This year's Edinburgh festival suggested that the new National Theatre of Scotland, (NTS), an informally arranged agency with no building and a modest operating budget of just £4m a year, might not be such a bad idea after all. Two Scottish plays emerged as the hits of the festival: Gregory Burke's Black Watch, a dramatic biography of the famous regiment; and Realism, Anthony Nielson's day in the life of a fat slob. Both writers are established figures, but the NTS is still a genuine sign of a new movement afoot. This would include contemporaries David Greig, David Harrower and Zinnie Harris, and older hands like John Byrne and Liz Lochhead. If the NTS is able to make a difference to the landscape of British playwrighting, it will also have proved that a new type of institution can work.
Chirac's second museum
How many museums can one man have? While Jacques Chirac's museum of "primitive art" in Paris does record business, the rascal has a second one tucked away in the depths of France profonde. Known modestly as Le Musée du président Jacques Chirac, it was purpose-built to house his presents. And because there are so many, 5,000 and growing, a new wing will be opened in October.
The museum is in Sarran (pop 300) in the Corrèze, the brainchild of the deputy mayor, aka the Princess of Andorra, Bernadette Chirac, the president's wife. It looks like a treasure trove accumulated over generations by a dynasty of rapacious sultans, but has been amassed in a single, admittedly long, life in modern politics. Scores of beautifully displayed carpets, paintings, furniture, diadems, hundreds of deluxe watches, Tiffany crystal, a vast table-setting. What were these gifts intended to procure? "Oh, it's stuff emirs give us," Madame Chirac confides. "I couldn't possibly live like that." She strides on, the temple virgin, keeping bright the flame lit for that brilliant young man she met over half a century ago at the Sciences Po.
The special exhibitions rival anything in Paris. The current "Art Deco Kimonos" is stunning, with a sideshow of 1920s photographs and a season of Japanese films.
Filling Kofi Annan's shoes
America's man at the UN, John Bolton, is a pretty conservative chap, so it was surprising to hear him complain that the shortlist of candidates to succeed Kofi Annan, who steps down at the end of the year, included no women. The Bush administration is less than thrilled with the current (at the time of writing) crop of candidates. Initial support for former Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski, presently shoring up his Washington contacts with a teaching post at Georgetown University, foundered on the near-certainty of Russian objections and outrage among the Asians, who say it is their turn. There is a big Arab push to get Bush to back a new candidate, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Hussein, Jordan's much-liked ambassador to the UN, who would be the first Muslim to get the job. But the Bushies may not be enthused about Zeid's background in UN peacekeeping and his effectiveness in getting the international criminal court off the ground. Hence Bolton's remarks about a woman. The US is floating the candidacy of Singapore's awesomely efficient ambassador to Washington for the past ten years, Chan Heng Chee, a former academic who has also run Singapore's top think tanks.
What union?
Despite Gordon Brown's Britishness enthusiasm, it seems neither London nor Edinburgh is planning much —other than a commemorative £2 coin—to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union next May. The trouble is that it falls in the middle of the elections to the Scottish parliament, and Labour strategists believe that too much stress on this most successful of unions will only benefit the SNP. The British Museum, created as a symbol of the union, is not pleased.
New Republic
When the New Republic, the US politics and arts magazine, signed up the controversial critic Lee Siegel to write a culture blog, it was presumably expecting the sparks to fly. And so they did—Siegel was recently rumbled writing comments to his own posts under an assumed name. "Sprezzatura" bravely took on other commenters who attacked Siegel, with comments like, "Siegel is brave, brilliant and witty… take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep."
Tattoos for intellectuals
It has come to our attention that Prospect's cinema critic, Mark Cousins, has a tattoo—of Walter Benjamin. Could this be part of a new trend? Is there a little-noticed phenomenon of brawny bodies being emblazoned with old Jacques Derridas or young Susan Sontags? Prospect wants to hear from you. Send in a photo of your best intellectual tattoo and win a new session at the parlour, plus a mystery prize. Remain in the closet no longer. Be proud of your pretension.
