Whichever flag you wave, there’s no question the new king, Charles III, will be waving his flag for the arts. A cello player, Charles is a talented watercolourist (he once got a painting into the Royal Academy summer exhibition under a different name), wrote and illustrated a children’s book, The Old Man of Lochnagar, and is pretty much a culture vulture.
Not only that, he has asked a group of Methody girl choristers to join the Westminster Abbey choir and belt out some great numbers during the coronation service. They’ll be joining an elite group, including one Keith Richards (yes, the Rolling Stone) who aged nine sang at the Queen’s coronation.
As Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle, who knows the king, put it, noting his support for her organisation that works to preserve Belfast’s built environment: “We met when he opened Christ Church, a repurposed building in College Square, now creatively used by Inst. His enthusiasm for the arts will definitely make a difference.”
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Everyone’s agreed that Owen McCafferty’s dramatic account of the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago, which has sold out at the Lyric theatre, is a hit. And important; it was even attended by one of the key players, Senator George Mitchell who received a standing ovation.
But what of the other memorial GFA offerings? At Ulster University there is a video installation by Amanda Dunsmore, AGREEMENT, showing Mo Mowlam and 13 other key figures in footage of the time. It is illuminating and reminds one of the trickiness of the situation at the time.
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Talking of hot tickets, over in London I caught Betty Blue Eyes, the musical adaptation of Alan Bennett’s film with Michael Palin and a pig kept for bacon during the Second World War. Sixteenth part Irish Kasper Cornish produced great choreography. This affectionate parody of the Hollywood musical also featured 12-year-old Coco Bennett, my great niece (in both senses) as the truculent daughter, Veronica Allardyce. I remember one flag day at primary school, she took the Irish tricolour, saying because I’m married to an Ulsterman, she was Irish too.
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Creatives heading for the Edinburgh Festival are preparing now. Richard Clements, actor and dramatist behind the superbly moving How to Bury a Dead Mule, which showed here last year, has booked his place.
“I have the pre-lunch slot, before 12, which is good. Later on you want comedy," he tells me.
A five-star production, now forward lit, it should go down rather well.
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I am so enjoying uber-dark Blue Lights by genius partnership Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson. “Remember your training, Grace, get the rifle.” Well, yes.
