Terrence Young’s picnic in From Russia With Love does not happen in Ian Fleming’s novel. It’s inconsequential, shaken but not stirred. Young’s picnic begins when Bond and his current lover, Sylvia Trench, are punting in a boat on /River Cherwell in Oxford. It’s summer. They are tied up in the shade, dressed in bathing suits, […] read more

A picnic in the woods is a novelty for Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old New York City boy who has never walked on anything but pavement. So, when Drew Preston, a worldly woman of twenty-one, says,” Let’s go for a picnic….” Billy is flummoxed. He has no choice but to go on because Preston is the […] read more

John Ruskin was introduced to Turner’s works when his father gifted him with the watercolor painting Richmond Hill and Bridge, Surrey (1828). According to the British Museum, the original title of the painting was  Richmond Hill and Bridge, with a Picnic Party. But it was subsequently shortened, and the Picnic Party dropped. In 1878, an […] read more