EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Charles turns down Buckingham Palace thermostats

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Alarm bells ring in the art world as King Charles turns down the Buckingham Palace thermostats to 19C – two degrees lower than the recommended level for paintings

Alarm bells ring in the art world as King Charles turns down Buckingham Palace thermostats to 19C – two degrees below the recommended level for paintings like the late Queen’s favourite, Rembrandt’s The Shipbuilder and his Wife. 

Along with Vermeer’s Lady at the Virginals and Rubens’s Milkmaids, they are in the process of being re-hung as rooms come back into use after refurbishment. 

Curators calculate 21-24C is the optimum temperature for keeping paintings at their best, with damage likely if temperatures are kept too high or too cold. 

Surely the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures would know that? Alas, that post was axed in 2020.

Alarm bells ring in the art world as King Charles turns down Buckingham Palace thermostats to 19C – two degrees below the recommended level for paintings like the late Queen’s favourite, Rembrandt’s The Shipbuilder and his Wife

Girls might soon be admitted to Eton if women’s rights campaigner Dame Helena Morrissey succeeds Lord Waldegrave as Provost. 

An Eton fellow and parent of old Etonians (she has three sons and six daughters), Helena’s book A Good Time to be a Girl advocates women’s advancement. 

Should she succeed, Eton will have to do better than the time in the 70s when girls from a nearby school were admitted to Eton to prepare for Oxbridge. 

With no ladies’ toilets, the girls had to trek off at designated times to use the facilities at the Theatre Royal in Windsor.

Girls might soon be admitted to Eton if women’s rights campaigner Dame Helena Morrissey (pictured) succeeds Lord Waldegrave as Provost

Awa with the fairies conspiracy theorist Louis Theroux frets that Nicholas Witchell, pictured, has been burying evidence of his youthful interest in the Loch Ness Monster and, bizarrely, links the BBC royal correspondent with David Icke’s daft theory that the Royal Family are reptiles. ‘Is this a deep cover project where Witchell is like an Ickean and he’s actually on a kind of reptile-hunting mission taking decades to infiltrate the BBC in order to get close?’ asks Theroux. Nicholas, busy running the Normandy Memorial Trust for next year’s 80th anniversary of D-Day, has nothing to hide about his Nessie past. ‘I long ago came to the conclusion that there’s nothing there,’ he tells me.

Awa with the fairies conspiracy theorist Louis Theroux frets that Nicholas Witchell (pictured),  has been burying evidence of his youthful interest in the Loch Ness Monster and, bizarrely, links the BBC royal correspondent with David Icke’s daft theory that the Royal Family are reptiles

Fifty Shades of Grey writer E.L. James’s vast royalties rendered fellow scribbler Julie Burchill jealous, as she notes in a Spectator review of E.L.’s latest book The Missus: ‘She is set for life from her decades acting as the chief pornographer to the Boden set. In more than 40 years of reviewing books, I don’t think I’ve ever read one quite this bad,’ adding: ‘I’m pleased to report I am no longer the tiniest bit envious.’ Miaow! 

George Osborne’s comparison of Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant with a ‘pantomime dame’ prompted Bryant to seek an apology, raging: ‘Homophobic or just nasty?’ But when Hugh Grant praises his new book about ‘fixing’ Parliament, cheekily tweeting ‘Dame Chris always worth reading’, Bryant mewls: ‘There is nothing like a dame.’ Fancy!

Ex-Oasis warbler Noel Gallagher tells Jools Holland about a boozy Caribbean holiday encounter with Keith Richards, when the Rolling Stone asked: ‘Who is the bigger c***, your lead singer or mine?’ Referring to Mick Jagger, Noel replied: ‘Your singer wrote some of the best lyrics of all time.’ So where does that leave brother Liam?

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