Proms notebook

The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always plenty of missionary work to do, for the world will never run short of grouches.

The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always plenty of missionary work to do, for the world will never run short of grouches. Perhaps, like Sir Harold Acton in his Tuscan grotto, who loved to ‘hunt philistines’, we should trap the blighters in cages and force them to listen to lashings of Beethoven and Wagner until they recant. Step forward, if you will, Miss Lynsey Hanley. Miss Hanley recently contributed a well-meaning but ultimately silly piece to the Guardian about the place of high culture in our national life. ‘When we talk about a cultured person,’ she said, with rather more certainty than was wise, ‘it’s clear we’re also making an inference based on class.’