Art for money’s sake
Sir: It is hardly surprising that Olivia Cole (‘How to put children off art’, 14 March) found so many schoolchildren in the National Gallery and that they seemed to be learning little about art from their visits. The Gallery, like other public bodies, has a funding agreement with its sponsor department, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The agreement for the current financial year is not on the Gallery’s website but for 2007/8 it was set a target for the number of children aged 15 and under visiting the Gallery in ‘organised educational sessions’, of 105,000, which it exceeded. There is no target for the benefit that the children gain from these visits.
In the agreement the Department states that ‘The National Gallery’s ability to show measurable improvements in service delivery, the achievement of Funding agreement targets and its contribution to the delivery of Government Policies will be factors in the Secretary of State’s decisions on future allocations.’ In other words, get the schoolkids in or we’ll cut your money.
Readers will not be surprised to learn that these funding agreements which seek to manage our national museums and galleries as if they were Soviet factories were introduced at the insistence of Gordon Brown’s Treasury.
Charles Williams
London W8
Inside knowledge
Sir: I was impressed that Charles Moore is able to tell the time, to within 15 minutes, without recourse to a watch (The Spectator’s Notes, 28 February). When I was a jackeroo in Western Australia in the 1960s there was an aboriginal stockman who told me he could do this. If you asked him the time, he’d raise his hat above his head, glance at it, then look at its shadow on the ground. He could then tell you the time to the second. One day while he was asleep under a tree after lunch I had a look at his hat. Inside it was pinned a watch.
James Hughes-Onslow
London SE5
Israel’s terrorists
Sir: Jonathan Mirsky declares himself to be ‘no expert’ in writing about the early days of Israel’s struggle for independence (Books, 14 March). But in these days when everyone and his wife seems to be happily trading half-truths and whole smears about Israel, it is more important than ever to get our perspectives right. Yes, there was a terrorist strain among the Jews in Israel pre-independence. But that situation is not at all comparable to Hamas or its ilk today. The destruction of the King David Hotel (then the British military HQ) was preceded by several tele-phone warnings which were ignored. A simple evacuation would have avoided the dreadful loss of life. But the vital difference is that the Jewish terrorists were the minority and they were fought by the Jewish establishment, under Ben Gurion’s leadership, who turned the guns of the nascent Israeli army on the militants. Hence Jewish terrorism was nipped in the bud. The Gazan government is Hamas. Enough said?
James Inverne
Reading, Berkshire
Marriage à la mode
Sir: Oh dear, oh dear! How could it be that your correspondent Mary, who solves readers’ problems and is such a magnificent arbiter of good taste and manners, should have fallen into such a dreadful error as to go along with the misconception that there is an institution of ‘gay marriage’ (Your problems solved, 7 March). Surely she should have pointed out to her correspondent that there is no such thing as gay marriage.
There is an institution called ‘civil partnership’ but that is not marriage, which can be only between a man and a woman.
Tebbit
House of Lords
London, SW1
A drowsy numbness
Sir: I have long been an admirer of the elegance and scholarship of Allan Massie’s column, and it was therefore with a sense of astonishment probably shared by many other readers that I found him misquoting John Keats’s ‘memorable words’ from the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (Life and Letters, 14 March). To those who have loved this poem since childhood, part of its wonder is the infinitely evocative choice of words; and that is perhaps why ‘now more than ever seems it rich to die’ makes Massie’s ‘sweet to die’ sound strangely flat and banal.
Alan Brooke Turner
Via email
Phillips and the facts
Sir: Melanie Phillips (‘Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists’, 7 March) states that I was present at the meeting last July, at All Nations Christian College, Ware, Hertfordshire, organised by Global Connections and the group Christian Responses to Islam in Britain. I was not there. Facts are sacred in journalism. This is one of many inaccuracies in the article, which were mentioned in letters last week. Global Connections and Christian Responses to Islam in Britain are to be commended for their sensitive work.
Graham Kings
St Mary’s Church, Islington, London N1
Standing ovation
Sir: In her wonderful, hilarious and compulsive new column Standing Room, Sarah Standing seems to have penetrated the part of my brain that concerns itself with the endlessly infuriating minutiae of life. How did she know that the Congestion Charge admin team has reduced me to vales of frustrated tears?
Who told her of my middle-aged terror of being caught out not getting ‘teen-speak’? Was she sitting next to me in the cinema sensing my screaming irritation at the popcorn muncher behind me?
Whatever the source of her sixth sense, I am grateful to know that I am no longer Standing alone in dealing with the infinite variety of life’s challenges.
Juliet Nicolson
Via email
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