Diary – 12 October 2017

I used to long for mid-October when I could say goodbye to the hot rooms, cold buffets, and warm white wine of party conference season. But ever since I swapped politics for the world of museums, I have happily rediscovered those autumnal weeks of blackberries, spider webs and London returning to life after summer. At the V&A, we opened our new opera exhibition, tracing the art form’s development from Monteverdi’s Venice to Shostakovich’s Moscow. At the British Museum, the Scythians have been reviving the art of ancient Siberia. And around the capital, Frieze Art Fair has been drawing the world’s aesthetes to London. What we don’t yet know is how Brexit will affect this cultural leadership. Any bureaucratic hurdles to borrowing artefacts from the Continent, paying VAT for purchases in the European Union, or limiting the curatorial talent able to work here could badly damage our future creative capacity.

Someone else wrestling with Brexit is our Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Luckily, amid all that long-form non-fiction essay writing, he can retreat to Chevening House. As director of the V&A, I am privileged to be a trustee of this Sevenoaks jewel, gifted to the nation by the Stanhope family for the use of government ministers. It is here that our leaders and officials gather to thrash out the myriad complexities of exiting the European Union. Yet what V&A curators Julius Bryant and Angus Patterson have discovered is that dominating the house’s entrance hall, up the freestanding staircase, is a suit of armour that belonged to Alonso Perez de Guzman, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia and, er, the commander of the Spanish Armada. As Brexit Britain seeks to rediscover the bounteous, buccaneering days of Good Queen Bess liberated from the shackles of Europe, a dreadful spectre of Continental revenge is standing at the top of the stairs.