Royal Festival Hall re-opens
The Royal Festival Hall re-opened with a week end of free arts which attracted 250,000 visitors, followed by a gala concert which attracted rather fewer - in fact, amazingly, the Hall must have been a quarter empty. The Evening Standard has already commented that the Duke of Kent sat in the stalls while Lord Hollick sat in the Royal Box. More amusingly, the chairman of the Arts Council was sat next to Stephen Timms, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They must have had an interesting discussion on Gordon Brown’s planned arts cuts.