It isn’t my intention to repeat the tediously familiar stories peddled by obituarists relating controversies which Brian’s inclination to mischief and provocation helped encourage. Instead I want to address two issues unconsidered elsewhere: his astonishing generosity and the disgraceful but typical hypocrisy of the BBC towards him. Brian was a working man. He called himself ‘working class’, a description some […]

…by the frivolity and lack of ambition and academic rigour in the 2014 Reith Lectures. Immediately after his predictably rapturous greeting at the first performance, Grayson Perry raised the question of why he was asked to give this year’s Reith Lectures. Well, for the first time in their sixty-six years, they were to be given by a “visual artist”. Could […]

Two months ago, having been criticised for their useless visual arts coverage, which tends to be levelled at children and others of grotesque collective ignorance, the BBC promised us a raft of excellent arts programmes. Perhaps things were looking up. One of these has now hit the screen … with a splat. The organisation has clearly learned nothing from the […]

My word what a revelation Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New has been second time around. It was pretty good when first aired all those lifetimes ago in 1980. The fourth episode, it had Utopia in the title, reviewing the history of trendy architecture in the 20th century, was the best television about art for decades. It was alive […]