The annual dinner is the highlight of the RA’s year, an opportunity to celebrate the annual exhibition, for the RAs and the art world more generally to sport their plumage.   This year the speaker was Mervyn King, who is not only a former Governor of the Bank of England, but also a former Trustee of the National Gallery.   He spoke of the democracy of the annual exhibition in encouraging new collectors into the field and of the work of Tom Monnington in reviving the fortunes of the RA, as well as painting murals for the Bank of England.   The most moving fact of the evening was that El Anatsui, a new Honorary RA, had come over especially from Nigeria for the evening.

Today was non-members varnishing day, when those who have entered the Summer Exhibition come to see where their works have been hung.   It begins with a church service when we stop the traffic, process down Piccadilly led by a steel band, and attend a church service in St. James’s.   It must be one of the more secular occasions of the church year, conducted with vim by Lucy Winkett.   Then everyone goes back to the RA to eat strawberries, judge the hang, and hear who has won the prizes.

I went to the prizegiving for the Wolfson Prize for History tonight, which I have been going to nearly every year for the last twenty.   I like to go in order to find out what historians have been writing, at least the good ones;  and as a mark of respect to Leonard Wolfson, who was an extraordinarily knowledgeable and enthusiastic reader of twentieth-century history.   I once walked him round the twentieth-century gallery of the National Portrait Gallery.   He knew gigantically much more about every single sitter, particularly the politicians and generals, than I did.  I enjoy the dryness of the occasion, the presumption that no-one in London ever bothers to read a book.   This year the prize went to two books, The Red Fortress by Catherine Merridale, about the Kremlin, and a book about the archaeology of the Mediterranean, The Making of the Mediterranean Sea by Cyprian Broodbank.

I was asked to give a speech at the Fine Art Society to mark the foundation of the Whistler Society.   The reason I was asked was because he was never made an RA.   Why ?  He himself was keen.   He started exhibiting his engravings in the annual exhibition in 1859.   This was how his work came to public notice.   In 1864, he exhibited four works – The Scarf, Old Battersea Bridge, The Golden Screen and The little White Girl.   He was sufficiently confident of his abilities to put himself forward as a candidate.   But when, on 8 May 1866, six elections were held, Whistler received not a single vote.   Why ?  Too cocky ?  Too American ?  Wrong style of painting ?  He wrote to complain.   His biographer says that ‘to the day of his death he would have accepted membership’.

I have spent the day celebrating my sixtieth birthday.   I was born exactly sixty years ago today in the Old Vicarage in Redlynch near Salisbury.   Early in the day, I was given some bright red, calf length socks, maroon braces, a book about Paul Smith and some cup cakes with pictures of me on them.   In some ways, it was an ordinary day, starting at 8am with a fundraising catch-up, a strategy meeting in the second half of the morning, interviews in the afternoon.   At lunch, I celebrated a new three-year partnership with BNY Mellon.   Now I’ve got my bus pass.

Mention of Johann Christian Bach reminds me that we should be celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s visit to London (maybe others already are).   He arrived on 23 April 1764 with his father, mother, and older sister, Maria Anna.   They took lodgings over a barber’s shop in Cecil Court.   He was already known across Europe as a prodigy, had proposed marriage to the young Marie Antoinette, met Goethe in Frankfurt, and been introduced to Madame de Pompadour in Versailles.   I like to think that Reynolds might have passed him in Frith Street (or Filth Street as it was then called).