How good to be in Liverpool after a long time away – and no, I wasn’t there for the Labour party conference. My first stop: Alfred Waterhouse’s magnificent terracotta Victoria Gallery & Museum to see the novelist Jonathan Coe on stage with another writer close to my heart (my husband, in case I sound like a stalker) at the literary festival. My second: the eternally lovely Walker Art Gallery for a steady gawp at the gargantuan Christ Blessing the Little Children by Benjamin Robert Haydon, a Victorian artist who will make a star appearance in On Disappointment, a series of essays I’ve written for BBC Radio 3 (it’s on next month, and all I can say is that I hope it does not disappoint).
Liverpool is a brilliant walking city, with many spectacular and sometimes peculiar buildings close together. However, a quick circuit through the city brought mixed emotions. Two sights in particular left me feeling unsettled. Next to Peter Ellis’s beautiful proto-skyscraper of 1864, Oriel Chambers (the first building in the world to feature a metal-framed glass curtain wall), a branch of Hooters, the American sports bar known for the physical appearance of its female staff, now stands. And while I expected it, it’s still distressing to see that The Wellington Rooms (1815), once a vibrant venue for society’s revelries, now stands abandoned. I fear that its Robert Adam-style ceiling and Wedgwood friezes will soon be lost forever.
Custard prize
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