“In England, the tradition of going up to London to see a show has been entrenched for 500 years. The result is arts monsters, all of them in London, such as the Royal Opera, English National Opera and the National Theatre. They have all got too big to function properly; the right paw can only communicate with the left paw through hordes of intermediaries who inhabit the body of the monster like nits, hiding in the folds of dead skin. A better question would be whether such dropsical organisations are truly viable. Their capacity for absorbing funds is legendary, but year on year the monsters give birth to mice.”