We last met in leafy Tervuren Park on the outskirts of Brussels when we were both going through a difficult period. Henrietta had lost her mother and was struggling with ill health that no one could quite diagnose.
I had lost a sister and a son in a matter of months. We walked and talked it out.
In typical fashion, Henrietta was full of ideas for future projects. She had been offered an all-expenses-paid assignment to cover Flemish culture, and planned to spend more time in Belgium. She had a friend in Ukraine and fancied travelling by train across Europe through Poland and on to Kyiv to report on the war.
As her publisher, I said I’d love to see her in Brussels more often, and we’d gladly publish more of her arts reviews and travelogues. But despite our publication’s name, I couldn’t possibly sanction her putting herself in harm’s way in a war zone.
Of course, I knew that Henrietta had covered the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. She wrote about it in her theatre showcase piece Learning from Pristina, and again in A Tale of Two Proms – when she described dancing at the Royal Albert Hall’s Disco Prom as “the best fun I’ve had with my clothes on…” only to be transported back to an altogether different disco experience as a war reporter:
“When I worked as a journalist in the former Yugoslavia, there were a number of us, including Kofi Annan, Chris Gunness, the official UN spokesman and other less august colleagues, including me, who would meet every Sunday afternoon, when possible, at Nana from Ghana’s apartment in beautiful downtown Zagreb for a much-needed disco jump. War is awful and relentless, even if you are a lowly correspondent, and it is not your fight. After a while, seeing the complete devastation of a people and a culture becomes too much to handle. So, for a few hours a week, escaping into the disco was a necessary relief to keep body and soul together. Much more potent than alcohol, drugs, or meaningless sex. Nothing is better than a boogie with a force commander or UN High Representative.”
And there you have it. Henrietta’s unique ability to take her audience with her, through dance, music, drama, painting, knitting, you name it, to a connecting, human experience.
It’s something we had discussed early on, when Henrietta first approached me about writing for The Battleground. I explained that as a progressive politics and culture publication, we like to provide a human touch and write from a personal perspective. We also use our own images.
Henrietta replied somewhat emotionally, “I need to write.” She’d just lost her father, who she was evidently very close to, and wanted to get back into a work routine. I jumped at the opportunity.
Someone of Henrietta’s journalistic pedigree was a rare find – an arts film producer who had worked for the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, and covered Russia and the former Yugoslavia. Those are tough beats that distinguish any journalist who works on them. We were delighted to have her on board.
A steady stream of creative ideas and culture reviews flowed from Henrietta. It was like the floodgates had opened. She would scan the UK art scene for interesting new exhibitions. Thanks to her reputation and contacts, she received invites to all the latest openings, including in Europe. She often grouped them into thematic reviews, comparing and contrasting works that illuminate the human condition.
Henrietta described exhibitions and installations exactly as if you were standing there, observing and experiencing the artworks for yourself. She would place them in a broader cultural context, comparing them with other performances and even genres to make the work accessible to a broader audience. But most importantly, she never took herself or the work she is critiquing too seriously.
In fact, every review contains a moment of humour, and quite often hilarity, that catches the reader off guard. They will make you laugh out loud when you least expect it. Usually understated and cloaked in elegant prose, the reader has to pause to register whether they read the words correctly.
I often found that an involuntary snigger would turn into a fit of giggles as Henrietta’s delightful irreverence struck home. I loved that about her writing and her character.
Even now, as I read back through Henrietta’s reviews of concerts, opera, museums, galleries, theatre plays, art exhibitions, books, cultural festivals, and more, I find myself rediscovering those hidden gems and laughing anew.
From evoking Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina-scented candles in Sex and the Gallery to the feminisation of history according to “disgraced British TV historian David Starkey” in Fake is the New Real, Henrietta’s raised eyebrow and ironic tone are unmistakable.
Henrietta could be bitingly critical, but she also showed care in her treatment of sensitive subjects. In her trip to the Sholem Asch Festival in Kutno After the Holocaust, her description of the meagre yet meaningful remnants of Yiddish heritage is made all the more poignant as we see them through the eyes of her Jewish travel companions.
In her comparison of works of opera and photography in Art Against Racism, she is clear-eyed: “The last production of the season at the English National Opera illustrated the whole point about racism and grief … That prejudice in its many forms is universal and we are all vulnerable. That the ensuing grief is corrosive and relentless.”
It is extremely powerful to read her interpretation of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Henrietta didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she was the first to appreciate the love of art in others, even if she didn’t share their particular enthusiasm. We see this in Art is Touching, where she recounts a press tour of the Sainsbury Art Collection at the University of East Anglia.
Despite not quite being able to suspend her disbelief as instructed by the experimental curator, Henrietta managed to convey his enthusiasm whilst poking gentle fun with her visually descriptive humour:
“A tall, very English boyish man in his mid-forties decked out in school uniform navy blue with a blonde Tintin-like quiff…He believes the truth that art is not frozen, and anyone who thinks that they cannot touch art does not understand it. Cue a lot of sculpture hugging and tears from my fellow hacks. I touched it tentatively with my index finger and felt, if anything, rather guilty.”
And in a later, somewhat darker passage, with a twist of British TV humour at the end:
“Art can help you understand the ageing process and, indeed, the dying process as well. This is highlighted by the final object on the guide – Monumental Jar VII by Julian Stair.
Stair has held death cafes in the Sainsbury Centre where members of the public discuss their thoughts about death and have even been persuaded to donate their mortal remains to Stair so that he can use them in his artworks. The ashes of one of Stair’s cafe friends have been mixed with the clay of this jar. A sort of Great British Wake Off.”
It’s now that I remember we first met to plan Henrietta’s journalism over a beer in the rather ominously named A La Mort Subite – an oak-panelled bar in the centre of Brussels, famous for being frequented by Jacques Brel and other artists.
On other occasions, we chatted over Dame Blanche dessert at Brussels’ BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, met for English tea and cake in The National Gallery, London, tried Georgian pastries in her native Notting Hill bakery and risked Indian takeaway on Hounslow High Street, watching performance art curated by Watermans Arts Centre.
We planned a road trip to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the Yorkshire home of the Brontë sisters, whose books had inspired us both, and to explore chateaux and stately homes in the Ardennes and Northern France. Henrietta had Belgian relatives and spoke impeccable French.
We didn’t get to make those trips. But we did get to imagine them, and perhaps most importantly, we all got to enjoy Henrietta’s infectious appreciation of art.
Henrietta Foster bequeathed us a treasure trove. And she opened a door into the world of culture for others to walk through.
We are eternally grateful for the legacy and the laughter that she left us.
Henrietta Foster’s art and culture reviews for The Battleground are available here.
Natalie Sarkic-Todd is the publisher of The Battleground. Photograph courtesy of Henrietta Foster. All rights reserved.
