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John Howard says, “the left has had a free rein with this cultural stuff”. As if trying to help the less fortunate is a sin.

John Lees’s oneiric landscapes and portraits are haunted. And not only by his acknowledged sources, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Fauves like Rouault and Dufy, the precursors of Expressionism, the niche to which Lees is usually assigned. There are other ghosts, especially the mysterious landscapes of Samuel Palmer, themselves channels for the otherworldly works of William Blake. So, Lees is a strange kind of Romantic who finds himself painting in the twenty-first century.

How a nation fell in love with the world's last sea-going paddle steamer.

I keep getting drawn into these pale purple outlines in the big painting facing the street, Burning Summit, which, like others in the show (all 2023), uses a palette that is disparate but deeply congruous. It’s only once you stand close that you can even see the wisps of green and halos of purple, but you realize that they’re doing heavy lifting, adding a sweet aesthetic nuance that’s almost geological.

Chief executives of big business companies have been chipping away at workers’ rights for a long time.