Pictures at an exhibition

Friday, March 9: Away from the flat before 7.00 and in the constituency by 9.30. Today is a day of meetings, pre-election discussions and surgery, all overshadowed by the increasingly sombre news from MAFF. Foot and mouth has not yet broken out in my constituency but it is very close and we are leaving nothing to chance. At home we have disinfected straw strewn across the gate - and so do all our neighbours. There will be no towpath walks along the canal this weekend.

In the evening to Brewood Village Hall for a very special occasion. Brewood's millennium project was to compile a Domesday book of the village as it was on January 1, 2000. All the residents are listed. There are details of every business in the village, street maps, and a profile of every village organisation - all 60 or so of them. The whole work, which includes a magnificent photographic record, and a volume devoted to every event which took place during the year 2000, runs to four handsomely bound and very heavy volumes and tonight three sets are presented; to the parish council, to the county record office and to the county library service. There is a popular, and abridged, version on sale but the definitive volumes are all printed on archive quality paper and should last for a thousand years.

Saturday, March 10: We have to go into Bridgnorth to collect a clock taken in for repair and do some weekly shopping. The market still flourishes but there are fewer people than normal and we are back home shortly after 10.00. Then it is a day at the desk dealing with yesterday's full surgery and a mammoth weekend post, including Friday's sent on from Westminster.

Sunday, March 11: To 8 O'clock service on a freezing cold morning and then a chance to catch up with some reading.

I don't do meetings on Sundays - never have - but today my fellow warden and I do have a couple of hours with the wardens from the other parish in our benefice, with the archdeacon, to talk about the appointment of a new rector. It is a wholly appropriate use of a Sunday afternoon but my wife is none too pleased at even this incursion: and she is right.

Monday, March 12: Away before 7.00 and a truly dreadful journey to London. It is almost five hours later that I get into my office; feeling in extremely bad humour.

I am only just in time for the party in the Speaker's House to mark the unveiling by the Prime Minister of Ian Walters' bust of Harold Wilson. This was one of the last works commissioned for the collection here when I was Chairman of the Works of Art Committee. Tony Banks has now taken on the torch and is clearly enjoying every moment, as I did. Mary Wilson makes a particularly gracious and moving speech and the Father of the House has his photograph taken with the bust of his old adversary and friend.

Tuesday, March 13: A morning of meetings, an afternoon in the Chamber and then to the Army's annual presentation. The Member's Dining Room has been turned into a lecture theatre and there are over 200 seats set out. A great many remain empty but the presentation is admirable. No wonder the Army scores so high whenever national institutions are listed in order of popularity.

In the evening two particularly enjoyable occasions. The All Party Heritage Group, which Andrew Faulds and I founded in 1975, is received by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs at the recently rebuilt Guildhall Art Gallery. It is a fine collection. Among my favourites are Millais's companion portraits of the same little girl. In one, alert but slightly apprehensive, she is listening to her First Sermon. In The Second Sermon she is fast asleep.

Then on to Lancaster House for a dinner, amiably hosted by George Foulkes, to mark the CPA's 50th Parliamentary seminar for visiting Commonwealth members - a happy event in every way and one that underlines the real worth of the CPA.

Wednesday, March 14: Much of the morning taken up with the CPA. Tom Cox has recently taken over as Chairman and I have become Treasurer. We talk over the coming year's plans. Everything has a question mark against it until we know the date (and then the outcome) of the General Election.

In the evening another All Party Heritage Group visit, this time to Somerset House to see the treasures from the Hermitage. We are greeted by Tim Salisbury, our former colleague, and Jacob Rothschild, both of them among the greatest of modern benefactors. What a transformation has come over Somerset House. First the Cortauld moved in and more recently the Gilbert and the Hermitage collections. The courtyard, for decades an Inland Revenue car park, has been cleared. Where tax inspectors enjoyed their London perk, fountains play. Back at the House I look in on Dafydd Wigley's farewell party, a real House of Commons occasion. What an exemplary parliamentarian he has been.

Thursday, March 15: A private breakfast with the Danish Ambassador to discuss a non-parliamentary project and then, after a meeting to discuss a memorial service for Reg Prentice, I dash to the Athenaeum to tell the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings that I cannot host the William Morris Craft Fellowship lunch today as we have a statement on Foot and Mouth. I get back to the Chamber shortly before Nick Brown begins. For over an hour and a half he deals with Members' worries and concerns with an admirably gentle patience and frankness.

Friday, March 16: We are in London for what was to have been the weekend of the Great Countryside March. I have a parliamentary Friday and then a weekend with some unwanted free time. But we resolve to make the most of it.

I take part briefly in the debate on Gwyneth Dunwoody's Christmas Shopping Bill - the very best sort of Christmas bill. And then, with Tom Cox, take a seminar for the visiting parliamentarians.

In the afternoon to the National Gallery for the new exhibition of German paintings.

There have been some spellbinding exhibitions since the Sainsbury wing opened. I would not put this one in the first division. There are some stunning pictures but I don't leave the Gallery with those mixed and conflicting feelings of covetousness and high emotion the greatest art provokes. But it is an exhibition that everyone should see, for it says a great deal about Germany and these pictures, gathered together during the restoration of the German National Gallery, will probably never be seen again outside Berlin in such profusion.

Saturday, March 17: Mary has not seen the British Library since it opened and so we go to that outpost of civilization on the Euston Road. Sadly this is not a building that moves me. And when I look at the way the King's library is displayed - as some vast wall-hanging - I regret more than ever that it was wrenched from its proper setting in the British Museum. The vast glass case looks impressive but you can't get close enough to read the spine on any of the books. Most people seem to like it but to me it is almost a negation of what a library should be about - the accessibility of knowledge.

But there is much that is magnificent about the British Library, not least the exhibition that we have come to see - Treasures from the Ark: 1700 years of Armenian-Christian Art.

The exquisite illuminated manuscripts, and other assembled treasures, make as riveting an exhibition as I have seen in a long while. Go and see it before it closes on May 28.

In the evening to the National Theatre for the new My Fair Lady, a spectacularly staged and beautifully acted production of a very great musical play.

Sunday, March 18: More fine music - this time at Matins in the Chapel Royal - my favourite London church. There is a special quiet dignity about the worship here, an unbeatable combination of the Book of Common Prayer and an excellent choir. Then to our favourite table in our favourite restaurant for a leisurely Sunday lunch but one tinged with very real sadness. We should have been spending this day on the streets with 500 of our constituents, and tens of thousands more from around the country.

Afterwards to the V and A. We wander around the sculpture galleries and the Indian gallery and into the marvellously Victorian Cast Courts and then have a quiet half hour with the Raphael cartoons.

Monday, March 19: What a welcome change from last Monday. No five hour drive this time but a brisk walk along the Embankment and then five uninterrupted hours at the desk before lunch.

As I write this I am waiting for the very last of the works I commissioned as Chairman of the Works of Art Committee, a portrait of Tam Dalyell, a companion piece to a spectacularly good portrait of Dennis Skinner, both of them by Graham Jones, a young Welsh artist who has already contributed some first rate pictures to our collection including portraits of Michael Foot, Enoch Powell and Geoffrey Howe.