Gordon's Wine Bar whisks you back to Victorian London

In the harsh glare of electric light, Gordon's Wine Bar would no doubt be revealed as a mouldy, cramped cellar with wonky furniture, oppressive proportions and all the charm of a prison cell. What a difference candlelight makes.

Illuminated only by wax tapers jammed into old wine bottles, this low, barrel-vaulted space becomes an atmospheric slice of Victorian London giving modern drinkers a chance at time travel.

Located just up Villiers Street from Embankment tube station, the building was once the home of Samuel Pepys and later a thriving trader's office. It was directly on the Thames until the Victoria Embankment pushed the river back 100 yards. At that point, the river-based trade moved out and the wine bar moved in ... letting the current owners claim that, going since 1890, it's London's oldest continuously operating wine bar.

A short list of those "in the know" love this place, though never count on getting a seat. The number of people clamouring at the bar and spilling onto the pavement outside is often double or triple the seating capacity of the atmospheric vaults. The majority of tourists ... and Londoners ... walk by without knowing it's there.

We were recently looking for a place to hold a long lunch for a group of friends in search of good company and fine conversation, and discovered that one section in the candlelit cellars ("the cage", with one table for 8-12) can be reserved. Thus the first meeting of our "Lost Afternooners" club came to convene in Dickensian gloom.

It's a marvellously eclectic place to while away an afternoon, and a surprisingly reasonable one for central London. Lunch and a prodigious afternoon of drinking (we started at 12:30 and left in search of dinner around 8) cost about £55 per person. In addition to facilitating candlelight, the old cellars completely block communications signals, so it's also an excellent place to hide from the incursions of the modern world.

There's a large and various wine list, some of it imported and bottled under the Gordon family name. (The place is, indeed, still family owned.) They're known for their port, which they serve direct from barrels in schooners (dangerously big) and beakers (hangover territory). There is a pool of electric light at the bar, which you'll find by clattering down narrow, steep wooden steps off the river side of the building. There's no entrance from the front, which actually looks like the place is closed. Diagon Alley from Harry Potter's world springs to mind. The lighting in that entry section ... and the credit card machines ... are the only nod to modernity. Otherwise, the barrels, wooden panelling and old prints look like they may well have been here when Rudyard Kipling wrote and drank in this space.

Food, served only at lunch, is hearty and basic. Choose from a short list of pub favourites and add salad from a small buffet for around £12. You must pay separately from your bar tab; the food is definitely an add-on. If you're tucking into the port, then assembling a hearty cheese board sliced from their array of hefty wedges is a must.

If you want to book The Cage on a specific date, it's best to work two or three months in advance. Otherwise, grabbing a table here is a matter of pure luck, though you'll help your chances by arriving in the lull between lunch and the happy hour crowd.

Creative process revealed in National Gallery's fascinating Michelangelo, Sebastiano show

I approached the National Gallery's new lead exhibition with skepticism. Focusing on a partnership between Michelangelo and a little-known colleague, with many more of the latter's works that the former ... and including copies rather than the real thing? Were the curators getting desperate? Would nobody loan them anything better?

I was wrong. Michelangelo and Sebastiano is a fascinating show that shines a light onto how the collaborative process actually works. We spend more time on the painters as individuals, rather than just critically regarding the art they left behind.

And those copies? Absolutely brilliant. There's an exact plaster cast of Michelangelo's most famous Pieta, liberating that great work of art from its usual distant place enclosed in a perspex diorama well above your natural line of sight. Here, you can wander all around it, getting up close to appreciate the drama and skill of the composition. The reproduction of the Borgherini Chapel is a wonder of modern technology, as the highest tech digital scanning and printing give us a copy so perfect it even replicates the battered power outlet some cretin drilled through the fresco in the last century.

There's no denying that Sebastiano del Piombo was a lesser artist, and no surprise that he's not very well known. While you wouldn't turn down a gift of one of his works, they're hard to distinguish from an army of candy-pastel coloured saints, Tuscan landscapes and fat putti rolling out of workshops up and down the Italian peninsula in the 16th century. He was, however, in the right place at the right time.

In the early 1510s, despite the fact that he'd already painted the Sistine Chapel and the new pope was a childhood friend, Michelangelo's popularity was fading before the glittering arrival of Raphael in Rome. Young, spectacularly handsome and famously jovial, he ousted the older, legendarily taciturn Florentine from several prime commissions. Michelangelo realised that adopting a younger, better looking, more politically savvy protege than himself would help to compete with Raphael, and thus the odd partnership was born.

Sebastiano is ennobled by his relationship with the great master and, under his coaching, achieves something approaching greatness in paintings like his The Raising of Lazarus on display here. Splash out the extra cash for the audio tour, so you can hear the details of how the mentor's advice changed this, and other, works on display.  Michaelangelo's pencil sketches revealed on the back of Sebastiano's painting of a pieta (displayed facing the cast of the Vatican's sculpture) give you brilliant insight into the raw brainstorming of two artists.

Letters between the two broaden that view, and also show off Sebastiano's diplomatic skills. The cantankerous Michelangelo managed to alienate most people quickly and had few friends. Sebastiano staying in his good graces for almost two decades, even making the elder a godfather to one of his sons, was a remarkable achievement. The letters make clear that the way to Michelangelo's heart was flattery mixed with complete adulation. The two men finally fell out when a more secure Sebastiano started to offer suggestions to the older man's work.

The insight into the creative process goes beyond the dual collaboration. In my opinion, the best thing here is the unfinished Taddei Tondo (which only had to travel down the street from the Royal Academy), because the curators guide you through the whole process of creation. From considering marble choice to comparing the rough chisel marks with the smooth completed areas to observing the innovation of the composition, the work rewards lengthy contemplation steered by the audio guide.

The blockbuster loan, however, is the Risen Christ normally resident with the monks of San Vincenzo in Bassano Romano. Few outside of that order have ever been allowed to meditate upon the larger-than-life, shockingly-human-in-his-nakedness Christ leaning casually against his cross like a Greek god. Michelangelo almost finished this one, but abandoned it when a crack flawed the marble. Another perfect plaster cast stands beside it, allowing us to examine the version he did finish, now standing in Rome's Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Amongst the copies, however, I found most delight in the Borgherini Chapel. The quality of the duplication is extraordinary; the ability to experience something this close to a Michelangelo fresco without travelling to Italy unprecedented. While the Sebastiano did the painting, Michelangelo sketched it all out for him first. The contorted figures in the lunettes above are straight out of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the Flagellation of Christ is a tour de force of perspective and pathos.

Michelangelo and Sebastiano is on at the National Gallery until 25th June. If you're interested in artistic collaboration, or want to get close to one of the Renaissance's greatest masters without trekking to Italy, get this in your diary.

Maritime Museum does welcome resurrection of remarkable woman's reputation

There are few eras of British history before our modern one that have as many fascinating women as the late 18th and early 19th century.

Of course there's my heroine, Jane Austen, but she's just one of a flock of impressive writers including Ann Radcliffe and Fanny Burney. Mary Wollstonecraft struck some remarkable blows for early feminism, while her daughter Mary Shelley shook up the world with Frankenstein. Angelica Kauffman and Elisabeth Vigee le Brun were remarkable painters, while silversmith Hester Bateman created some of the forms we think of as classically Georgian. Sarah Siddons was establishing what we now know as modern stage acting, while Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace was making contributions to higher mathematics that would lead to modern computing. Georgiana Spencer was a notable, and fascinating, figure on the national political stage. I could go on.

Inevitably, most of these women have taken a shadowy place behind the men of the era. Of few is this more true than Emma Hamilton, now known by most ... if she is known at all ... as the mistress of Lord Nelson. But Emma was so much more than that. A fascinating show at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is currently trying to set the record straight.

A woman with a remarkable aptitude for learning, she was an actress, model, singer, classicist, diplomat and arbiter of fashion. She used her skills to triumph through a series of circumstances that would have destroyed most women. She left home and was making her own way as a servant from the age of 12. She probably had to survive a stint as a prostitute (the usual end for young girls seeking their fortune in London, with up to 50,000 women working in the city's sex trade at the time) before she managed to ascend to the ranks of kept mistress to a nobleman. He dropped her when she became pregnant. She found another "protector" from amongst his friends. It might have been a similar story to many other girls used and tossed away, had it not been for Emma's thirst for knowledge. With every step she drank in lessons, from etiquette and accent to literature and current events. This is, undoubtably, one of the things that made her so fascinating to the portraitist George Romney, who painted her more than 70 times.

One of the triumphs of the show is a whole room of these Romney portraits. Romney said one of the reasons he kept returning to her as a model was her ability to inhabit a part, while society ladies all shared the same placid, expressionless gaze. Here you see her as a demure matron, a joyous young girl, a penitent Magdalen, a sensuous bacchanate; clearly all the same woman, but inhabiting radically different roles. It's easy to imagine what an astonishing actress, and how charismatic, she must have been.

Another horrific tragedy befell her when her second patron, Charles Greville, wanted to get rid of her in order to marry an heiress. Rather than settling an amount of money on her (the usual way of breaking up such relationships at the time), he shipped her to his uncle in Naples, telling her it was a vacation that he'd soon join her on, while informing his uncle that he was sending him a new mistress for his enjoyment. The show does a fine job using contemporary documents to dig into the tension of this situation. The handbook Charles gave her on being a good wife, annotated and clearly studied by Emma in an attempt to be all he had wanted ... despite the lack of legal status ... exposes the depths of his villainy. Her letters back to him, showing a slow realisation that he'd ended the relationship without the courage to do it face-to-face, are heartbreaking. There's no question she adored him.

Emma combined luck and fortitude to transform crisis into survival. Greville's uncle was the British ambassador to Naples, who was also a well known antiquarian and a "must see" stop on the grand tour. He was fascinated as much by Emma's mind as by her beauty, and set out to transform her, My Fair Lady style. In this part of the exhibit, paintings, books and artefacts bring the remarkable world of turn-of-the-19th-century Naples to life. Pompeii was giving up its treasures, there was a glittering royal court, every artist and intellectual came through town and Vesuvius smouldered over it all.

The place, and Hamilton's tutelage, inspired Emma to create The Attitudes ... a highly intellectual mime show in which she would transform, with the aid of just a few props and a shawl, into a series of historical and literary women from the ancient world. Visitors loved the challenge of figuring out who was who, showing off their impressive classical educations as they did so. I'd read much about The Attitudes, but the exhibit's decision to bring them to life by creating a small theatre and presenting a film of an Emma look-alike performing some of them was a master stroke. When she wasn't performing, she was studying classical pottery or hiking up Vesuvius for early lessons in vulcanology with Hamilton, or working with a singing coach. Her voice was good enough that the Madrid opera tried to hire her, and Haydn wrote a cantata within his Nelson mass for her to sing. At this point, the naval hero was no more than a respected friend.

Hamilton then shocked society by marrying her. But Emma was so famous by this point ... evidenced by a set of fine china on display with her Attitudes as the painted decoration ... she could ride out the negative comments. Here starts the summit of Emma's career. Now Lady Hamilton, artist and aristocrat, she became close friends with Queen Maria Carolina of the Two Sicilies. As the daughter of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa and the sister of the recently executed Marie Antoinette, Maria Carolina had learned a lot of first-hand lessons about government. Some good, some bad. She needed them, since her husband Ferdinand was ... to put it kindly ... developmentally challenged. Maria Carolina was functionally ruling the kingdom, giving Emma enormous influence. As the Napoleonic wars heated up, Emma was playing a critical diplomatic role, even taking the lead in organising the court's evacuation to Sicily in the face of a threatened revolution.

This is where things get weird, and where we enter the story Emma is best known for. The Hamiltons provided political support for Nelson and nursed him back to health after the Battle of the Nile. They were good friends. At some point, Emma and Nelson became lovers. The ageing Hamilton didn't seem to mind. Demonstrating that the trend for the press turning against favourites is an old one, a series of political cartoons illustrate how the London papers made Emma the villain. Though their love was ardent and sincere, society never accepted the fallen Lady Hamilton's relationship with their naval hero.

The final rooms show the life they tried to make together, despite public disapproval and Nelson's wife. (Lord Hamilton died two years before Nelson, eliminating half of their barrier, but Lady Nelson refused divorce.) Nelson's letters displayed here are filled with passionate love and firm instructions to pour all of the proceeds of his successful career into furnishing the house they shared together. You can see drawings of the place and some of the furniture, along with a painting of their daughter Horatia. It's most striking for the fact that the painter chooses a pose similar to one that made the young Emma famous. He tries to conjure the old magic, but the daughter was a sadly plain girl with a wistful expression ... as if to embody the tragedy in store for both her parents.

Particularly poignant is the display of Nelson's will, scribbled hastily the night before the famous battle that killed him, begging the government to take care of Emma. The government ignored him. Emma could have lived quietly on the pension she received from Lord Hamilton's estate, but she was too used to the high life. The final room of the exhibit exposes the full tragedy of her fall, as she has to sell off the house she shared with Nelson, ends up in debtor's prison, moves to Calais to escape her creditors and dies of liver failure brought on by attempting to drink away her despair. The parting sight is Nelson's dress uniform. Empty. Ghostly. A haunting image of the love that sent a remarkable woman's life on a trajectory to doom.

Well done to the National Maritime Museum for trying to redress history's crimes of omission. Emma Hamilton deserves to be so much more than the a sexual footnote of famous man's story. She has an amazing life all her own, and this exhibit does a fine job telling us about it. The show's on until 17 April, more info here.

Exquisite design store demonstrates benefits of a career revolution

We live in a revolutionary age.

Technology has created a world of work and leisure beyond imagining in the year of my birth. Medicine has turned death sentences into manageable conditions. The role of women has transformed radically. (Though there's still much work to be done.) Just as radical, I'd argue, is the shift in our approach to work ... though we don't give it nearly the same amount of attention.

The career path I trained for simply doesn't exist for today's graduates. I went to university to learn to do a specific thing. I expected to change employers a few times, but assumed I'd step onto a ladder and keep climbing. I'd go ever upwards, in a relatively straight trajectory, until my august retirement to charity boards, gardening and travel in my late 50s.

How alien that vision seems now! Better health and poorer pensions mean we're all likely to be working into our 70s and beyond. Millennials entering the workforce expect a pick-a-mix of employment experiences: big business and self employed, full time and part, radical shifts between roles and industries ... probably liberally spiced with self-enhancing sabbaticals. For those of us bred to the structure of paid holidays, co-funded pension plans and premium insurance policies, the financial risk that comes with such a varied career is nerve-wracking. I'm convinced, however, that the potential for personal fulfillment is far greater.

These thoughts, combined with healthy doses of envy and pride, flooded through my brain this past weekend when I stepped over the threshold of a strikingly beautiful home design shop in Canterbury called Neptune. It was the latest endeavour of a good friend and former workplace protege who'd had a Damascene revelation a few years ago. She'd had enough of marketing communications, and its inevitable corporate politics, and decided to do something about it. Not some time off. Not a shift to freelance, or a shift to a similar role in a different industry. But a wholesale transformation to something completely alien. Her move was brave, risky and unexpected. But seeing her standing at the heart of that beguilingly seductive shop, consumed with passion about what she's now doing, I have no doubts she made the right choice.

Neptune is a fascinating British brand, as much about concept as about tangible products. If there's any connection between my friend's old profession and new, it's that. I was aware of Neptune as providers of luxury kitchens, but now know that's the tip of their iceberg. They're offering something almost unknown in the UK: lifestyle-based interiors. Their shops are showcases of desire: dream homes as stage sets, every element carefully selected to gel into a casual, yet elegant and sophisticated, style. You can buy everything you see, from the impressively solid furniture to the subtle throw cushions and the tasteful candlesticks. It's all designed by the Neptune team, and manufactured either in the UK or in a wholly-owned and carefully supervised Chinese operation. Americans would recognise it as mash-up of Crate & Barrel and Restoration Hardware Company. The closest equivalent I can think of in the UK is Ikea ... but this is after the fairy godmother of retail turned a Cinderella shop into something worthy of the ball.

Thank heavens I have recently completed decorating our house, or I could have gotten into some real trouble. Wandering through the place was a delight, however, and even those with no furnishing needs can come away with something, from china and glassware to some of the most realistic silk flowers I've ever seen. And it's not just the interiors that are a work of art. The building itself was a remarkable restoration project, returning a much-abused 19th century oast house to its original, church-like proportions. The central hall now soars three stories above you, where you can see some of the restored industrial mechanisms suspended from the ceiling between flying spans of roof timber.

There've been no half measures as my friend has jumped into this totally new career. She now radiates an enthusiasm and a passion that I've seen from few colleagues. I've long thought that creating tangible things gives you sense of fulfilment, and a connection to beauty, that most of us on the corporate ladder will never experience. If I were younger, I'd be fantasising about following my friend's lead. (It's probably significant that she's almost young enough to be my daughter ... if I'd gotten started very early.)

As it is, I'm looking at this new generation's pick-a-mix career portfolios with envy. It's probably a bit late for me to re-invent myself as a history teacher or a restorer of decorative Georgian plasterwork. But I have no doubt that they, by having multiple and very different jobs, will be on a path to deeper satisfaction than the four-decade corporate hacks of their parents' generation.

If you like interior design, I'd recommend a visit to any Neptune store. But you can only find my renewed friend Sarah, and the amazing oast house restoration, in Canterbury. Details here.

Five reasons to go out of your way for Walmer Castle

I have completed the Duke of Wellington trifecta.

As a local, and regular visitor, to the great man's country home at Stratfield Saye, and a long-time fan of the collection at his London residence Apsley House, I had just one significant English property to visit to complete the story of Arthur Wellesley's remarkable life in England. Walmer Castle was the home he was awarded with the honorary title of lord warden of the Cinque Ports, and the place where he died. With one day available for sightseeing in Canterbury, and having already visited the cathedral, this had to be my destination.

Walmer certainly delivers the goods for any fan of Wellington, offering up the room in which he died just as it was on that day. When you tour Stratfield Saye, the guides show you the original watercolour of the place captured at the time of his death and, indeed, it hasn't changed. It's simple and practical, with his camp bed, desk and armchair. Walmer was said to be his personal favourite amongst his residences, and you can see how the intimate scale and homely decor matched his dislike of excess. Apsley is a public stage set for great acts of government. Stratfield Saye is made for entertaining and dynasty building. Walmer is an old man's comfortable bolthole. You can also linger in an interesting two-room museum with gems like the original Wellington boots and the death mask of a touchingly fragile 83-year-old.

But there's much more here to see.

The military-minded will thrill to one of the best preserved of Henry VIII's coastal defences, still clearly showing the genius of its plan. Fans of architecture and design will be delighted to see how a comfortable, lovely country house has been carved out of a curiously-shaped Tudor fortress. History buffs will find much more than Wellington; a range of famous people lived here and an audio tour exposes you to the momentous things that happened within the walls. Gardeners will be impressed with the outdoors, which even on a grim day in early March were a delight.

Defence
When it was built, Walmer was a sophisticated piece of military high tech. Artillery was changing rapidly, and as a consequence so was defensive architecture. Cannon balls destroy corners, but are more likely to bounce off curves. Thus the castle is designed in the shape of a quatrefoil (a four-petalled flower). There's an outer set of quatrefoil walls, then a moat, then an inner set, with a round keep at the very centre. While the floral form looks very pretty from the air, the reality was a place bristling with guns at many levels that could shoot in many directions, from walls that were custom-built to repel enemy fire. The castle never fired a shot in anger at the enemy it was built to intimidate, France. But its location on the coast, so close that the old enemy is visible on a clear day, sent a very powerful message. Though the moat is now a garden and the keep a house, there are still plenty of cannon in place and it's obvious to see how the defensive structure originally worked. There's an excellent audio-visual guide that comes with the price of admission that explains everything, and shows drawings of the place ready for action in Tudor times.

The House
Once military technology moved on enough to make its concentric rings of cannon old fashioned, Walmer became a house that went with the honourary title of lord warden of the Cinque Ports. A succession of important, and often wealthy, public figures held the post, from Pitt the Younger to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, often putting their own money and ideas into improving the place. It is a cosy, quirky house, with some lovely interiors and decorative objects that reflect past owners. It's fascinating to see how architects carved a home out of this unusual defensive shape, complete with picture windows set into cannon embrasures and lots of rooms with curved walls. The most striking feature is the long hallway you encounter after ascending the stairs from the ground floor. Running the length of the house, all the oddly-shaped rooms radiate off it and a glass door at its end leads onto a cannon-studded terrace overlooking the beach and the channel. At the mid point, there's a lovely little octagonal lobby with light flooding in from windows set in a lantern above. A big fireplace and some of striking portraits lie below.

The decor is classic English country house: mostly a mix of Georgian and Victorian art and furniture with tasteful renovations and additions made in a consistent style in the 20th century. In addition to Wellington's bedroom and three museum rooms, you see a couple of comfortable reception rooms on the ground floor, while off that upstairs hall you find Pitt's bedroom and office, a dining room and a pleasant sitting room. There must have been more bedrooms, and plenty of staff accommodation, but this is definitely not a grand place. That adds to its charm.

History
Knowing a good deal about Wellington before I got there, I spent more time exploring the rooms devoted to Pitt the Younger. The wunderkind who became prime minister at 24, he'd worked himself to death by 47. No wonder, given that he had to spend most of his career juggling the twin problems of the Napoleonic Wars and a spendthrift Prince Regent. He also had a boisterous political opposition and was the butt of many a joke in the raucous dawn of the political cartoonist. (There's a great selection of the best cartoons here.) His bedroom and office suite give great insight into the man, as does a museum room.

The audio guide brings other eras of history to life, from the original Tudor soldier occupants to the early 20th century dinner parties at which WWI battle strategies were conceived. The daughter of the lord warden of the time wrote with gushing enthusiasm about how Winston Churchill planned Gallipoli at the dining table with "all the romance of a crusade." It's a chilling story, and a great example of how a good tour can bring a place to life.

Outdoors
Though you hear a bit about the Queen Mother indoors (and see a lovely portrait of her), it's in the gardens where she made her biggest mark. At this time of year, the woodland walk was most striking, with clumps of hellebores, late-blooming snowdrops and early blooming daffodils and miniature irises all adding colour. The space specifically known as the Queen Mother's Garden has interest all year round, with topiary castle walls and a long reflecting pool ... though it's clear the flower beds add colour in the summer. The moat was filled with daffodils, and lawns sprouted with crocus. It's the long, oddly-shaped yew hedges that made the most dramatic impression on me, however, looking oddly malevolent on a stormy, grey day. I have no doubt that the deep borders in front of them form a corridor of herbaceous glory in high summer.

The castle sits on a remarkably undeveloped strip of coastline. It looks like you could walk for miles between shingle beach, farmland and secluded homes. No doubt it's jammed with noisy holiday makers in warmer months, but right now it's moody and secluded ... something you don't associate with being in the London commuter belt.

Walmer is an English Heritage property, £10.10 per adult if you're not a member. There's also a tea room in the base of the keep, and a better-than-average gift shop. It would be a steep price if you were only interested in one of these aspects of Walmer. But if you combine Wellington, the military architecture, the history, house and garden ... all enlivened by an excellent audio guide ... it's well worth the price.