Quiet and full of free time, it's the most organised Christmas ever

The run up to Christmas is, usually, crazed. There's that inevitable surge of work before the holidays, paired with the round of unmissable work related parties and the need to see all your friends before they disappear home for the holidays.

Being off on sick leave transforms things. No mania, no business. Quiet. Enormous stretches of sleep. (The side effects from the first chemo treatment have mostly been exhaustion. Far worse has been a bad cold with chesty cough that settled in on the 12th and is still hanging in there.) I am more organised on the holiday front than at any time in my life.

Decorations were up around the house by the 1st. I bought my last Christmas present on the 15th. I baked eight varieties of Christmas cookies: pignoli (an Italian macaroon-like disk

topped with pine nuts); cherry biscotti; chocolate chip; sugar-free chocolate chip; white

chocolate and macadamia nut; raisin bars

(using the recipe from the Party Pastry Shop in Chesterfield, Mo.); gingerbread; rolled vanilla shaped by cookie cutters. The

last two formed the basis of a cookie decorating evening with my godson Sacha and his siblings, before we settled into a more grown up dinner with his parents.

The cookies formed half of our home-crafted Christmas gifts. The other half was alcoholic. Inspired by those infused rums we tasted in Mauritius, Piers and I decided to play around with infused alcohols. We made apple and cinnamon flavoured vodka, vanilla rum, bramble gin (infused with blackberries, blueberries, damsons and a bit of rhubarb) and Tuscan vodka (infused with sun-dried tomatoes, basil and a bit of lemon).

I also messed about with candle making, but couldn't get those to a quality I was satisfied with giving away. There lies a continuing craft project for the winter. A project, by the way, that already makes me appreciate why good scented candles are so expensive. Unlike the alcohol, the DIY option here is no big cost saver.

Having reached these levels of domestic goddess-dom, I turned to my computer and did something I've been meaning to for years: a detailed Christmas card spreadsheet. Track what's come in, what's gone out. Track annually, eliminating sending cards to anyone from whom you haven't received in two consecutive years despite your mailing to them. Sound theory, though I think I've finally gotten around to this level of organisation as the tradition dies. 68 sent, 27 received. I'll continue the traditional approach for one more year before I consider transitioning yet another aspect of life online.

Christmas Eve brought lows and highs. My hair started coming out in great handfuls. Exactly between two and three weeks after the first treatment, as the books said. Fortunately, Ferrara hair is so thick that we can loose a lot of it before showing any impact, getting me to midnight mass looking normal. Bef0re church, however, we went for a nice meal.

Finding a restaurant open on Christmas Eve is a challenge. My top two options near church were closed, by next booked. We ended up at the Thomas Cubitt, an upscale gastropub I'd enjoyed at a business dinner a couple of years ago. (See 9.12.08) It's a classic English menu, with presentation and fine touches taken up several notches. Highlights were my scallop and black pudding starter and our mains: pork belly for Piers and a succulent venison for me. Piers Mum reported her salmon Wellington good but a bit overcooked. Desserts of chocolate fondant, Christmas pudding and cheese board all looked good and tasted fine, though not exceptional. The upstairs dining room is a beautiful space. Classically Georgian with plaster moulding, fireplace and sash windows overlooking Elizabeth street, it's painted in a soft grey and decorated with black and white photos of the legacy of Thomas Cubitt, architect and master builder of the mid-Victorian age. An fine choice for this area, keeping up the quality I found on my first visit, but not value for money. Three courses, two vegetable sides, one bottle of wine, one glass of house red, three glasses of port ... £70 per person. About £10 past what I thought the meal was worth.

Oh well, it was Christmas. And the five minute dash to church from there meant that we got excellent seats for the spectacle of midnight mass. First, candlelight carols. The golden altar looked magnificent, glittering beneath the brass chandelier and the towering candlesticks. More delightful for me than the carols themselves, which combined several I didn't know with three traditional ones that are sung to different melodies in the UK. A lovely concert but, for me, missing the joyful ability to sing along. The drama kicked it up a notch with the procession of the clergy ... 10 on the altar for the big night ... and a dramatic ringing of hand bells when the main lights were thrown on. The highest of high masses followed, featuring Haydn's St. Nicholas Mass, a ceremonial laying of Christ in the manger and our vicar, Father David, handing out chocolates at the door afterwards. A nice mix of drama and community.

We spent Christmas ... our first together ... at home alone. We exchanged gifts, watched TV, rested and indulged

ourselves. Piers took on cooking duties and serving up a very Danish meal, with home-cured gravad lax followed by duck with bilberry sauce, red cabbage and fondant potatoes. A few luxury cheeses, ending with slices of our wedding cake (which has been preserved in rum since September) and port.

We emerged from our solitude for a family Boxing Day lunch at my brother-in-law's in Putney, for which I got to contribute the dessert.

I opted for Heaven and Hell cake, the signature recipe of Dallas' master chef Stephen Pyles. It's a layered concoction of angel food cake, devil's food

cake and peanut butter mousse, iced with chocolate ganache. Not difficult, but not for the time constrained. I counted no less than six hours of prep time. Another sweet consequence of this season's bonus of free time.

Da Vinci exhibit deserves its accolades; not just for the paintings, but for context and big picture

Museum exhibitions can change lives. At least in the Ferrara family.

A touring collection of treasures from the Vatican museums in mymother's childhood (sent out to raise money for restorations after the trauma of WWII) set her on a firm path as an artist and art historian. During my senior year at university, I couldn't afford to get to Washington for The Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition. Later, descriptions of the show and its contents set a blueprint for holidays that eventually led to me settling in England. I suspect Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan will have life-changing effects on many. It is certainly a show that deserves the much overused accolade of "blockbuster".

This is the biggest show in London this year, and in recent memory. Its claim to fame is bringing together more Da Vinci paintings than have ever been on view in one place before. Given how few he actually finished, there's a good proportion of his work here.

For me, there were three specific highlights.

1. The Lady with the Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani). An incredibly famous work I never thought I'd see, as she lives in Krakow. More on her in a moment.
2. The two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, one from the Louvre and ours from the National Gallery (below on the left, recently cleaned and restored to dramatic effect). I'd seen both of them before, but being able to stand between them and compare and contrast is fascinating.


3. A full-sized copy of the Last Supper done by one of Leonardo's pupils before the original started to deteriorate. I didn't even know this existed. It is supposed to be a remarkably accurate copy, giving you a sense of the colours, expressions and details that would have been in the original.

Curators are likely to add a fourth here: the revelation of a newly-authenticated, previously unknown Da Vinci called Salvator Mundi (saviour of the world, as in, a portrait of Jesus). It is fascinating, and interesting, but was a bit of an anti-climax for me after the aspects above. And even if it is by the master, it doesn't have the emotional depth and other-worldly beauty of some of the other pieces.

Despite the superlative of "most in one place ever", there are only nine of Leonardo's paintings here. For two ... both the Salvator Mundi and the Madonna Litta from the Hermitage ... the attribution is questionable. So how do you build a whole show around so few paintings, and make sure the punters get their money's worth? Adult tickets were almost £20, which is lofty.

Here's where you have to give the curators some real respect. Leonardo was as prolific with his sketching pencil as he was frugal with his paintbrush, and thanks to the Royal Collection and the British Museum, a large proportion of those sketches can be borrowed from resources just up the artistic road.

Thus in each room we have one or two of the masterpieces, surrounded by related sketches and works by Leonardo's pupils. It helps us to understand what drove the great man, how he

worked and how he influenced all of artistic life at the Sforza court.

The best illustration of this is the room anchored by two gorgeous portraits. One, La Belle Feronniere, is probably Ludovico Sforza's wife Beatrice d'Este. The other, the aforementioned Lady with the Ermine, is his 16-year-old mistress.

In both cases, Leonardo was more concerned with creating an ideal beauty than depicting reality. (And, frankly, both of these portraits are far more spectacularly beautiful than the Mona Lisa.) In the series of sketches we see not only how he created perfection with the women, with obsessive studies to find the perfect finger, forehead or

eyebrow line, but even how he applied his composite approach to the ermine.

A symbol of the Sforzas, having Cecilia hold one marked her as Ludovico's. Thus Da Vinci needed an idealised animal: strong, handsome, noble, sexual. We see sketches of dogs' paws, and a gorgeou

s study of a bear's head, all used to

create a gorgeous creature that's half ermine, half mythical beast and entirely memorable. I suspect Ludovico was pleased.

The approach is particularly effective with the true-to-life-sized copy of the Last Supper. I have been lucky enough to see the real thing three times and, frankly, seeing this copy and all the sketches was a lot more impressive. This is not to take anything away from Da Vinci or the valiant curatorial team at Santa Maria delle Grazie. It is a masterpiece. But it's a faded wreck, and the copy is a vivid glory. It hangs dramatically over the gallery, while all around you can see Leonardo's specific studies for different apostles' heads, feet and movements. It is a masterstroke of curation.

There is something beyond painting in the best of Da Vinci's work. Stand before the National Gallery's Virgin of the Rocks, pristine in is new restoration, gaze into the angel's face, and the room disappears. You don't sense people or the architecture around you, or the painting's frame, or even the rest of the scene. You're simply drawn in by that face, more beautiful and serene than anything in your real life. That, of course, is the point of both devotional paintings and idealised portraiture, but few artists really achieve it. Leonardo's work transports you to another reality.

If you don't already have tickets for this exhibition, I'm afraid you're unlikely to get in. All tickets through its close on 5 February are sold out. There are a handful of tickets released each day on a first come, first served basis, but the news reports people are queuing for three hours or more and they sell out quickly every day. Is this a show worth sleeping in a cold and rainy Trafalgar Square for? Quite possibly. I, for one, am glad I responded to the National Gallery's marketing and booked in June. In this case, advanced planning paid fine dividends.

Lion in Winter and First Actresses make fine theatrical-themed holiday treats

Theatre is one of the exceptional glories of London. I'm not talking opera, ballet or musicals (though there are plenty of those), but proper plays, well produced and often anchored by stars of global renown. It is a point of guilty regret that I only seem to get to one of these a year.

The show that got me to the box office in 2011? The Lion in Winter. Its film adaptation would be one of my "desert island videos", and though I was aware it was based on a stage play, I'd never had

a chance to see it live. The Theatre Royal Haymarket indulged me, and all other fans of cutting wit and verbal repartee, with a revival anchored by Robert Lindsay and Joanna Lumley.

This is the ultimate dysfunctional family story; a very modern exploration of damaged relationships set in a distant past. It's 1183. Henry II gathers his family for Christmas. He's cobbled together the greatest empire since Charlemagne, but he's troubled by who will follow and the legacy he'll leave. Joining him is his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, once his great love match but now a political enemy held prisoner for a decade because she backed a rebellion against him. They each have different ideas

about who should take the throne next. Eleanor supporting the eldest, Richard, Henry backs baby John and nobody supports clever middle son Geoffrey. A parental division which, of course, puts all the sons at each others' throats while making them distrust their parents. Joining this tense gathering is the young king of France, who's elder half-sister has grown up in the English court, betrothed to Richard since she was seven but who is now Henry's mistress. In one intense, 24-hour period plans rise and fall, alliances change, secrets are revealed and relationships falter.

What makes The Lion in Winter so special to me is the sparkling writing. This could have been a straightforward, tense, dark, drama. But it's a glitteringly clever comedy, too, with all those moments of sharp passion cut by wry one-liners. (Eleanor, after a particularly bitter confrontation during which all the relationships have imploded painfully, shrugging her shoulders and saying "oh well, all families have their ups and downs.")

It's brave actors who even consider following in the footsteps of Richard Harris and Katherine Hepburn in the film version. Though not quite as good as their mighty predecessors, Lindsay and Lumley have the talent to carve their own identity on the roles. I've been a Lumley fan since her Ab Fab days and have an enormous respect for the travel programmes and political campaigns she appears in as herself. But I'd never had the chance to see her on stage. She was a more flirtatious Eleanor than Hepburn, who was all iron. Lumley's portrayal offered more of the feminine wiles that covered the master politician. Lindsay, on the other hand, I'd seen in a great version of Richard III in 1999, when I first discovered his tremendous range. (He's known more as a comic TV actor here, but his dramatic heft is impressive.) They each capture the sense of ageing without grace that's so essential to the characters, and make the love/hate relationship between them entirely credible.

It was only after seeing the play that I read the reviews, which are universally poor. Crit

icisms of facial expressions and costuming I can't agree or disagree with; we were in the balcony. But from there, everything looked fine. All of the reviewers bashed the play itself, and several used its likeness to Blackadder as a criticism. And there's the difference. It's precisely because this is Blackadder turned serious drama that I love it. So I'll leave you to make your own decision from there. If you're a fan of historical drama, wit and clever banter, it's on 'til 28 January.

Just around the corner at the National Portrait Gallery is another theatrical treat. The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons gathers together the depictions ... many of them quite famous ... of the actresses that rose to prominence on the London stage from the first legalisation of female acting in the Restoration through the Regency period. As ever with the NPG, while portraits are the visual fodder, the exhibition explanations and catalog help you to understand life stories, and through them, the times themselves.

Acting was a scandalous profession, something no fine lady would consider, and yet the stories revealed here make it clear it was packed with vivacious, intelligent, powerful wo

men. Women who channeled their exceptional charisma into acting then, but might have easily been politicians or corporate executives as much as media stars today. Though they may not have been considered "good" society, most had fascinating lives, and they certainly didn't all have bad ends.

We start with Nell Gwynn, who ended up a popular mistress of Charles II and, through him, matriarch of two English aristocratic families. (They're still around. I once spent an evening knocking back port in a cellar with one of them.) Another aristocratic line comes from the union of William IV and Dorothy Jordan, whose three dramatic portraits here leave you no doubt that she was gorgeous and interesting. While her royal children did well she ended sad and strapped for cash; she'd stayed faithful to her lover, but when he became king he was forced to put her aside, after more than a decade, and marry. Mary Robinson (pictured here in Hoppner's famous work), was also known as "Perdita" from one of her more famous roles, did slightly better after briefly being the mistress of William's brother George IV when he was a prince. She went on to be a poet, playwright and respected authority on the Georgian arts scene.

In fact, most of the women in this exhibition did fairly well for themselves. Some married into the industry and retired to management (Elizabeth Ann Linley, who married the playwright Sheridan). Some were so alluring they got the full marital prize from their admirers. Lavinia Fenton became the Duchess of Bolton, Elizabeth Farren the Countess of Derby. Sarah Siddons, after locking her reputation as the finest tragic actress on the London stage, went on to become tutor to George IIIs daughters. Her full length portrait here is as dignified and stately as any Jane Austen heroine. Of course, there are the tragic young deaths, a few addictions and plenty of sexual impropriety on display as well. A fascinating preview of our modern age, as is the cabinet of little statuettes of the actresses in some of their leading roles, and the display of first editions of their memoirs. Clearly, the cult of celebrity is nothing new.

The show spreads over just four galleries and, like most NPG shows, isn't very crowded. There are exhibition catalogs scattered on benches throughout, allowing you to linger, read the stories of the various women, look into their engaging faces and speculate on what they were really like. This show is a lot less known, but a heck of a lot easier to get into, than the far more famous exhibit around the corner. That's coming next.