Culture

Deans are a strange breed. Growing up in the Church of England, I met a wide range, their cultural tastes embracing everything from Chagall to In Bed with Madonna. In 2003, I didn’t know what appealed to the then Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, John Moses, but in April of that year it suddenly became crucial. I was proposing that St Paul’s commission the artist Bill Viola — dubbed by some the Rembrandt of the video age — to create a work for the cathedral. Since Moses had never heard of Viola and I didn’t work in the visual-arts world, it seemed a far-fetched proposition. Yet I was in no doubt that it should happen.

Earlier this year, I sat down and watched Kenneth Clark’s groundbreaking TV series Civilisation. I vaguely remember when it was first screened in 1969, but was too young to appreciate it properly. This time around it made splendid Sunday afternoon viewing: Clark’s distinctive blend of authority and humour, his ability to convey information and enthusiasm without the slightest trace of condescension, coupled with effective camerawork and good editing, make a rich and stimulating brew of word, image and music. The series, which was commissioned by David Attenborough and brilliantly directed by Michael Gill, established a model for all subsequent arts documentaries. Not only did I learn a lot from its 13 episodes, I also enjoyed it enormously as entertainment.

It’s rare for the public to be given access to the Royal Archives. They are housed in the forbidding Round Tower at Windsor Castle, and direct contact with them is normally reserved for erudite academics adept at buttering up the Keeper. With about two million documents relating to 700 years of the British monarchy, it is quite the trove. To celebrate the centenary of the creation of the archive, a few pieces have been put on display. Treasures from the Royal Archives (until 25 January 2015) is a bijou blend of the cheerful and the solemn. A young Princess Elizabeth captures her parents’ coronation in 1937, writing that she thought it ‘very, very wonderful’ and that she expected ‘the Abbey did too’.

Lynn Chadwick was born 100 years ago in London, and died in 2003 at his Gloucestershire home, Lypiatt Park, where he is buried in the Pinetum. He was one of the great names of 20th-century sculpture, not just in England but recognised and celebrated internationally, too. He first came to prominence in the 1950s, and the aura of that decade clung to him for the remainder of his career. He was included in the 1952 Venice Biennale with seven other sculptors (including Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler and Eduardo Paolozzi), when Herbert Read coined the phrase ‘geometry of fear’ to describe their work. In conjuring up this postwar angst, Read spoke of an ‘iconography of despair’ and ‘collective guilt’.

I watched the new DVD of Gregory’s Girl on the train from London up to Edinburgh. I hadn’t seen Bill Forsyth’s school-yard comedy in more than 30 years. Incredibly, it hasn’t dated in the slightest. When I saw it in the cinema, in 1981, as an acne-ridden adolescent, this tender romance was a revelation — for me, and millions like me. Funny yet heartfelt, it was that rare and precious thing — a rite of passage movie that was neither patronising nor pretentious. Half a lifetime later, Gregory’s Girl still rings true. A reticent, retiring man, Forsyth doesn’t do many interviews, but to promote this new DVD he’s agreed to meet amid the serene splendour of Edinburgh’s Museum of Modern Art.

Tracey Emin’s bed is to be sold at auction this summer with a guide price of £800,000 to £1.2 million, although the man who sold it to Charles Saatchi has said it’s priceless. Emin was part of the British art movement in the ‘90s that gave Richard Dorment trouble at dinner parties; this scene is an occupational hazard of being an art critic, he said. ‘The beautiful person I'm sitting next to has bluntly informed me that modern art is rubbish. We're only on the soup, and a long evening stretches ahead. Whether or not we round this dangerous corner depends on my neighbour's tone of voice, which can range from raw aggression to lively interest. If it is confrontation she is after, the rule is: change the subject as fast as possible.