Queeny But Highbrow Interview Of The Week: Simon Schama Does Neil MacGregor

FT Weekend Magazine, of course.

Neil's epic new series, Germany: Memories Of A Nation, starts on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday October 1st.

Fagburn Awards 27: Queen Of The Year

Neil MacGregor.
The wonderfully erudite director of the British Museum and writer and presenter of A History Of The World In 100 Objects.
The best radio programme in the history of the world - which involves illuminating yet wrily amusing comments about Roman Art and pederasty.
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

A History Of The World: 97

Today the endlessly fascinating BBC Radio 4 series, A History of the World in 100 Objects did number 97 a 1966 drawing by David Hockney, In A Dull Village.
It's worth the licence fee itself etc etc.
Neil MacGregor was speaking from the heart, and fessed up that a key subtext to his history was sex and the world's changing attitudes towards it.
Fagburn was really moved by today's programme.
Thank you, Neil.

A History Of The World in 100 Objects: Painting On The Radio

Now I don't care about you, but the cultural highlight of this month for Fagburn is the final countdown of the BBC Radio 4 series, A History of the World in 100 Objects.
We know that straight in at number 97 is this 1966 drawing by David Hockney, In A Dull Village.
Series curator/presenter and British Museum Director, that wonderfully erudite old queen, Neil MacGregor writes: “We have no idea whether the relationship between the two men is recent or of long standing, but at first sight this looks like a calm and entirely satisfactory morning after.”
Steady on!
The image he explains “was shocking for many then, and still is for some today. It raises perplexing questions about what societies find acceptable or unacceptable about the limits of tolerance and individual freedom”.
MacGregor has already chosen such phallic relics as the Taino Ritual Seat (65), homoerotic/pederotic artifacts as The Warren Cup (36), and some of your actual gay iconography, including a coin showing Alexander The Great (31), and a head of Emperor Augustus (35).
Object number 99 is the credit card.
The 100th object will be unveiled on October 14th.
My money's on a cockring.

Neil MacGregor: "Male Genitalia"

Britain's most erudite old queen, Neil MacGregor, has found another excuse to talk about "male genitalia" on his A History Of The World in 100 Objects.
Today it's the Taino Ritual Seat.
You can hear it here as soon as the BBC sorts its website out.
It's here now!
It wasn't as good as his piece on the delightful pederastic pornography that is The Warren Cup, but you can't have everything.
It's for moments like this that I listen to Radio 4 all day.
I can't wait for Neil to get to the present day and talk sagely about a Bel AMi DVD or something.
Well done Neil, you lovable old ponce!