Wyndham Lewis

An exhibition worth seeing: Wyndham Lewis: Portraits, at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It runs until October and includes the now-famous Lewis likenesses of Edith Sitwell, T S Eliot and Ezra Pound, as well as self-portraits such as the striking one here from 1920enititled Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro.

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It's lawlessness which is on the increase

Crime figures are going down, according to the Government stats. People are sceptical. As an old TV commercial used to say, the stain says Hot, the label says Not.

The final impotence of those with no solutions and a fare share of the blame, is to bleat about the sensationalism of the media. On the contrary, I would suggest that in various ways the media actually plays down the extent of the problem.

Of course we know that the likes of the Guardian will pretend there isn't any kind of breakdown. To say there was would be to admit to the results of years of liberal handiwork, and that would require real moral courage. It's not going to happen.

However other, more populist papers such as my own local, the London Evening Standard, have striven manfully to keep afloat the 'narrative' of the capital as a great, diverse, dynamic city like no other which is a massive success story, and a model for the world. I am a Londoner and love the city, but this is a myth. Like New York before Guiliani, London is slowly becoming unliveable in.

I'd suggest that the reason people feel that crime is more rampant is because, on an everyday level, they see low-level disturbances and anti-social behaviour which might actually fly under the radar of criminality, but which manages to alienate, frighten and disturb. Eventually, many draw the conclusion that there is a growing 'lawlessness.' The public arena appears to be increasingly dangerous to be in, and so they retreat from it.

Last week, two police officers were attacked by a mob in south London when they asked a 15-year-old girl to pick up some litter she dropped. Metropolitan Police said one of the officers suffered injuries including a bite wound in the attack in North End in Croydon, on Wednesday afternoon. The other was kicked to the ground and jumped upon.

In actual criminal, statistical terms, this incident will, on paper, probably appear as a series of 'smaller' offences. But try to imagine the effect of it on the people who must have witnessed it.

PW

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Anthony Browne appointed Mayor's Head of Policy

It's been announced that Anthony Browne is leaving his position as director of the think tank Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Head of Policy.

Anthony has been a member of the NCF's Advisory Committee from the very beginning. Indeed when he was still the political correspondent at The Times, he was one of the first people we talked to about our plans for the NCF.

He has been very supportive and helpful to us, and continues to be so. We'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate him and wish him all the very best on his new position.

PW

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The Triumph of the Kidult Movie

Like most of the first reviewers, Matthew D'Ancona over at the Spectator website waxes lyrical about the new Batman Movie, The Dark Knight,which opens this week.

' Very rarely is it genuinely true to say that a movie is astonishing, writes Matthew. 'But no other word will do justice to this film... To describe The Dark Knight as the latest in the (famously uneven) Batman franchise simply does not explain what this film aspires to be and to do.

Steady on Matthew. What are we actually talking about here?

Having seen it myself, I'd agree that The Dark Knight is stylish and full of good performances. Heath Ledger as the Joker (pictured) is however being almost ridiculously gushed over, largely because it is a posthumous performance by a young, popular actor. In truth Ledger's is a role which already existed as an icon of popular culture, and he fills it well, and that's about it.

But what the reaction to The Dark Knight really illustrates is the infantilisation of our movie culture, indeed our broader culture. Comic book superhero films are now analysed with deadly seriousness, and are praised for their 'darkness' 'edginess' and sophistication. The Dark Knight has proved to be the last word in this trend.

But surely we were more adult in our approach in the sixties, when the caped crusader could be seen in the much loved colourful, campy TV series? Even as late as 1989, and the first of the big screen Batman movies, there was still a cartoon sensibility and aesthetic in Tim Burton's operatic treatment.

Now that has disappeared, and movies such as The Dark Knight are poured over for meaning. The truth is, in the last three decades, as attention spans and perspectives have shortened, genuinely adult narratives have been disappearing from the cinema. The child-like and the trivial have taken centre stage and been given not just big budgets but the full broadsheet treatment.

Many film critics dispaired at the effect that the Star Wars series had on the whole perception of film. As the renowned film critic and historian David Thomson wrote, 'What is there to say about Star Wars?'  Many lovers of film have felt the same about the mainstream dominance of the Superhero blockbuster. We are, in effect, going backwards.

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