Lord Hall of Birkenhead, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, chairman of the Cultural Olympiad and Deputy Mayor of the Olympic Village, is just emerging from what was surely the busiest, strangest, dizziest, most exhilarating month of his life.
If ever a man could be forgiven for sneaking off for a long hungover snooze at the back of the dress circle it is now. Instead he means to seize the moment to put culture at the heart of post-Olympic Britain.
Lord Hall (Tony to his friends and the Opera House staff) wants to create a pop-up “people’s Glyndebourne” in the Olympic Park when it reopens. He wants a permanent “London Biennale” and says that Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, has already asked him to