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Last Night European Union flag-waving once again provided meat to newspaper columnists and correspondents. Post-Brexit restrictions on freedom of movement around the EU continue to hamper work opportunities for British musicians. The singers, conductors, instrumentalists and promoters I have spoken to are delighted that the new shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, has promised to fight for a visa waiver scheme for touring artists. There have been 12 Conservative culture secretaries in 13 years, some more passionate about their brief than others – but this succession of quick cast changes has hardly offered a ringing endorsement of the party’s belief in the importance of the arts. The appointment of Debbonaire, a cellist who studied at Chetham’s – Manchester’s prestigious music school – and the Royal College of Music, suggests there may be a more sympathetic response to those working in the arts should Labour be elected to power.
Britain is still a member of the European Broadcasting Union. The Geneva-based organisation may be best known for the Eurovision Song Contest, but sharing classical music programmes between public broadcasters is another of its roles. Before the Last Night went on air, my co-presenter Georgia Mann and I briefed commentators from Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia and Estonia on what to expect. Fourteen European nations carried the celebrations live, with many more catching up since. It goes out in Australia on Sunday, with broadcasts to follow in America and New Zealand. Radio as cultural diplomacy, and the Proms’ bounds set wider still and wider, to re-order A.C. Benson’s words to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.
News that chairs used at the coronation were to be auctioned this week with an estimate of up £4,000 a pair has made me particularly gleeful. At a recent supper party my friend Robin got so carried away telling an anecdote that his chair collapsed under him, prompting me to review seating provision in my flat. On a visit to an antique shop in Semley, Wiltshire, I found what I needed – a set of six late-Victorian chairs, compact, robust and recently re-covered in elegant red tweed. I assumed the price – £70 – was per chair, but it turned out to be for all six. Less than £12 a chair, compared with £50 for the cheapest equivalent at Ikea. I managed to fit four of them into the surprisingly capacious Fiat 500 I had hired for the weekend; the other pair rest in a friend’s garage in Wincanton, awaiting my next journey down the A303. It is inexplicable that what the antiques trade calls ‘brown furniture’ is so unloved.
My Radio 3 Breakfast show will be on the road in Northern Ireland this week. Our summer travels started in 2019 when we traced the river Severn from its source at Plynlimon to the Bristol Channel. Yorkshire rivers and a coast-to-coast journey across the Scottish Highlands followed. With musicians playing outdoors, poets reading their work and the sound of birds, animals, wind and water, we attempt to paint a sound picture of each location. The strange noises captured by our hydrophone, an underwater microphone, always seem to get the most attention. This week I’ll be gently lowering it into five loughs, as we journey from the Irish Sea to the Atlantic, with visits to Carlingford, Strangford, Neagh, Upper Lough Erne and Foyle. Expect harps, fiddles, pipes, bodhrans, brent geese and wild eels along the way.
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