 1:07:38
  place for so many reasons, but.
• 1:07:40
  But it's partly quest and you get there and it's thrilling.
• 1:07:45
  It's really exciting to be in that space.
• 1:07:48
  And then if as a teaching experience and learning experience, it's not
• 1:07:54
  all about the delivery of didactic information of being told the dates
• 1:07:59
  of when it was done and all of that.
• 1:08:00
  All of that can be fed in.
• 1:08:03
  at different points.
• 1:08:04
  But it's not as if you start there.
• 1:08:06
  It's a case of, well, where's the best place to be looking at this from?
• 1:08:10
  How, actually, how big it is?
• 1:08:11
  It says here that it should be so big.
• 1:08:13
  Is it that big?
• 1:08:14
  Or, you know, pacing out a building looking at it from different angles.
• 1:08:18
  If it's a picture that, let's say, should be seen from a devotional kneeling point.
• 1:08:25
  And so often that's the case that you know, if I know there's a, there's
• 1:08:29
  a wonderful painting by Pontormo in Santa Felicità in Florence, and
• 1:08:33
  it's, and it's one of the weirdest.
• 1:08:36
  paintings in the 16th century in Italy and people either love it or hate it.
• 1:08:40
  It's the great marmite painting because it has really lurid colors and and we
• 1:08:47
  do I think I think Humans and society go through phases of favoring certain
• 1:08:54
  colors point and and actually funnily enough this Pontormo Really offended
• 1:08:59
  people because it's lilacs and it's light pinks and, and in the 80s,
• 1:09:04
  early 80s, nobody liked those colors.
• 1:09:06
  Everything was primary colors, and it was really interesting.
• 1:09:10
  Gladioli as a flower became the, you know, the sort of demonic plant.
• 1:09:18
  You know, there were things that people wouldn't put in their
• 1:09:21
  garden because of the color.
• 1:09:24
  Sorry, I'm off on one there.
• 1:09:25
  But, but, but the Pontomo's deposition usually puts people off.
• 1:09:30
  It's in a private chapel to a family called Capone.
• 1:09:34
  And so it's behind a grill.
• 1:09:36
  And just every so often the sacristan is there and, and they'll let you
• 1:09:42
  go in and they'll unlock it for you.
• 1:09:43
  And it's great because then you can kneel down in front of the altar.
• 1:09:48
  And at that point the painting suddenly makes sense, the composition
• 1:09:52
  of it and all of the rest.
• 1:09:54
  And it's essentially about the absolute tragedy of somebody
• 1:09:58
  so young and so marvelous as Christ dying and being killed.
• 1:10:06
  And they're literally being put on your head and you're you know, given to
• 1:10:13
  you the way the painting is composed, and it's all in the colors as well.
• 1:10:19
  And, and what you're doing is you're kneeling on the plate that is lifted to
• 1:10:25
  get to the crypt underneath the chapel where all of your ancestors are buried.
• 1:10:31
  So Christ in his death is being passed to you and you're thinking this is
• 1:10:38
  awful How much did he suffer to make a fundamental point about love to all of
• 1:10:46
  the rest of us and and And I'm remembering his death, and I'm thinking about the
• 1:10:53
  death of my dearly beloved on this spot.
• 1:10:56
  So the moment you get into that place, everything makes sense.
• 1:11:00
  And it's a, it's, it's a spiritual, emotional, visual, auditory the sense
• 1:11:11
  that you smell the, you know, you can hear, you can, you can smell the whiff
• 1:11:16
  of, incense from the morning's mass, all of those things come together.
• 1:11:22
  And you say liberating.
• 1:11:24
  Well, if what it's doing is just it is an explosion of realization,
• 1:11:30
  emotion and sensory invasion, which is just overwhelming.
• 1:11:38
  It's, it's, it's absolutely wonderful.
• 1:11:42
  And so that's why Information with, with things, you know, that after
• 1:11:48
  all of that, once, once people said, Oh my God, now I get it.
• 1:11:51
  I really understand this.
• 1:11:53
  Then you can say, Oh, and by the way, it was, you know, 1525 and people
• 1:11:57
  call this Manor Est and, and there's things that are wrong with that term.
• 1:12:01
  So you can then talk about language and how we academically or, or, or
• 1:12:07
  culturally have organized things and the rights and wrongs of that.
• 1:12:11
  But the main thing is to get across the emotional, the
• 1:12:14
  emotional aspects of it first.
• 1:12:16
  And you, and there are loads of places that you can really do that.
• 1:12:20
  Of course, museums and galleries are, are a problem because it's
• 1:12:24
  one thing after the next on a wall.
• 1:12:26
  And, and it's, and you end up having to describe where it was in order to
• 1:12:31
  try and get, to summon the muse in order to get people to that place.
• 1:12:38
  But the great advantage of things, seeing things on site.
• 1:12:41
  Is that you don't have to summon that muse, which depends on one's
• 1:12:45
  ability to describe it's there and it's evident and it's real.
• 1:12:52
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting you talk about quest.
• 1:12:56
  And it seems that, you know, we know that the hero's journey, the
• 1:13:01
  universal story is always quest.
• 1:13:05
  And we know that we are the speaking ape.
• 1:13:08
  They say we're the thinking ape, Homo sapiens sapiens, but everything
• 1:13:11
  with the brain thinks, but we're the only ones with the larynx.
• 1:13:15
  We speak, we create poetry, we have language in that way.
• 1:13:20
  And healing and story, you know, the shamanic healing process, you
• 1:13:26
  go to the shaman with your story.
• 1:13:30
  They go into the spirit world, get a series of instructions,
• 1:13:34
  it's effectively a story.
• 1:13:35
  Come back, give you a story, and then a new story is created.
• 1:13:38
  But it's the same when you go to the doctor.
• 1:13:40
  He's always my leg.
• 1:13:41
  It's a story.
• 1:13:42
  The doctor delves into their knowledge.
• 1:13:44
  Oh, leg stuff comes out with another story.
• 1:13:46
  Creates a new story for your leg.
• 1:13:48
  Hunting and gathering is who we are.
• 1:13:52
  And story is a way of organizing that.
• 1:13:56
  And it seems that really hearing you speak, you're, this is
• 1:14:02
  the again, back to paradox.
• 1:14:04
  You think something as heavily cultural as art and architecture would be so far
• 1:14:10
  removed from hunting and gathering that it would be artificial in the brain and
• 1:14:16
  an artificial experience and therefore of limited use to Say our neuroscience,
• 1:14:22
  which would develop through our hunter gatherer ancestry, but hearing you speak
• 1:14:28
  about that aspect of quest and then the sensual experience, not just the smell
• 1:14:36
  of the incense and the kneeling and the looking up at the thing, but also, as you
• 1:14:39
  say, to get there, you had to get there, you have to hunt, you have to arrive, you
• 1:14:44
  have to take a journey, which is a story, it just in order to get to that place.
• 1:14:49
  And then, of course, you've got to do it in, you're doing it in a group.
• 1:14:52
  As you would when you hunt or gather, and now you're hunting and gathering
• 1:14:56
  experience and information together and sharing this, what from a neuroscience
• 1:15:02
  point of view immediately springs into my mind there is Oh, axons and dendrites.
• 1:15:07
  So, the axons being the main stems and branches of the brain cells that are
• 1:15:15
  reaching out to try and make synaptic connections with other brain cells that
• 1:15:19
  we do this all the time until we die.
• 1:15:21
  Otherwise our brains atrophy and then the dendrites being the twigs that.
• 1:15:25
  Or like the root system that then makes contact with the other root systems
• 1:15:29
  and then myelination the fusing of those neural pathways happens that this
• 1:15:36
  seems to be how our brains are wired.
• 1:15:38
  And then you talked about question and people bursting into tears.
• 1:15:42
  Then I'm thinking, Oh, that's dopamine.
• 1:15:45
  And that's the endorphins kicking in of having made the physical
• 1:15:48
  journey to get there of the exercise.
• 1:15:50
  And then the serotonin of the group connection.
• 1:15:54
  And the shared experience and the oxytocin of the feeling
• 1:16:00
  of emotional shared support.
• 1:16:02
  All of those happy hormones, those are the four happy ones coming
• 1:16:05
  together in that one moment.
• 1:16:07
  What could in a strange way be more natural for the brain, but
• 1:16:13
  one wouldn't necessarily know that.
• 1:16:15
  When one looks at the words art history together one thing I have
• 1:16:20
  a real, I have a question for you.
• 1:16:21
  When we were young, 5, 000 years ago, when mastodon still bellowed to
• 1:16:27
  mastodon across the primeval swamp.
• 1:16:29
  You and I were coming out of you, Nick and me were coming out of a
• 1:16:34
  world that was pre cell phones.
• 1:16:36
  And to some degree, pre computers.
• 1:16:39
  When we were at university, we didn't use them.
• 1:16:41
  We wrote everything longhand and we and.
• 1:16:44
  The people that were on say gap years going around and having these experiences
• 1:16:49
  that you're talking about traveling and exploring were coming with brains
• 1:16:54
  that were more naturally prepared.
• 1:16:59
  This seems to me to have changed.
• 1:17:02
  Have you noticed a difference in the type of brain that's coming
• 1:17:08
  in front of you on these trips?
• 1:17:10
  And if so, how are those brains impacted by the experiences that?
• 1:17:19
  your courses provide?
• 1:17:24
  Nick Ross: Okay.
• 1:17:25
  So, so how, how did they arrive?
• 1:17:27
  I, I
• 1:17:28
  okay.
• 1:17:28
  So on the, on the one, on the one hand, it's, it's very easy to take a pop at
• 1:17:32
  the internet and, and the digital age.
• 1:17:35
  And, and I'm, I'm, I'm guilty of probably thinking like as many, many
• 1:17:41
  people in older people might, which is that, you know, the, the, the last
• 1:17:45
  generation the upcoming generation, they're, you know, they're, they're
• 1:17:48
  somehow different and something is lost from the experience before.
• 1:17:56
  And on the one hand, I think that it is marvelous that you can find information
• 1:18:00
  really quickly, you know, all of those that, you know, that capacity to have
• 1:18:06
  an idea to have a question a query, and then find an answer almost immediately.
• 1:18:12
  Is is brilliant.
• 1:18:13
  It's and that is a really good building block.
• 1:18:16
  You know, that's that's that's really exciting.
• 1:18:20
  Or, you know how to do something, you know, you know, you
• 1:18:23
  introduce a student to an idea.
• 1:18:26
  Or a book and they can go off and find it.
• 1:18:28
  They can go off and find that film that you think, oh, that's really relevant.
• 1:18:31
  You'll really enjoy this.
• 1:18:33
  And you don't have to wait two months to go and see it.
• 1:18:34
  It's there.
• 1:18:35
  You can watch it this evening.
• 1:18:37
  So all of those sorts of things are really big and positive and good.
• 1:18:41
  The only, the only thing that I find Is the sort of impatience that, that
• 1:18:48
  because you can get things very, very quickly, you assume everything
• 1:18:52
  will arrive very, very quickly.
• 1:18:54
  And I find myself becoming unbelievably impatient and and therefore sort
• 1:19:00
  of rather irritated with myself.
• 1:19:02
  And, and I think the I think the, and also the collective experience.
• 1:19:07
  You sort of touched on that a moment ago, of, of traveling and, and being together
• 1:19:13
  and sort of, I do remember actually once our good friend Tom caught me doing
• 1:19:18
  this in Verona once, I deliberately made ourselves late for a train because I
• 1:19:23
  felt that the course, the group, weren't working very well as a, as a whole.
• 1:19:28
  That's interesting.
• 1:19:28
  And and And we were in Verona.
• 1:19:31
  We didn't have bags with us, so it was just a day trip, but, but I suddenly said,
• 1:19:35
  oh my God, we've got seven minutes to be on a train, and we've got three quarters
• 1:19:39
  of a kilometer to run to get to the train.
• 1:19:41
  And and we, we all got there, everybody helping each other, you know, and it
• 1:19:45
  was you know, pulling each other on the train as the train then pulled out and
• 1:19:49
  stuff, and then we all collapsed in the carriage hot, sweaty, and exhausted.
• 1:19:53
  But...
• 1:19:54
  All of a sudden, a group of people, and Tom, I remember him
• 1:19:57
  looking at me and saying, you, you, that was deliberate, wasn't it?
• 1:20:00
  And, and I, I, you know, to this day, I'm not sure if it was just me being
• 1:20:05
  half witted, or, or whether there was a little bit of me that wanted
• 1:20:08
  to create that sense of, of for all.
• 1:20:12
  Okay, so, so the, the, the business of collectively doing
• 1:20:16
  things together is, has gone.
• 1:20:18
  I think it's interesting that, that personal sports have really taken off.
• 1:20:24
  In the sense that, you know, when I was younger, it was all
• 1:20:27
  team sports, everything was about being in part of a team.
• 1:20:29
  And now it's about actually a lot of sports, and the most popular
• 1:20:34
  and taken up sports, I think in Britain at the moment is jiu jitsu.
• 1:20:39
  And more people are taking up that than than than other team sports.
• 1:20:44
  because they're all individuals as opposed to groups of people taking up sport.
• 1:20:48
  Anyway, again, I, I slightly digress, but, but if I'm looking for differences
• 1:20:53
  and therefore things that, the, the very nature of AHA and traveling
• 1:21:00
  and having quite a lot of autonomy.
• 1:21:03
  So I'm really keen that when we set up a course, we can do all sorts of things.
• 1:21:08
  To make it wonderful and lay out a program of great events and things like that.
• 1:21:14
  But I'm really, really it's very important to me that the tutors can, can wake up
• 1:21:19
  one morning and say, do you know what?
• 1:21:20
  It's an absolutely fantastic day out there.
• 1:21:22
  I think we should do this.
• 1:21:24
  Or, you know, we can go and do that.
• 1:21:25
  Or why don't we go and watch football?
• 1:21:27
  Or that there's all sorts of things that, that, that make the trip.
• 1:21:31
  Both an adventure for them, but crucially that the tour, the course
• 1:21:37
  is an individual course, an individual adventure for those students.
• 1:21:42
  And it's not the same as the last one.
• 1:21:44
  It's their course.
• 1:21:45
  It was their history.
• 1:21:47
  And it was their experience, not a a usual one.
• 1:21:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:21:53
  I've got a question that will follow, but go ahead.
• 1:21:56
  Nick Ross: And then, and then, then in terms of, of.
• 1:22:01
  I often talk to students at the beginning of the course about the
• 1:22:08
  senses and using up the senses.
• 1:22:12
  I know just a moment ago I was talking about the Pontormo deposition
• 1:22:16
  and I possibly sounded like somebody who either understands
• 1:22:19
  or believes in the resurrection.
• 1:22:23
  I don't, I don't really, there's lots of things that I like and approve
• 1:22:28
  of, but, but I don't quite get the resurrection but I suppose that's
• 1:22:32
  life's great passage, but, but what I am keen on in a spiritual sense, if
• 1:22:40
  I've got a spiritual center, it's that I really want to use up the things that
• 1:22:44
  I was given, and those are my senses.
• 1:22:48
  When I, I don't know to what extent being paralyzed when I was a teenager
• 1:22:53
  from the neck down had any, any, any input on this, but I am absolutely
• 1:22:58
  determined to use up all my senses.
• 1:23:01
  And I've been lucky enough to do what I've done, whereby my visual,
• 1:23:05
  visual acuity is really pretty acute.
• 1:23:08
  And, and I noticed things, I see things, I, I've got a great.
• 1:23:13
  maturity in my sight, if you like, of recognition and things.
• 1:23:18
  I'm a bit pissed off about my hearing.
• 1:23:20
  I, you know, I can hear all right, but I, I haven't explored sound enough.
• 1:23:25
  And I really want to explore sound.
• 1:23:27
  I was quite worried about my nose.
• 1:23:29
  a while ago.
• 1:23:29
  I used to smoke.
• 1:23:30
  I loved smoking.
• 1:23:31
  God, I love smoking.
• 1:23:32
  But, but I stopped smoking.
• 1:23:34
  And and so I started to scent and smell much better.
• 1:23:38
  Not me personally, but the act of smelling.
• 1:23:41
  So, so I, I actually spent some time going to perfumiers
• 1:23:47
  and asking, how do you smell?
• 1:23:48
  What do you do?
• 1:23:49
  How do you register?
• 1:23:50
  What actually happens in the nose?
• 1:23:52
  And now I'm, I'm I'm a real sniff stop snob.
• 1:23:55
  I go, you know, I can spot a synthetic smell really easily.
• 1:24:00
  I'm really aware of what I'm walking past.
• 1:24:03
  Touch, feeling, I lost all of that, but, but what I've got,
• 1:24:06
  I've really enjoyed exercising.
• 1:24:08
  Taste, I've loved food all the way along, but what I want to do is get
• 1:24:13
  to my deathbed and I'll be pissed off if I get run over by a bus and I
• 1:24:17
  haven't finished using up all of my senses, because that is, to be honest,
• 1:24:21
  the only way I can say thank you.
• 1:24:24
  If I've truly.
• 1:24:25
  wholly used myself up.
• 1:24:28
  I've loved as much as I possibly can.
• 1:24:31
  I've appreciated all of those things.
• 1:24:33
  I've appreciated what my, my connection to the rest of the world, if I can
• 1:24:37
  do all of that completely at that point, rather like a finished plate at
• 1:24:42
  supper, I can say, you know, thank you.
• 1:24:45
  That's, that's it.
• 1:24:46
  And I'm out, but I've really enjoyed it and I've made the absolute most of it.
• 1:24:52
  Because I've been lucky enough to be able to do that.
• 1:24:54
  And so I have, I, I tend to use Biros, pens, pencils, I
• 1:24:58
  tend to use them up completely.
• 1:25:01
  I'm really irritated if I lose a pen, which is only half finished.
• 1:25:05
  My pencils, I've got two or three, I've, I've I gave one to Cosmo the other day.
• 1:25:10
  My pencils become unbelievably small until I can't use them anymore, and then I
• 1:25:14
  actually tend to keep them because they're memories, and it's slightly pathetic.
• 1:25:18
  But anyway, the, the, the point is to use oneself up.
• 1:25:23
  And if I can, if we can, as a, as a group, impart that sense of, of, of appreciation,
• 1:25:34
  understanding, use of the senses to our students, not only is it liberating
• 1:25:40
  in a way that I was kind of describing earlier on with the Pontormo, but it's
• 1:25:45
  kind of an antidote to the digital world.
• 1:25:47
  Or it's a supplement to the digital world.
• 1:25:50
  You know, there is no way that people should and could live going
• 1:25:54
  forward without the digital world.
• 1:25:56
  It's here.
• 1:25:57
  But what we've got to do is to kind of learn how to do both.
• 1:26:00
  And if, if it can be a journey in one's own development as well.
• 1:26:07
  And, and as a, to a point, trying to find some purpose in all of it, using oneself
• 1:26:13
  up isn't a bad one, as far as I can see.
• 1:26:16
  Rupert Isaacson: It seems to me that what you're talking about
• 1:26:18
  is teaching people how to live.
• 1:26:21
  Because to, to explore, to learn, for the love of learning, to encourage
• 1:26:28
  the love of learning that's one part.
• 1:26:33
  And so often, in our culture, we celebrate the intellectual.
• 1:26:39
  Or we celebrate the spiritual and because of the church and whatever
• 1:26:44
  that we inherited, that morality, we denigrate the senses, we denigrate
• 1:26:49
  the sensual, even though we spend our entire lives trying to gratify our
• 1:26:53
  senses, but we feel guilty about it.
• 1:26:55
  And we're told we should feel guilty about it.
• 1:26:57
  And it's this really interesting point that you're making about the senses
• 1:27:00
  that as someone who was deprived of your senses for a while in a way that
• 1:27:05
  I think few people have experienced to then really see their value.
• 1:27:09
  And then.
• 1:27:10
  That there is no separation, of course, how could there be,
• 1:27:14
  between your spirit and your mind, your intellect and your senses.
• 1:27:19
  And to make that separation perhaps also induces a type of dementia
• 1:27:28
  that's pre digital that some of our ancestors might have felt.
• 1:27:31
  So, just stay with me here.
• 1:27:32
  So, for example, I have a great friend who we did a A podcast with Jane Pike a while
• 1:27:38
  ago who works very much with the nervous system and she delved for years and
• 1:27:42
  years, like decades into deep, deep yoga and was a yogini to the point that she's
• 1:27:48
  been flown all over the world, giving courses and so on and studied in India.
• 1:27:52
  And she said the problem with it for her in the end was that there was
• 1:27:56
  too much in the philosophy of it that was about using this practice through
• 1:28:01
  the body to leave the body behind.
• 1:28:04
  And only go to the spiritual as if the body was something bad or wrong in
• 1:28:10
  just the same way that, you know, we've done that with Christianity and so on.
• 1:28:14
  But really, that's just seems to be a way of controlling people.
• 1:28:16
  And she said that it seemed at a certain point that what then happened
• 1:28:19
  was her body began to shut down.
• 1:28:22
  And she said a lot of people she knew had this experience that they took the yoga
• 1:28:26
  to an extreme where instead of serving the body, it began to work against it
• 1:28:31
  for interesting reasons that people could go back to that which surprised me, but
• 1:28:35
  she said, no, this actually does happen.
• 1:28:37
  You're talking about the senses that as being part of the
• 1:28:40
  whole and having been deprived.
• 1:28:42
  You know, we think about sensory deprivation, you know, if you go
• 1:28:46
  into a room where you can't see, or you deliberately put on a blindfold
• 1:28:50
  so that you're, you can hear better or, and people are now seeing the
• 1:28:55
  value of doing that sort of thing.
• 1:28:59
  I've noticed that on your.
• 1:29:01
  Courses, you're absolutely right.
• 1:29:03
  You expose people to taste, you expose people to smell, you expose people to the
• 1:29:08
  touch of the stone, you and not just the touch of the stone on your hand, but the
• 1:29:12
  touch of the stone on your knees or to lie in a position on the stone to look
• 1:29:16
  up at a certain painting or something that all of that is going to again,
• 1:29:21
  bring us back to the sort of hunter gatherer route of pure functionality
• 1:29:26
  within the human brain and body.
• 1:29:27
  Which is sort of our original blueprint, whether it's done by going to a place to
• 1:29:32
  look at a piece of art and architecture, whether it's by going through a forest
• 1:29:35
  to look at a deer the same process seems to happen in the brain and where
• 1:29:40
  I was asking about a digital dementia.
• 1:29:42
  That seems to be the catchphrase now.
• 1:29:46
  You're talking about the senses made me realize that perhaps
• 1:29:49
  there's been a dementia of trying to divorce people from the senses
• 1:29:54
  that's caused such unhappiness and.
• 1:29:57
  Suffering in people that it's made us do things like invent the Spanish
• 1:30:01
  Inquisition and you know, the Holocaust.
• 1:30:03
  A lot of that seems to come out of the suppression of passion and the
• 1:30:09
  suppression of the census to the point that people become so angry
• 1:30:13
  that you can then control that anger.
• 1:30:14
  And I'm going to make you go and commit these atrocities.
• 1:30:17
  You could argue that that's to some degree what's going on
• 1:30:20
  in Putin's Russia right now.
• 1:30:22
  But I hadn't thought about it like that until you made those points.
• 1:30:25
  So, when I asked you, have you noticed a digital dementia in the new generation
• 1:30:31
  coming, when you said, ah, well, maybe a bit, but there's all these other
• 1:30:36
  good things about the digital age, I hadn't, until you began to talk about
• 1:30:40
  the sensors, I hadn't put together that perhaps there was another dementia,
• 1:30:45
  which we've suffered from for a much longer period of time, pre digital.
• 1:30:51
  And so
• 1:30:56
  as you were talking to it made me think the word came up in my mind pilgrimage.
• 1:31:02
  Is that really what you're doing?
• 1:31:04
  Nick Ross: Yeah, I think it's really it's that's fascinating.
• 1:31:06
  Okay, so, so, Occasionally when, when people hear about what we do
• 1:31:12
  with teenagers, they, they say, ah, it sounds like a modern grand tour.
• 1:31:16
  You know, the 18th century idea of largely Englishmen and, and quite a
• 1:31:22
  lot of Frenchmen going off on, and Germans as well, and Goethe did it as,
• 1:31:26
  you know, you go off and you travel and, and quite often the quest was to
• 1:31:29
  Italy because of Rome and Roman empire.
• 1:31:33
  And, the church and so on.
• 1:31:36
  And and so, yes, that was one sort of pilgrimage.
• 1:31:39
  And, and interestingly, it's done at a stage where young
• 1:31:43
  people have become independent.
• 1:31:45
  They're physically and emotionally independent enough and sexually
• 1:31:48
  mature and all of those sorts of things to be able to go off.
• 1:31:52
  And, and and explore for themselves.
• 1:31:55
  The same happens with Aborigines, I, I think.
• 1:31:59
  I remember reading Bruce Chatwin's songlines and being very, very impressed
• 1:32:04
  by that as a, in my twenties, and thinking at the time that's, you know, what he's
• 1:32:10
  kind of describing is not unlike the modern gap year or, or, or pilgrimage.
• 1:32:16
  In the Middle Ages and, and it's about setting off on a journey and experiencing
• 1:32:21
  all sorts of things as you go along, and, and in a way, having an opportunity
• 1:32:25
  to, to try oneself out, because after all, until you're about 18, in the
• 1:32:30
  main, you're told what to do, what to eat, where to sleep, and all of those
• 1:32:34
  sorts of things, and all of a sudden, you can actually go and just work it
• 1:32:38
  out yourself, and, and and it's both an opportunity, but it's also a test of
• 1:32:42
  oneself, you know, can I actually do this?
• 1:32:45
  And I do remember feeling that very strongly when I was 18, leaving,
• 1:32:49
  leaving home and going to live in London, I was determined not to use
• 1:32:54
  connections or any other friends.
• 1:32:56
  So, you know, to find my own flat, to find my own job, to find my own.
• 1:33:01
  stuff just to find out whether actually as a person, I could work.
• 1:33:06
  I do work, you know, not just work in a functional sense, but operate
• 1:33:11
  socially and all of the rest.
• 1:33:13
  And so, yeah, it's a pilgrimage that I, I think is part of the same thing, you
• 1:33:18
  know, gap years, walkabout, Spartans going off and testing themselves, you
• 1:33:24
  know, young, young boys and all of that.
• 1:33:27
  I think it's part of the same thing, and yeah, and it's a, it's a pretty important
• 1:33:31
  part of development for one and all.
• 1:33:34
  Rupert Isaacson: The rite of passage.
• 1:33:36
  Nick Ross: Yeah, yes.
• 1:33:38
  I suppose rite of passage comes with...
• 1:33:41
  with some tremendous challenge, you know, the, you know, the, you
• 1:33:46
  know, mortal challenge that, that you overcome some mortal difficulty.
• 1:33:50
  I don't think one needs to overcome a mortal difficulty.
• 1:33:55
  I do see it as a more sort of positive thing of learning to appreciate yourself
• 1:34:03
  and your senses, you know, there's the whole thing of love oneself.
• 1:34:08
  I've never completely fallen for that idea, but, but learning to
• 1:34:14
  use what you've got in an external way is, is is a really good thing.
• 1:34:20
  And that's, and that's a very good connector to other
• 1:34:22
  people and so on and so forth.
• 1:34:23
  So, so the idea of mortal challenge, I personally would leave to one side.
• 1:34:29
  But, but setting out to try oneself out socially and physically and sensually
• 1:34:39
  is, is a really good antidote to formal education and, and particularly as
• 1:34:47
  one sets out into, into a world or university where you hopefully will
• 1:34:54
  be invited to think for yourself.
• 1:34:57
  and create for yourself.
• 1:34:59
  And I think that's possibly what makes successful people within
• 1:35:04
  within the workplace or for the, if they, if they don't want to work
• 1:35:10
  for anybody else, certainly to have the creative confidence to have a,
• 1:35:16
  to have a go and do your own thing.
• 1:35:18
  One's own thing.
• 1:35:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Do one's own thing.
• 1:35:22
  I mean, that's live free, ride free.
• 1:35:25
  Where do you want?
• 1:35:27
  AHA to go.
• 1:35:27
  What's next for you?
• 1:35:31
  Nick Ross: What's next?
• 1:35:32
  It, it was, you know, Art History Abroad as a, as a title, you know, the one thing
• 1:35:38
  is that I quite enjoy is that what you start off with as a plan quite often
• 1:35:42
  doesn't end up being the way it goes.
• 1:35:44
  And, and the more fun thing is just to kind of let it go where people
• 1:35:49
  and, and, and circumstances lead.
• 1:35:52
  And, and like all, like any organisation, it's so much a part of.
• 1:35:57
  the people who were there with you and those you meet along
• 1:36:00
  the way, and changing ideas.
• 1:36:03
  And so, so Art History Abroad, it was quite specifically not identified
• 1:36:07
  either to me or to Italy and And so, it can go anywhere, and I would
• 1:36:14
  quite like it to go everywhere.
• 1:36:17
  I would quite like to see it not only in Europe, but also in India,
• 1:36:23
  Japan and, and in South America.
• 1:36:26
  In fact, anywhere, anywhere.
• 1:36:29
  You know, I think, I think it's applicable elsewhere.
• 1:36:34
  So that's one thing, geographic and, and an intellectual spread.
• 1:36:39
  Art also, I think, as a term, you know, what is art?
• 1:36:42
  That's always been in the background.
• 1:36:45
  I think, I think art itself is a, is a floppy term and I quite
• 1:36:49
  enjoy it for being loose like that.
• 1:36:53
  I'd also quite like to change the parameters or encourage the parameters
• 1:36:57
  of what we do and what we think about and the way we approach things.
• 1:37:01
  I know, I remember, It's probably about 10 12 years ago, you and I talking about
• 1:37:08
  the nature of, of, of what we talked together in Florence, and, and that
• 1:37:17
  it's, it's, it's, it's all kinetic and auditory and aural all at the same time.
• 1:37:24
  Now, what we were fumbling with then, is what you've now developed
• 1:37:31
  into a much more articulate description of axons and dendrites.
• 1:37:40
  Dendrites, yeah.
• 1:37:41
  Dendrites.
• 1:37:42
  And, and I'm interested in developing that because that, that chimes with my
• 1:37:50
  belief structure about using oneself up.
• 1:37:54
  It chimes with.
• 1:37:57
  the idea of, of the nature of education being about liberation
• 1:38:03
  as opposed to structure.
• 1:38:05
  And stricture.
• 1:38:07
  So, so that is a development.
• 1:38:10
  I think would be really interesting.
• 1:38:12
  So both geographic, but also because I don't know about you, but I find teaching
• 1:38:18
  and enormously emotional experience.
• 1:38:21
  And and for that reason, actually, I very, very rarely ever go and watch.
• 1:38:26
  Any of our tutors simply because, you know, I know standard practice is go
• 1:38:31
  and review people and check that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.
• 1:38:35
  In my view, I don't need to do that.
• 1:38:37
  I don't want to do that.
• 1:38:38
  The way I prefer to do it is to teach the same students maybe
• 1:38:41
  the next day so I can look at.
• 1:38:45
  their development or I can look at the, the the teaching capacity of
• 1:38:50
  the tutor I'm interested in by their reflection, by looking at them directly.
• 1:38:56
  After all, the only important thing is what ends up in the student.
• 1:39:00
  So look at the student, don't look at the person who's doing the teaching.
• 1:39:03
  Apart from anything else, it's embarrassing watching people teach,
• 1:39:06
  or I, you know, I know that I slightly become somebody else when
• 1:39:09
  I'm teaching, and when I'm off on one, I am altogether some somebody else.
• 1:39:16
  And, and so I'd rather not pry on anybody's personality in
• 1:39:21
  that way, I'd rather just let them be what they want to be.
• 1:39:25
  So the, the, the, the, the experience of teaching I think is hugely emotional.
• 1:39:31
  I think, you know, obviously it's different if you're in a classroom.
• 1:39:35
  And I think I, I am lost in admiration for.
• 1:39:38
  people who are teaching within schools, where there are people who
• 1:39:41
  don't want necessarily to be there, they're tied to a desk or they're in
• 1:39:46
  an environment that's unsympathetic or whatever, that is hugely difficult.
• 1:39:50
  And, and before somebody can actually deliver meaningful
• 1:39:56
  knowledge and inspiration.
• 1:39:57
  They've got to get over all of these hurdles.
• 1:40:00
  I'm in an amazingly, and with my tutors and the people who work for AHA,
• 1:40:05
  amazingly privileged position to be able to walk out of the door and walk
• 1:40:10
  somewhere else and say, Hey, look at this.
• 1:40:12
  This is wonderful.
• 1:40:14
  And it's privileged in economically and, and physically.
• 1:40:18
  And so, so I, you know, my, my, I, I frame my view within that, you
• 1:40:27
  know, teaching is a very big word.
• 1:40:29
  It refers to a lot of people in a lot of different circumstances.
• 1:40:32
  But the bit that we're able to do is, is hugely emotional, liberating for both the
• 1:40:39
  person teaching and, and the recipient.
• 1:40:42
  And I think I've already forgotten the actual question that you asked me.
• 1:40:46
  Well,
• 1:40:46
  Rupert Isaacson: you, you actually just answered it, emotional liberation.
• 1:40:49
  I mean, and, and emotional liberation, because, you know,
• 1:40:54
  the intellect serves the emotions, the emotion serves the intellect.
• 1:40:57
  To take that to as wide a context as possible, it's funny you use
• 1:41:00
  the word abroad, because you know the word abroad semantically simply
• 1:41:03
  means out and about, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean overseas.
• 1:41:08
  And just so listeners know not everything that AHA does is overseas,
• 1:41:13
  a lot of what you do is also local.
• 1:41:16
  To go abroad can mean to walk around one's village.
• 1:41:19
  One is abroad, you know, the other word I love is the old Norman
• 1:41:23
  hunting expression of enlarged.
• 1:41:25
  The stag is enlarged, you know, he's got out, he's left the ticket is
• 1:41:30
  all it means, but it's, it's, he's broken cover, but it's interesting
• 1:41:34
  how words take on certain meanings.
• 1:41:35
  And one of the things I've, some of the best experiences I've had with you
• 1:41:40
  as a teacher, I think have been when you've shown me something really local.
• 1:41:43
  The other day we were, I was lucky enough to be in for the listeners
• 1:41:46
  in, in Nick's Village with my kids.
• 1:41:48
  And there happens to be a very, very beautiful piece of medieval architecture
• 1:41:53
  in there, which isn't the church.
• 1:41:56
  It's the thing next to the church, which is this half timbered building.
• 1:42:01
  Okay, one sees a lot of half timbered buildings, they're always charming,
• 1:42:03
  they always have a nice aesthetic.
• 1:42:05
  But this particular one had a set of carvings in the In the
• 1:42:09
  half timbers of a detail that I've never seen before anywhere.
• 1:42:13
  And I live in a part of Germany that's famous for half timbered villages.
• 1:42:17
  And I didn't see anything like it.
• 1:42:19
  And that was 2 minutes away.
• 1:42:21
  It, that feeling what I'd love to do is.
• 1:42:26
  encourage people always to look for what's close as well as
• 1:42:31
  what's far when one is questing.
• 1:42:34
  You also mentioned something else which I'd like to come back to, but
• 1:42:38
  I want to do this on another podcast.
• 1:42:39
  I want to have you back.
• 1:42:40
  Would you come back?
• 1:42:42
  I've got some questions you mentioned resurrection, you mentioned self
• 1:42:47
  love, and you mentioned pilgrimage.
• 1:42:51
  Pilgrimage got a bit of a thumbs up from you.
• 1:42:54
  Resurrection and self love got question marks from you.
• 1:42:59
  I'd like to...
• 1:43:01
  explore those three concepts self love, resurrection, redemption,
• 1:43:06
  resurrection, and pilgrimage in a wider context looking at it from the
• 1:43:14
  brain point of view, as well as from the physical point of view, would you
• 1:43:17
  be willing to come on and do that?
• 1:43:22
  Yeah, okay.
• 1:43:22
  Because I think logically that's where this conversation would go.
• 1:43:27
  And I think many of us who would listen to something like this
• 1:43:31
  would have those questions.
• 1:43:33
  So what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite the listeners
• 1:43:34
  to send in their questions.
• 1:43:36
  What are your questions to Nick about what he does?
• 1:43:40
  What are your questions about the nature that he's talked about of the censors?
• 1:43:44
  of how the senses, the intellect, and spirituality come together.
• 1:43:48
  What do you think about self love?
• 1:43:49
  What do you think about pilgrimage?
• 1:43:51
  What do you think about resurrection?
• 1:43:55
  Even if those are just questions, especially if those are just questions.
• 1:43:58
  And then let's kick those questions around on round two with Nick.
• 1:44:04
  Before we go, Nick, how do people find you?
• 1:44:07
  How do people book a course with you?
• 1:44:09
  How do people go walk around London with you, let alone Italy?
• 1:44:12
  Or Suffolk?
• 1:44:14
  Or India?
• 1:44:15
  or can they also have conversations with you online?
• 1:44:20
  What are the mechanisms by which people can contact AHA and you?
• 1:44:25
  Nick Ross: Well, the key one, I suppose, is the website is arthistoryabroad.
• 1:44:29
  com.
• 1:44:31
  But that will describe some of the things we do.
• 1:44:39
  But to be honest, it's that whole thing of keeping things simple and direct,
• 1:44:46
  which doesn't necessarily reflect The complexity of other things that we do.
• 1:44:52
  So, there's that, but, but I'll ultimately write either to info at
• 1:44:57
  Art History abroad or better still.
• 1:44:58
  Write to nick@arthistoryabroad.com.
• 1:45:01
  Rupert Isaacson: nick@arthistoryabroad.com.
• 1:45:04
  Nick Ross: Yeah, and that's Nick, NICK.
• 1:45:06
  Okay.
• 1:45:07
  Nick at arthistoryabroad.
• 1:45:09
  com and that, and that'll come through to me.
• 1:45:11
  And, and particularly if anybody is doing such a thing to just reference Rupert on,
• 1:45:18
  on, on the email and then, and then, and then I will leap into an action that is
• 1:45:23
  unfamiliar to many people who write to me.
• 1:45:27
  Anyway, so, so no, I enjoyed hearing from people.
• 1:45:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:45:31
  I, I would, I would encourage Listeners write to Nick, ask
• 1:45:36
  him stuff, font of information.
• 1:45:40
  I have learned so much from you, Nick, over the years
• 1:45:42
  that we've known each other.
• 1:45:44
  Time with you is always time beautifully spent, satisfyingly spent.
• 1:45:51
  The, the, the, the, the, the pleasure of discovery I always
• 1:45:57
  have when I'm in your company is.
• 1:46:01
  Something I cherish.
• 1:46:02
  So thank you so much for sharing that in a wider context here on the podcast and I
• 1:46:09
  look forward to having you back for more.
• 1:46:11
  Thank
• 1:46:12
  Nick Ross: you.
• 1:46:12
  Yeah, happily come back.
• 1:46:13
  Thank you
• 1:46:13
  Rupert Isaacson: very much.
• 1:46:15
  All right.
• 1:46:15
  Till next time.
• 1:46:16
  Bye for now.
• 1:46:17
  Bye bye.
• 1:46:18
  Thank you for joining us.
• 1:46:19
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 1:46:21
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 1:46:26
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 1:46:32
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 1:46:37
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 1:46:39
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 1:46:43
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 1:46:46
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 1:46:50
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 1:46:53
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 1:46:58
  See you on the next show.
• 1:46:59
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.