More than men with bells

Those of us who worked at the Arts Council of Great Britain, some 40 years ago, were as often as not introduced, even by our own families, as being at or from ‘the British Arts Council’. In vain did we explain that lumping these two institutions together was utterly inaccurate, that the Arts Council brought art from overseas to Britain while looking after art appreciation and practice in Britain, whereas the British Council promoted British culture abroad. The avoidance of personal publicity was a part of our ethos, but a nadir in our public relations was reached when my friend, colleague and fellow struggler at the Arts Council’s headquarters at 4 St James’s Square was introduced as ‘Mr Colin Anson – from the British Legion’.

Another Arts Council colleague was Joanna Drew, who has just died aged 73. One of the first of many achievements of this unpompous, kind and splendid woman – her mother was a painter, her father a brigadier – was to organise the Arts Council’s great Picasso exhibition at the Tate in 1960, under the leadership of Picasso’s friend, the Surrealist painter Roland Penrose.