Category: Personal

Nicholas publishes Flints and Flashes: Volume Two

After popular demand, Nicholas swiftly followed up with another volume of his autobiographical anecdotes: Flints and Flashes Volume Two.

This book of personal anecdotes and observations is the fruit of his travels through this complex web of interests which took him all over the world and twice round it. As a result he claims to know from direct experience that the world is not flat.

Buy it here now on Amazon.

On Flints and Flashes Volume One:

‘How incredibly lucky I have been to have known Nicholas since the early ’60s and my very early days at the BBC, about the time he was creating Late Night Line Up – and to have had him in my life ever since as a wonderfully kind and knowledgeable friend – yet reading through these delightful and original memoirs, realising how much I still have to learn about his extraordinary life and many adventures.’
Valerie Singleton OBE – travel writer and television presenter

‘Nicholas Tresilian’s Flints and Flashes Volume Two manages to work to two paradigms. One is the impromptu ambassador, diplomatically bent on forging creative pathways between peoples, regions and countries. The other an excited collegiate backpacker, eager to be immersed in the intimate mores and unassuming cultural traditions as they ebb and flow in his purview. Bound by an insightful tone, his words shine bright throughout. Were this not triumph enough, some of the tales are extremely funny too.’
Keith Reeves – wine and food writer

‘“I will just read the next one…” This is what happens when you start to read this collection of extraordinary memories by an extraordinary man.’
Ann Christopher RA – sculptor

‘…his exquisitely elegant prose, entwined with a teasing sense of the ludicrous, is reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh at his finest, while his gentle mock-heroic exposure of the foibles and affectations of his interviewees in many exotic locations reminds one of E M Forster (also, of course, like Tresilian a notable BBC broadcaster).’
Ian Steadman – retired former Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of the Witwatersrand

‘The charm of Nicholas Tresilian’s anecdotes lies in their resemblance to a child’s gazing into a rock pool: but the creatures he sees there are the creatures and events of his personal memories.’
Noel White – artist

‘Each flint (and each flash!) a perfectly crafted little story that leaves you wanting more….’
Marianne Talbot – retired philosopher

‘We all know that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun. Nicholas has never been mad, even when he served as an officer in the army. He’s merely invincible, a fearless traveller always in the best of spirits. He’s also one of the most erudite men I have met in a long life. This volume of Flints and Flashes reminds me again of how privileged I have been to be allowed into his company. May he go on shading us from the mid-day sun for many more years.’
Hazhir Teimourian – author of The Consolations of AutumnBuy Volume Two here on Amazon.

Nicholas publishes Flints and Flashes: Volume One

These are vignettes, told in personal anecdotes, from the life of one member of an extraordinarily privileged generation. A generation which emerged very young from the war clouds, the destruction and the universal living constraints of World War II, into a world which, despite the looming presence of the Cold War, gradually shook off the tightly bound behaviour of the wartime period and began to expand simultaneously in economic prosperity, cultural innovation and personal freedom. It was a privileged minority who benefitted most from these changes. They were in the main, as Tresilian points out, the beneficiaries of good families, good education, good friends and good luck.

Buy it here on Amazon.

In this first volume of Flints and Flashes, Nicholas Tresilian delights in leading us on a merry dance through much of the twentieth century, as seen by a man fortunate enough to be born in that time of plenty, that time of growth.

From a cold boarding school in England to writing poetry at Cambridge, to setting up radio stations around the world; how his great travels around Europe and across the world led to feasts in the tomb of a long dead pharaoh and admiring the frowning shoulder pads of Bulgaria in the ’90s (where he ran a radio station), taking him all the way through to the peaceful ruminations on the swallows resting in his tree when he moved to live in Spain.

Frequently hilarious, always insightful, these Flints and Flashes glitter off the blade of Tresilian’s boundless memory.

Buy it here on Amazon.

Nicholas presents the Classic FM Evening Concert

In this recording, Nicholas presents the Classic FM Evening Concert, on the 20th Sept 2002, his last broadcast after some 1200 broadcasts for the world’s largest commercial radio station, across a five+ year period. Nicholas was one of the original founders of Classic FM.

[Recorded by Susannah Tresilian 20th Sept 2002]

{https://soundcloud.com/arabella-tresilian/nicholas-tresilian-presents-the-classic-fm-evening-concert-2002}

Nicholas on the BBC’s Late Night Line-Up, 1965

We share some vintage footage from the BBC Archives, of Nicholas in his days as a presenter on Late Night Line-Up. Many thanks to @BBCArchive!

[https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1128276273380245509]

[https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/935112731660881920]

Art after Covid-19

Nicholas spoke about the impact of Covid-19 on the visual arts and reflected on the work of APG (Artist Placement Group) as a precursor to the type of ‘self-organising artist networks’ that might arise as the world emerges from pandemic.

https://youtu.be/Z2nlkxwjQSc

Audio available on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/arabella-tresilian/nicholas-tresilian-on-art-after-covid-19