The Week in Arts: Why can't politicians enthuse about the arts?

On New Year's Day, I read the whole of Gordon Brown's lengthy New Year's message. I then read the whole of David Cameron's lengthy New Year's message. I then read Nick Clegg's lengthy New Year's message. In all three of the party leaders' thoughts and hopes for 2008, there was not one single word about culture. No mention of film, theatre, music or television. No, that's not quite true. Nick Clegg did mention television, and the need for government to have a bigger concern about what children watched. But it turned out that he didn't have drama or music in mind. He was talking about advertising.

I certainly don't think that the arts should dominate a New Year message from any of the party leaders. Health, education, crime and the environment are key areas of policy that must be addressed. But can it really be a genuine survey of the state of the nation that leaves out culture altogether?

Culture's absence in the New Year messages touches on a deeper omission, the omission of culture from nearly all of the party leaders' utterances at any time of the year. I'm told that the Prime Minister recently went to see a play at the National Theatre, but asked that his visit be kept private. I wonder if such a request for privacy would be made over a visit to a football match.

There's something very odd, and a little disturbing, that the Prime Minister and his opposite numbers are uncomfortable talking about culture.

Gordon Brown is not alone, of course, in forgetting about the arts in his addresses to the nation. He is not even alone in wanting it kept quiet when he goes to the theatre. I know that Tony Blair also did exactly that.

Indeed, trying to think of a single government figure who regularly talked about the arts in the past few decades, the nearest I can come up with is Norma Major and opera. Come to think of it, Harold Wilson's wife talked about poetry. Come to think of it more, Gordon Brown's wife had a career in the arts, as an arts publicist, and retains an active interest. But is the best we can hope for in cultural advocacy, the enthusiasm of prime ministers' spouses?

The irony, of course, is that this week and any week the arts are a field in which a party leader can boast about Britain doing something well. Rarely has there been such a year full of achievement and innovation across the arts. But it is not just for pragmatic reasons that the party leaders should mention the arts.

Their presence at cultural events and their public advocacy of the arts give a signal that culture is, or should be, an intrinsic part of our everyday lives. It helps to destroy that lingering delusion that there is something elitist about enjoying art.

To my mind, that is actually more important than giving the arts a large, or larger than expected, increase in the public spending review, which Gordon Brown, to his credit, did only a couple of months ago. However, the public does not study the finer details of a public spending review. It does, though, take note of what a Prime Minister says and does.

So let me suggest a New Year's resolution for Gordon Brown: talk regularly and enthusiastically about the arts. Let it be known when you go to the theatre; don't hide it. Include the arts in future New Year messages and, indeed, in future election campaigns. All of that will set you apart from your predecessors.

Salinger, I salute you

The writer J D Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, celebrated his 89th birthday this week. Salinger has not written an original work since 1965, and has not given an interview for 28 years. He is a recluse, and virtually nothing is known about his present-day life. His name usually surfaces only when his lawyers threaten any hopeful investigative journalist who tries to get too near to him.

He is not the only literary recluse. Harper Lee, the 81-year-old author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has not written another book since that classic novel, her only work of literature, was published in 1960. She makes J D Salinger look prolific.

I find it strangely comforting that in the celebrity age, when authors can't wait to get on a chat show or in a newspaper, these two literary titans remain a mystery. So happy birthday, Mr Salinger, wherever you are. Perhaps your 90th will be marked with a new novel and a wide-ranging interview. And perhaps not.

* Channel Five made great play of commissioning Tony Palmer's three-hour documentary on the life of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The publicity it attracted helped Five to be taken more seriously as a genuine player in arts television.

So when did the channel screen this programme? The answer is at 9am on the morning of New Year's Day. That is, to put it mildly, not exactly prime time. The other terrestrial channels were either screening cartoons for the children, or repeats of Friends for those chilling out after a heavy New Year's Eve.

Yes, of course interested viewers could always set the video recorder, but that's not really the point. A channel that really wanted to prove itself seriously interested in culture would have been bold enough to screen such a programme in the evening, or at least in the late afternoon. Showing it in the graveyard slot demonstrated a loss of nerve.