THE Writer, Giancarlo Neri’s controversial Hampstead Heath sculpture, (pictured) seemed finally to have broken its writer’s block on Tuesday when a giant book and pencil appeared on top of it.
My mole in the bushes tells me mischievous artists crept onto the Heath in the dead of night and scaled the 25ft high table and chair to install the carved wood notebook and pencil.
Those who saw the additions to the critically-lauded sculpture from the top of Parliament Hill say they appeared to have been exquisitely crafted.
But they had only a short moment in the public eye before Corporation of London staff removed them that same evening.
And mystery surrounds their fate, after they were rumoured to have been damaged in the move.
Corporation staff yesterday could not track down the Goliath-sized writing implements, prompting speculation as to just what the giant writer had written.
Wags suggested the book’s title may have been ‘Jack, The Beanstalk and Me: The Real Story’ or ‘Honey I Blew Up The Kafka’.
Earlier this summer pranksters fitted a giant ‘Reserved’ sign to the tabletop, where teenagers have been spotted making love and builders have stopped for lunch in the sunshine.
Other large sculptures have been the target of similar stunts; King’s Cross-based Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North was only finally judged a public success when devoted Newcastle United fans draped it in their team’s famous black and white shirt.
But, it seems, the Corporation of London likes its art committee-approved.

Italian job’s a good ’un at Everyman

From left: actor Robert Powell, wife Babs, Antonio Carluccio and Anthony Minghella

THE Everyman in Hampstead is a wonderful cinema, but I wonder what regulars will make of the Italian Cinema season which restaurateur Antonio Carluccio and director Anthony Minghella launched at a glitzy gala last night (Wednesday).
Antonio, who chose the films with his old pal Anthony over dinner earlier this summer, told me: “In Italy, people are much more involved in the film – they get up, walk out, come back and respond to what they see in the film; they are a part of the performance.
“In my youth we would arrive half way through the film and watch the end first, then stay to watch the beginning.”
I can’t see it catching on over here.
But if anyone in Hampstead would have approved of a little trouble-making, it would have probably been the late, great Peter Cook.
Actor Robert Powell, a close friend of the comedian, told me he’d been enjoying Michael Palin’s Radio 4 tribute to Cook on the way to the cinema. His wife, Babs, was sporting a handbag with a photo of his face on it.
She said: “Lin, Peter’s widow gave it to me last year and when I got it home I found a bottle of scotch in it.
“I thought: ‘Cheers, Peter’ and everywhere I take the bag people compliment me on it.”

Fond memories of ‘Prof Peace’

AS the world grieves the loss of scientist and Nobel peace prize-winner Professor Joseph Rotblat, one woman is also slowly coming to terms with his death. Sally Milne, (pictured) 65, Professor Rotblat’s secretary for the last three years, first became connected with him 13 years ago when her son Tom got a temping job at the HQ of Pugwash – an international anti-nuclear body – in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.
“Tom and Prof just hit it off,” she told me.
“He ended up working as his secretary and used to rope me in a bit to help. When he decided to move on, Prof asked me if I’d step in and I agreed.
“The work was very varied. I was always drawn to international affairs and he lectured around the world. He was just an absolutely inspirational person. You worked on a different level when you worked with him. It was hard work but he was always very considerate.”
What does she miss most about Prof?
“I miss everything about him, especially his enthusiasm,” she said. “I miss his humanity most of all. He would always end his speeches with a quote from the Russell-Einstein manifesto of 1955. It said: Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”

Mum’s the word

FIFTY years after she fled Nazi Germany at the age of 16, former midwife Esther Jones, now 82, who lost both her parents in the Holocaust, decided it was finally time to record her experiences for posterity.
But when two publishers turned down the book, it was daughter Susan, a music teacher from South Hill Park in South End Green, Hampstead, who took it upon herself to publish her mother’s memoirs – typing the manuscript and designing the layout herself.
The result is Sunday’s Child, A diary from a girlhood in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 – launched at a private party organised by the Lotus Foundation in Hampstead on Sunday.
For both mother and daughter, the book has proved to be a healing experience. “I wept buckets when I was reading it,” Susan told me. “I am so proud that my mother could transform her experience into such beautiful writing. It is not just a painful agonised Holocaust story – it is full of love and positive feeling.”
For Esther, who supported herself through work as a pantry maid in a nursing home in East Finchley when she first arrived in England, the book seemed to write itself.
“My memories were always with me,” she told me. “I felt better once I’d written it. I used to make up stories for my grandchildren when they asked my about my childhood and then one day I thought it was time to write it all down.”