When I went to school in Wakefield in Yorkshire in the 60s, our art teacher would regularly take us across the road to the modest residential house that served as the Wakefield Art Gallery. There were very few rooms, no visitors apart from us, and I can’t remember much that was in there apart from a couple of reclining figures by a local boy, and some ceramics by a local girl. The former was Henry Moore and the latter Barbara Hepworth. Nobody made much of the extraordinary fact that the two greatest British sculptors of the century both came from this patch of the West Riding with very little previous in terms of world famous art. Nobody went in for bragging about culture. It was assumed that most culture came from London.
In his Sunday Feature: Step Inside – A 21st Century Gallery Guide (Sunday, 6.45pm, Radio 3) Paul Morley visits the gleaming new Hepworth Wakefield as well as the Liverpool Tate, the Manchester Whitworth and the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, where as a lad he first grappled with the key dilemma of the would-be aficionado – have I stood in front of this one long enough? This anxiety about not doing the right thing or somehow not “getting it” seems particularly northern and Morley is not one to avoid such an issue. Indeed, he dives straight in and enjoys himself with it, asking two middle-aged ladies in the Hepworth what they think of the exhibits. Not much, it turns out. But surely they must be impressed with the splendid building? Not really. Well, will you be coming back then? Oh, of course. That’s the new civic pride for you.
In the first of a new series of Chain Reaction (Wednesday, 6.30pm, Radio 4) Ed Byrne talks to Al Murray, who confesses that he’s never actually read the novel Vanity Fair, even though it was written by his distinguished ancestor William Thackeray. The fabulous Katherine Whitehorn is the guest on Private Passions (Sunday, 12noon, Radio 3). She has the kind of speaking voice that suggests that there might actually be benefits to being a long-term smoker and always has something worth saying. Her choices include Sibelius, Chopin, Mozart and one of the few songs that she and her late husband Gavin Lyall could agree on. While on the subject of stayers, the great Bernard Cribbins is the guest of Russell Davies (Monday, 11pm, Radio 2), talking about a career that has encompassed everything from Hitchcock’s Frenzy to the Wombles, Fawlty Towers and comic pop masterpiece Right Said Fred. Cribbins should be conveyed around in a sedan chair for services to culture.
All week Classic FM presents what it calls its American Road Trip (Weekdays, 8pm, Classic FM), with recorded concerts each evening from major American cities. This begins on Monday with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a programme of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. As the week progresses the notional tour takes in performances from the major orchestras in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York.
On Tuesday 5 Live Sport (6.30pm, Radio 5 Live) has commentary on Arsenal v Barcelona in the Champions League. The following night Manchester City travel to Dynamo Kiev. In these matches we will be encouraged to root for the British teams even though the standard football fan, having a master’s in schadenfreude, wants nothing more than to see the Premier League teams go out of the competition, preferably in the most ignominious fashion. You feel there ought to be a commentary to reflect this.
