Jonathan Sumption

Diary – 30 May 2019

Recording the BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures has brought me to five cities and five styles of questioning. Cardiff had been pungent, positive and intelligent, with a cameo appearance from a belligerent Mark Reckless, who seemed to think that the judges were responsible for the legislative impasse over Brexit. In London, people came armed with prepared speeches about every subject under the sun, followed by the usual ‘Howzat?’. Birmingham was quieter, thoughtful and to the point. Edinburgh was about human rights: plenty of room for confrontation there, but courteous and well-reasoned points from a knowledgeable audience. In Washington the theme was what British politics could learn from the United States (not much in my view). There was curiosity about Brexit, misconceptions about Britain, defensiveness about US politics. The front row was occupied by the usual right-wing thinktanks whose questions came with a curl of the lip and a barely suppressed snarl.

To the Washington National Gallery for the best of the many exhibitions this year marking the 500th anniversary of the Venetian painter Tintoretto. I have always thought him just a bit too gaudy to deserve the plaudits heaped upon him, but I shall keep this to myself for fear of being thought a philistine. The other rooms are a better bet. This is one of only two great national collections in the world to owe their existence to private munificence rather than the accumulations of a defunct monarchy (our own National Gallery is the other). Remarkably, its founder, the banker and industrialist Andrew Mellon, spent much of his fortune on it at a time when he was public enemy no. 1, reviled by Roosevelt as the ‘mastermind among the malefactors of great wealth’ and pursued through the courts on baseless and politically motivated charges of tax fraud.

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