For all Alan Bennett’s cosy reputation, there is a darker streak epitomised by the discomforting apologia for pupil groping in The History Boys.

While an artist is under no obligation to be principled and even less so to be politically correct, I was always astonished that nice middle-class audiences were so willing to embrace, apparently unquestioningly, the morally ambivalent hero of Hector (played by Richard Griffiths), a schoolmaster whose inspirational teaching skills seemed so undermined by his propensity to touch up his teenage charges.

I wonder whether Bennett, too, had later doubts about this abuse of authority. For in his new play, The Habit of Art, now at the National Theatre, any such sentiments are given short shrift. WH Auden (as again played by Richard Griffiths) pours scorn on his old friend, the composer Benjamin Britten, when the latter offers the self-serving defence that Thomas Mann’s Aschenbach is seduced by the beauty of the young boy in Death in Venice. Identifying the narrative as that of Britten’s own life, Auden tells his friend in no uncertain terms that he, Britten, was the predator. 

Curiously, a book, Britten’s Children by John Bridcut, a couple of years ago concluded the opposite - that the composer was a repressed puritan innocent, not a pederast. But I suspect Alan Bennett has started the hare of Britten’s tortured sexuality running once more.

The octagenarian impresarios who introduced generations of Russian ballet stars to a mass audience in London have been honoured with one of the top awards in dance.

Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, of Hampstead, were presented with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award for their lifetime contribution to dance in Britain in a ceremony at the Royal Opera House.

The award has been previously given to the choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and dancers Dame Marie Rambert and Dame Ninette de Valois.

Lilian Hochhauser said they were delighted. “I’m not accustomed to receiving awards although we had a very nice one from the Russian embassy.”

Mr Hochhauser, 86, whose family fled the Nazi threat in Slovakia in 1938, fell into music promoting when he was asked to organise a concert for schools when in his early 20s and it proved a huge success.

Within a few years, he had met and married Lilian, whose own parents came to London to escape pogroms in Russia, and they embarked on a career presenting music and dance at venues from the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Opera House.

They first introduced ballet to mass audiences at the now defunct Empress Hall near Earl’s Court with a short-lived London company called the Metropolitan Ballet whose stars included the partnership of Freddie Franklin and Alexandra Danilova as well as Svetlana Beriosova, Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin and Leonid Massine.

But for many, it is their association with the famous Russian companies of the Bolshoi and the Kirov - now known as the Mariinsky - that made them famous, working with stars such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova.

No one had seen the Russians in London until 1956 when the Hochhausers were involved - although not responsible for - the Bolshoi’s first visit on a government to government initiative. “Of course, we were all completely and utterly bowled over,” she said.

They brought the Kirov to London for the first time on its first tour of the West in 1961 - on the trip during which Rudolf Nureyev famously defected -  followed by the Bolshoi again in 1963 on the first of regular UK visits.

Mrs Hochhauser said it was difficult to organise when they started. “Communications are better now. You had to wait for three hours to get a telephone call through to Russia in the early days. And it became easier when we could directly with the companies rather than through the ministry of culture.”

They have continued to present companies from a dozen different countries alongside a classical music programme with performers such as the violinists David and Igor Oistrakh and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and composers including Dmitri Shostakovich.

The couple have no intention of retiring and are bringing the Bolshoi ballet and opera back to the Royal Opera House next year. “And we’ve got plans for the future, they are just not ready for public consumption yet,” she said.

You would think that no one wanted to watch the Ashes from the headlines suggesting that they are being returned to terrestrial television because the Government is cross at Rupert Murdoch and Sky. That is, we are supposed to believe that Gordon Brown and the DCMS are governed chiefly by petulance rather than by the recognition that the Ashes contests have provided two of the most memorable sporting summers of recent years and more of us should have been able to share the experience.

It may amuse mischief-makers to argue that the Government will make the Ashes free-to-air because The Sun was horrid over the Prime Minister’s letter of condolence. But the decision now is a coincidence of timing, not cause and effect. Which is not to say it might not bring a small sliver of a smile to Labour lips.

Footnote - If this seems strange territory for an arts correspondent to enter, I should explain I was once a media correspondent. And I like cricket. More significantly, it was a journalistic accident that the day the DCMS announced its review of the so-called “crown jewels” of sporting events,  I was the person free to write the story. Even then, it was very clear there was momentum behind the Ashes being on the list of protected events that should be available for all to see. Whatever the Government’s issues with Sky, when we all get to watch the Ashes next time round, it really won’t be anything to do with the PM’s handwriting.

If Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw really does want to rally the arts world to stop an incoming Tory government, he really needs to grasp a few essentials.

The first one being the fundamental flaw in this call to arms: “We need a few more luvvies to be jumping up and down about it,” he told a Labour audience, “because that is not happening at the moment. I am trying to provoke them into doing it.”

Not calling potential supporters in the arts world by the dismissive pejorative “luvvies” would be a start. The outside world may laugh at the point, but a Culture Secretary should know that serious professional performers detest the term.

If mayor Boris thinks it is just a question of time before he gets his way over the Arts Council in London, he is in for a bumpy ride. And if he thinks installing his culture adviser Munira Mirza as interim chair, pending the long-term appointment of his chosen candidate Veronica Wadley, he is in for an even greater surprise.

Rarely have I seen such immediate and palpable arts world fury. And they are bedding in to take the fight right to the wire if necessary. For what very senior arts world figures have been shocked to discover is that Boris either does not understand or does not care about the principle that has been the sacred bedrock of arts-government relations since the war - the arm’s length principle that seeks to separate party politics from arts policy.

Many in the arts world were surprised that the mayor had the right to direct the arts in London at all. And of course, he doesn’t really. What, since last year, the rules permit him is the right to nominate the chair of the Arts Council in London. Boris has been stamping his feet ever since the Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw, who rules dictate has to ratify the appointment, refused to accept Ms Wadley, saying the choice was not made in accordance with Nolan principles.

Any interim chair also has to be sanctioned by the Culture Secretary - and it is hard to imagine how a political choice like Ms Mirza could be accepted. Besides, I am being told, a temporary political appointment would be far from satisfactory when the London chair sits on the national Arts Council ruling body which has important budgetary meetings for 2011-2012 as early as next month.

Political machinations have been afoot in the story from the start, for key details of the row appear to have been leaked by from sources close to the Culture Secretary himself. If so, that is hardly to his credit.
But for the last 12 years the Tories have been objecting to the alleged politicisation of the arts and raging that arts bodies have had to dance to a Labour tune of wider access and greater diversity to extract funding. It ill behoves them to ride roughshod through due process now.

It looks like the first shot across the bows of a new class war. The Royal Court announces today that its spring season will include Posh, a play about the type of Old Etonians who belong to Oxbridge dining societies and believe they should rule the world.

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the credit crunch, the question on the collective artworld lips has been: “What will the recession mean for the arts?” The new play from Laura Wade sparks a potentially more interesting political question: “What might the Tories mean for us?” Or - given that the shadow culture team Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey are working hard to answer that one themselves - what will the arts do with the Tories?

No one can fail to see the inspiration for playwright Laura Wade’s investigation even if she insists she is no party political assassin. It is impossible to imagine that five years ago or even a decade the Court would have dedicated its main stage to a bunch of hooray Henrys. But how times have changed.

Next year could see a change of Government where the country is in the hands of former Bullingdon Club members David Cameron and George Osborne (not to forget mayor Boris). If David Hare, a disillusioned Labour supporter, can bring as much discomfort as he has to the Labour party with works such as Gethsemane, a scarcely veiled attack on New Labour corruption and sleaze, think that might happen once the playwrights get going on David and Sam Cam. Tales of Bullingdon-style debauchery might be only the start.

Advising Mayor Boris Johnson must be infuriating. His team had pulled together a sensible if not earth-shatteringly revelatory report on arts and the recession in a bid to garner support for funding the arts in tough times.

They had brought on board Kevin Spacey, director of the Old Vic, Simon Robey, UK head of Morgan Stanley and chairman of the Royal Opera House, and Mark Jones, director of the V&A, to speak at a launch attended by many of the arts world great and good. And Boris torpedoed it.

With the impeccable magpie tendency of a man who picks up ideas rather than concentrates on finessing the fine print, he suggested that London’s museums and galleries might implement voluntary charges as exist in New York -  which he visited last week to promote tourism.

It was a strange intervention, not least as anyone who visits London’s museums cannot but have seen the collecting boxes beseeching donations. Moreover, as a cursory attempt to test the New York system would show, the “voluntary” or “suggested” donation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the American Museum of Natural History is anything but. The moral arm-twisting is heavy, the deterrent factor to the poor considerable.

Boris did not, for the record, advocate abolishing free admission. But museum leaders immediately pointed out the danger of confusing a clear-cut, popular and successful policy, one which has already claimed the scalp of  Hugo Swire when, as shadow culture secretary, he dared suggest charging should be up to the museums themselves.

Most importantly, the idea was a serious diversion from the matter in hand. Around 70 per cent of private investment in the arts in Britain goes to the arts in London but most organisations have seen a fall of support in the last year. It is crucial to maintaining a thriving cultural sector that that investment is encouraged to return.

Simon Robey admitted that outrage at the excesses of the financial industry in the last year or so had shamed many potential supporters into shunning fund-raising corporate hospitality events. Yet what was really needed was for bankers and hedge fund managers to come out en masse and cough up their bonuses in a good cause.

As Spacey argued, the arts is a business and one in which the UK excels. It warrants the serious investment that any serious revenue-generating industry expects. At least some of those behind Boris evidently recognise that. They can see the threat to thousands of jobs if the delicate mixed economy eco-system of arts funding fails. But does he? It is sometimes hard to tell for the quips.

Calling a concert Handel Remixed could be read as an embarrassingly uncool bid to get classical music down with the kidz.
But tonight’s concert, the first in the Great Performers season at the Barbican, presented exactly what it said in the billing – five contemporary composers’ response to the great master played alongside some of Handel’s own music as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations of George Frideric’s death.
I leave it to the critics to review the new work by Nico Muhly, John Tavener, Michael Nyman, Craig Armstrong and Jocelyn Pook, all of whom were sufficiently honoured by the commission to attend last night’s event.
Tavener’s Handel seemed, to me, distinctively Tavener, likewise Nyman, while I warmed to Craig Armstrong for combining Handel with The Communards (lyrics: don’t leave me this way….)
Did any trump the original? Probably not. Was the whole event a delight, none the less? Yes.
Which is a credit to all involved, notably Chester Music publishers whose idea it was and the Barbican for helping make it happen.
Efforts to give classical music a new lease of life can often be hideously misconceived, a failure to trust in either audiences or the music.
But when done intelligently and with style, remixed is a concept to be saluted. Respect!

The Vienna Philharmonic at last night’s Proms were as technically deft and impressive as reputation demands. But they were, I noted, still astonishingly male (and white, but let’s just stick to gender for the time-being).

There was one prominent female violinist and a second non-male was, I was assured, lurking somewhere. But the orchestra notorious for refusing to admit women for generations still strikingly lacks even the diversity we take for normal in the BBC Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.

It was particularly noticeable as the night before, I had been at the opening of the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition of the second winner of the MaxMara Art Prize for Women. The Italians are, like the Austrians, not a nation I would have put in the vanguard of sex equality, a view that Berlusconi’s alleged peccadilloes has done nothing to dispel. But the forward-thinking (and art-loving) family-run fashion firm MaxMara has – with significant support from the Italian ambassador in London, Signor Giancarlo Aragona – founded (with the Whitechapel) and funded this prize intended to find and champion the next generation of Tracey Emins and Rachel Whitereads  in the UK.

It has, largely, managed to avoid the controversy that still occasionally dogs the Orange Prize for women’s fiction, a ridiculous controversy when  the Orange long ago proved itself by profiling fabulous authors overlooked by other awards. But, by the same token, neither has the MaxMara award garnered the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, this year’s winner, 29-year-old Londoner Hannah Rickards, admits her win was invaluable as the prize involves a six-month residency in Italy, buying thinking time it is difficult for young artists to secure –  time which helped create the work now showing in the East End.

The award is an impeccable example of Anglo-Italian relations and, I am sure, an affront to all critics of political correctness who seem to detest any efforts to create a level playing field. But  I suspect that Austria could do with something similar. If they had the gender equality rows in Vienna that are commonplace in the UK and prizes like the MaxMara  to make a difference, isn’t it impossible to imagine that the Vienna Phil wouldn’t look very, very different?

As cultural one-upmanship goes, the battle at the moment chez Jury is a highbrow one. At the weekend, I caught the final part of the Mariinsky’s Ring Cycle at Covent Garden conducted by Valery Gergiev. My beloved, meanwhile, has just returned from Germany where he had been the guest of a friend lucky enough a couple of tickets for Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth and found himself sitting a few rows from Stephen Fry.

The home of Wagner’s Ring, where fans can wait a decade for the chance to attend, has to trump the Russians’ first Cycle in the best part of a century in terms of top tickets. But what has been clear, comparing notes, is neither of us had a top Twilight of the Gods experience.

The design team and director of the Mariinsky Ring were booed in London (though I was glad the Covent Garden shared my approval for Elena Nebera as Gutrune and Mikhail Petrenko as Hagen). Siegfried as well as the designer and director got the verbal kicking in Germany.

My favourite, though, was discovering that even though Bayreuth has a dress code akin to Glyndebourne, it is not delicate picnic hampers that sustain German audiences through Wagner’s epic. It’s bratwurst – sausage – in a bun. Complete with ketchup. Class!