Will Gompertz gets his claws out

Oh dear. The makers of the new film of Cats will be most disappointed that the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz only gives it 2 stars. It's not as good as the original, says Will. Still they can console themselves that BBC Will's PC antennae aren't quivering uncontrollably over it:

That the cats are still gendered and sexualised is not such a big deal.

Phew, we can all breathe easily again then.

I've seen it all now

Will Gompertz

14 January 1989 was one of the darkest days of recent British history. It saw book-burning on the streets of Yorkshire as a result of a murderous religious edict from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini against a British-Indian author. That edict (fatwa) resulted in the author being targeted for assassination, going into hiding and receiving round-the-clock police protection. People associated with publishing the book were attacked and even killed. People died in riots around the world. And latent extremism within the UK's Muslim population became overt, with consequences that have echoed down the subsequent decades.

Astonishingly, last night's BBC One News at Ten reported the anniversary without mentioning the fatwa or the deaths that followed it.

And, even more astonishingly, Will Gompertz's piece proved to be nothing less than a celebration of the event, marking the wonderful moment when British Muslims got their voice.

Here's a transcript of this truly jaw-dropping, appalling BBC report:

Newsreader: It's 30 years since the publication of the book The Satanic Verses sparked protests right around the world. Some Muslims believed its author, Salman Rushdie, blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad. The controversy prompted a vigorous debate about freedom of speech and respect for religious sensitivities that resonates today. They are themes that will be explored at the Bradford Literature Festival, which opened tonight - in a city where a copy of The Satanic Verses was burned in public in 1989. Our arts editor, Will Gompertz, has more:

Syima Aslam, Director, Bradford Literary Festival: This is the centre of Bradford, the heart of Bradford. 30 years ago, this was also where some rather momentous events took place. This is where The Satanic Verses was burnt. It's the image that became seared in the national consciousness and became associated with this city. For Muslims collectively, it was a moment of crystallisation of identity. Prior to that, you know, everybody was Asian, there wasn't really the religious nuance. What you see at that moment is people saying, actually I live here, this is my country, I belong here, I'm going to spend the rest of my life here and my children are going to grow up here, so if I don't like something I'm going to raise my voice.

Will Gompertz: The festival is hosting a series of events, with contemporary authors reflecting on the politics of writing three decades on from Salman Rushdie's controversial novel.

Will Gompertz (to Ayisha Malik): Would your books - which are about Muslims dating and putting a mosque in a British village - would those have been published, 30 years ago, and would they have created a reaction if they were? Ayisha Malik, author: No, I don't think they would have been published and certainly not a book about a mosque in a village, because that conversation wasn't even happening and I don't think we were part of things in that way. I think a writer should be allowed to write whatever they want to write about, that is just categorical. What I do think, though, is that you have a responsibility. I don't believe in censorship when it comes to writing, but I do think that you have to bear the consequences of what you write. 

A new play, Imam Imran, which is part of the festival programme. It explores issues of identity, perception, protest and faith.

Will Gompertz (to Iqbal Khan): So if you go back 30 years to the burning of The Satanic Verses and that moment and everything that happened since, where does this play bring us to? Iqbal Khan, director: OK, so I think it brings us to a place where I think the confidence to protest is more present now I think than it was then. I think the protest now is more articulate, more subtle and more nuanced. I think also particularly in the way the play deals with these issues, there's the confidence to use satire, to use humour, to use other ways of addressing the issues other than naked anger and frustration.     

The subject of protest is extended to the festival itself. Some authors have pulled out of events after discovering a government counter-extremism scheme had provided funding, proving once again that art and politics are not strange bedfellows, but are intimately connected. Will Gompertz, BBC News, Bradford. 

Of Poet Laureates, UK Broadcasters and the BBC's Will Gompertz

Look! It's Will Gompertz! And he's asking an important question, slowly, like an intellectual! Look! Look!

Simon Armitage - a working-class Yorkshireman made-good - is our new Poet Laureate. 

I'm not very familiar with his poetry (though I've liked some of what I've heard) but his books about walking across England and exploring his home patch on the wrong side of the Pennines are beautifully-written and often very funny, and I'm a fan of his on the strength of them.

News of his appointment broke during last night's main 10 o'clock news bulletins, and I caught the BBC one, which struck me as being particularly 'BBC' in its slant:

In the last half hour, it's been announced that Simon Armitage will be the new Poet Laureate. He says he wants to use the role to ensure poetry embraces major global issues, including climate change.

The following report by the BBC's arts editor, the shy-and-retiring Will Gompertz, began with the end of a poem about climate change:

I'd wanted to offer my daughter

a taste of the glacier, a sense of the world

being pinned in place by a diamond-like cold

at each pole. But opening up my hand

there's nothing to pass on, nothing to hold.

(That's the least impressive bit of that poem. I particularly enjoyed:
"Rotten and rusted, a five-bar gate/

lies felled in the mud, letting the fields escape.")

"Like a rock-star", "taking poetry to the people", etc, were some of Will's words. (Very 'Will'!)

And then came the questions...

As so often with the BBC, viewers were being whacked over the head with a wet halibut of an agenda here - or a very heavy bronze cast of a wet halibut of an agenda. 

More about Will later.

Stay with us...

With ITV's News at Ten, the usual 'viewer-friendly' conversational style resulted in this meandering description of the 'breaking news':

Poetry has been part of Britain's national fabric for centuries, and the names of some of our most famous poets still resonate. Think Wordsworth, Tennyson and Betjeman, amongst many others. They were all, as it happens, Poet Laureates, there's a good pub quiz question, and the new incumbent of this prestigious post was announced just a few minutes ago. He is Simon Armitage, West Yorkshire poet, professor and playwright. Although the role may no longer have the influence on British culture it once did, he says there's still a need to capture moments in words that stretch the imagination. 

And we got an equally non-political poem to illustrate SA's art from ITV:

As he steps out at the traffic lights,

Think what he’ll look like in thirty years’ time –

The deflated face and shrunken scalp

Still daubed with the sad tattoos of high punk.

ITV then went on to focus on the relevance of the role of poet laureate, without any of the BBC's politics and focus on climate change activism.

And Sky News broke it like this:

His appointment was approved by the Queen, and for ten years he'll be seen promoting poetry, because Simon Armitage is the new Poet Laureate. He says he wants to harness the tools of the multi-media age. And if the rising popularity of poetry among millennials is anything to go by, he'll have a willing audience. 

And Sky then focused on the resurgence in the popularity of poetry and featured a clip of SA reading from 'Kid' and, again, included none of the BBC's politicking or any of their stuff about climate change.

*******

Now, if you think that proves something about the BBC, well try this...

Going back to the BBC, I've held back so far in mentioning what came next. Will Gompertz went on - after all the climate change stuff - to raise another issue not raised by either ITV or Sky:

Yes, the BBC's identity politics obsession reared its ugly head again with ghastly inevitability.

And here it is. Here's Will's 'hideously white' question to working-class Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage:

Did it cross your mind, even for a moment, when you were offered the post to say, 'you know, actually, I don't think this is right at this stage for a white male. Maybe someone from a different point of view, a different background, would be better for this role at this moment? 

As I said, very 'BBC'.

Yes, I know ITV and Sky can be as bad on some things, but - in so many respects - the BBC is well and truly unique, don't you think?

PERFECT HARMONY - The Coverage of Politically Motivated Art by The BBC

A guest post by Loondon Calling...

A Fashionable Marriage, 1986

Accompanied by fanfares of publicity the 2017 Turner Prize was awarded last month in Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture. The winner of the 2017 prize was Lubaina Himid based in Preston. 

The BBC report of the award ceremony echoed with the resonance between them and the Tate Gallery over the true nature of the Turner Prize. 

From Wikipedia … 

The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award)… 

From Analysis by Will Gompertz, BBC arts editor: 

… Lubaina Himid's Turner win is being put down to the well-documented rule change that did away with its 50-or-younger age restriction, which had been in place since 1991. Clearly, the 63-year-old artist wouldn't - couldn't - have won without the removal of the age cap. But there was another, less publicised rule change this year that also benefited her. For the first time the jurors were allowed to take into account the work each artist displayed in the Turner Prize exhibition. 

"What?" you may ask. "Hasn't that always been the case? Why wouldn't they take the exhibition the public see - and therefore judge by - into account?" 

Goodness knows why, but they didn't. Which might help explain some of the previous winners, and certainly makes sense of Himid receiving the contemporary art award for an exhibition packed with work she made some time ago.* 

Her tableau A Fashionable Marriage, a satirical and political 1980s take on a scene from Hogarth's 18th Century series Marriage A-la Mode, was the single best work of art in the entire Turner Prize exhibition. 

It would have been a worthy winner when she made it in 1986 and - thanks to the rule change - it was a worthy winner last night… 

From Himid’s own website, an extract: 

… The star of the piece for Hogarth is, of course, the Countess, who has recently had a baby, so lounges casually at her dressing table, having spent the previous afternoon at the auction rooms, while her husband, the earl, is away. She is having her hair done. She is Margaret Thatcher, the first and therefore the last woman prime minister of Britain, leader of the Conservative party, champion of business, destroyer of the unions, the welfare state and staunch supporter of apartheid…. 

The vilification of Margaret Thatcher is a familiar theme from the BBC, but this art piece from Himid gives an opportunity to reinforce their bias against Thatcher and the Conservative Party. 

In previous posts, we have seen how the BBC likes to absorb events such as the Turner Prize, the Stirling Prize and the RA Summer Exhibition into their narrative. The 2017 Turner Prize must have been a gift, offering a free hit at Thatcher’s memory, Himid receiving publicity for her political views and being the first black female winner to score points for inclusivity etc etc. 

From the Tate Modern Home Page: … 

Tate Modern is Britain’s new national museum of modern art. As class compositions change, each new economic force takes over the mantle of British taste. Each succeeding social elite must have its art, its brand which secret codes and systems of value can be exchanged. This is usually in the form of what is to be tolerated and what is not, what’s in and what’s out, who’s in and who’s out. New money needs to be a part of history. With money you can buy your way into art history. With even more money you can shape that future history…. 

*From Wikipedia again: 

…. Artists are chosen based upon a showing of their work that they have staged in the preceding year….

*************

The trend is set to continue with this early signal from the BBC Arts and Entertainment pages of the BBC News website with reference to 2018: 

‘Turner Prize 2018 rewards art activists tackling crime, rights and race’

The piece draws our attention to the work of a group known as Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which creates "3D models of sites of conflict" to help prove wrongdoing. 

‘Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson complete the list.’  

Naeem Mohaiemen: … ‘Born in London and raised in Bangladesh, Mohaiemen makes films that use turbulent periods in world history to focus on the legacies of colonialism, national identity, left-wing politics and migration….  

Charlotte Prodger: … ‘Glasgow-based Prodger is nominated for two videos. One was shot on iPhones and named Bridgit after the Neolithic deity. The other traces a history of recent video formats and the artist's personal history. The jury praised her for "the nuanced way in which she deals with identity politics, particularly from a queer perspective”….  

Luke Willis Thompson: … ‘The 30-year-old New Zealander makes silent black-and-white 16mm and 35mm films inspired by stop-and-search policies and killings. His films include one made with Diamond Reynolds, who used Facebook to broadcast the aftermath of the fatal shooting of her partner Philando Castile by a police officer in 2016…. 

Born Dead, 2016

Further searching reveals more about Luke Willis Thompson and a piece Born Dead 2016: …. 

LUKE WILLIS THOMPSON 1988, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND. LIVES IN AUCKLAND  

Sucu Mate – Born Dead (2016) is the result of an extended investigative process into the Old Balawa Estate Cemetery, a cemetery with a history of slavery in the Pacific island nation of Fiji. Luke Willis Thompson applied for custodial rights to a small selection of gravestones within the racially zoned site. In 2015, official approval was given to the artist from Fiji’s governing institutions to excavate anonymous material from the worker’s section, itself a former sugarcane plantation. The concrete markers were permitted to travel out of Fiji for a period of 24 months to be exhibited as art objects, and are presented here after being shown in Auckland and Brisbane. The work is, in this way, a mobile cemetery, and one that questions how human lives and dead bodies are inscribed in the order of power. The project will continue with the grave-markers’ repatriation to Fiji and resituated within the same field from which they came. In such a way the project simultaneously prototypes both a historical continuity and the performance of dislocation; two cultural operations with national relevance as the islands within Fiji face ecological change and the continuing submergence of their lowlands. 

Back to the BBC piece about the 2018 shortlist: …. 

Shortlist is right on the money - BBC arts editor Will Gompertz…  

…. If there are two themes that bring them all together, they are that they all work in film and they're all deeply politically engaged.  

We're going to get four films at least and maybe a bit of installation, which are going to look at the world in which we're living and all its complexities and blurred lines, with a very sharp political edge criticising the establishment's view of fact.  

The art world is becoming a very politically engaged forum and I think this Turner Prize is right on the money in showcasing three artists and one collective who are questioning the world we live in, in a way perhaps artists haven't done in the recent past…. 

I have been careful not to comment upon the quality of the artwork exhibited. Instead, it is in the looseness of rule-making that allows these political messages to be at the forefront of British art that should be of concern. 

Here are the rule changes: 

Artists are chosen based upon a showing of their work that they have staged in the preceding year - not any longer. 

Rule change that did away with its 50-or-younger age restriction, which had been in place since 1991. This helped the 2017 winner and has remained in place (as far as I know). 

Jurors were allowed to take into account the work each artist displayed in the Turner Prize exhibition - a change in 2017 which has stayed in place for 2018. 

The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. How does ‘LUKE WILLIS THOMPSON 1988, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND. LIVES IN AUCKLAND’ work in this case? 

It appears that The Turner Prize has been changed from its original form, first and foremost to engage a closely drawn group of activist/artists who promote a political message. The BBC, if not instrumental in the rule changes themselves, are clearly in full agreement with them - especially Will. 

Civilisations

Mary and a fine early Greek lass

Well, I've watched the first two episodes of the BBC's new 'landmark series' Civilisations - the first by Simon Schama, the second by Mary Beard - and I thoroughly enjoyed them both, in a hazy sort of way.

They passed a couple of hours of my day very pleasantly. 

Yes, they weren't anywhere near as thought-provoking or profound or original or as startling as the wonderful Kenneth Clark in his still-magnificent, beguiling and intellectually challenging Civilisation but, Hyperion to a satyr as that old BBC programme surely is to this comparatively dumbed-down new BBC programme, Simon Schama and Mary Beard are both excellent story-tellers - and, as you'd expect, the programme is an absolute treat for the eyes...

...(except for when the BBC's camerapersonages are made to do that annoying out-of-focus gimmick they've obviously been asked to do on behalf of Professor Beard). 

*******

On the BBC bias front...

...Dividing the presentation between three reliably left-wing, 'progressive' historians - all of who could be relied upon to drop in the occasional hint about the value of immigration and multiculturalism, or to talk critically about "gendered" art, or to take the odd potshot at Kenneth Clark's 'Eurocentricity' - was a very 'BBC' decision.

In fact, you might even cite it as an absolute proof of BBC bias.

And, yes, although I didn't feel as if I was being continuously hit over the head by a huge BBC-shaped haddock in these first two episodes, I did notice the programme's 'progressive' hints.

And, yes, it was indeed a divisive decision to make the presentation of the programme a purely, left-wing 'progressive' affair...

...as demonstrated by the following pair of articles (the first from the Right, the second from the Left):

Ed West: Civilisations is right-on and rather underwhelming. 

Yasmin Alibhai Brown: The BBC’s Civilisations is wonderfully multicultural – and the usual suspects are fuming.

*******

Mary and the Chinese lads

Despite enjoying what I've seen so far, no blogger worth his or her salt could ever resist trying to best a BBC historian, so I'm going to indulge myself here by using my avid reading of ancient Chinese history in order to try and discredit Mary Beard.

See how I get on below....

One thing I know about China's famous 'First Emperor' - the Mao-like monster. who began reigning supreme over the Chinese heartland in 221 BC and who was responsible for the Terracotta Army and the founder of the Qin dynasty - is that his name wasn't 'Qin' and that he wasn't the 'Emperor Qin' despite Mary Beard repeatedly calling him that!

He was born either Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng and became - like Bruce Forsyth before him - the King of Qin (a joke that only works if you know that 'Qin' is pronounced 'Chin' - hence 'China').

He's known to history, after brutally destroying every over Chinese warring state and becoming the first emperor of China as Qin Shi Huang - a title not a name. It simply means 'First Emperor, from the Qin dynasty'.

No one, except for Mary Beard, so far as I can see, has ever called the First Emperor 'Emperor Qin' before, for the very good reason that there never was a Chinese emperor called 'Emperor Qin'.

Still, to be fair to her, at least she didn't call him 'Emperor Ming', or 'Ming the Merciless'.

Would Kenneth Clark have made such an error? And wouldn't the BBC of the 1960s, unlike the BBC of now (which seems to know a lot less), have prevented such lapses from going out even if he had?

The First Emperor of Mongo

*******

Reviews for the programme have been mixed - some enthusiastic, some tepid, some brutal.

Very oddly, one of the most brutal reviews (a mere two stars our of five) came from the BBC's own arts editor Will Gompertz on the BBC News website...

...and the BBC News website has given it a good deal of prominence. 

It's astonishingly rude. 

So rude that it positively invited rudeness in return....

As noted by MB on the Open Thread, Will's criticism is curious and very 'BBC'. Why? Because despite attacking a BBC programme, it weirdly employs PC to pile in upon another form of PC. 

Personal pique (Civilisations without Will Gompertz) might be the explanation.

UPDATE: A little Twitter exchange involving the BBC's Nick Higham:

Willard Foxton Todd: Is there anything more BBC than spending millions on an incredibly high profile series and then having your own arts editor give it a 2 star review on the front page of your website?
Nick Higham, BBC: As the BBC’s erstwhile bad-news-about-the-BBC correspondent, I defend to the hilt the right/duty of BBC reporters to make independent judgements about BBC policies/actions. Whether we should be *reviewing* stuff (programmes, plays, films etc) I’m less sure...

Of Charles I, Will Gompertz, this fella, and Andrew Marr

Top part of a Titian

A BBC programme I particularly enjoyed this week was Monday's Start the Week. 

It looked at King Charles I and his art collection, plus the contemporary art scene.

It was pleasingly rude about contemporary conceptual art and all the "really bad artists" who have made millions over the past few decades. Andrew Marr joined in, though I laughed when Prof. Don Thompson condemned the "dreadful sculptures" of Anish Kapoor and Andrew replied ruefully that he likes Anish Kapoor, only to be told "You're wrong!" by Andrew Graham-Dixon. 

I was particularly struck by Andrew Graham-Dixon's depiction of England over the near century from Henry VII and Edward VI's initial waves of iconoclasm to the beginning of Charles's fascination with art as being pretty much 'a land without art'. He compared their supporters' iconoclasm to that of Maoist China, saying that nearly all art in Britain was destroyed, with estimates ranging from 90% to nigh on 100%. Some 100,000 wooden sculptures alone, he said, were taken to Smithfield and destroyed. Now, it did strike me that the absence of art couldn't have been total given there were portraits, such as those of Elizabeth I and many another Elizabethan notable, but still...Thank goodness we're beyond that way of thinking these days and that no-one but no-one is thinking of tearing down and destroying works of art like statues or stained glass windows! 

Self-effacing Will Gompertz 

Later in the week shy, retiring BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz did a piece on the News at Six and News at Ten about a new exhibition on Charles's art collection at the Royal Academy, London. Where there's a Will there's bound to be a bit of Gompertzery. Here we had Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria called "his missus" and Anthony van Dyck called "this fella", plus a reference to "this wonderwall of Hans Holbein portraits".

There's an image of a lovely-looking Titian that appeared in his report on his blog - The Supper at Emmaus (which the BBC caption writers managed to misspell). For anyone who likes dogs, it features a dog underneath Christ's table.

A bit from the bottom of the same Titian

Ecce Homo (though not on the BBC)

Here's a curious tale, courtesy of one of our readers...

For six weeks from Easter 2017 until 22nd May, Mark Wallinger’s sculpture Ecce Homo has found a new temporary home outside St Paul’s Cathedral. This work was originally the first sculpture to be commissioned for the Fourth Plinth in 1999. Mark Wallinger was the Turner Prize winner in 2007 for his work State Britain - an installation of protest banners and placards.

Searching through the BBC website, I can’t find any mention whatsoever of Ecce Homo’s re-siting at St Paul’s. Bias from the BBC is evident in the way that events are reported, but also in the way that events are ignored and not reported. Reporting on its new temporary home would have given the chance of debate about public art, about the religious context and interpretation of the piece - an issue that drew attention when it was first displayed.

Sponsors of the re-siting at St Paul’s were Amnesty International - Kate Allen, director of Amnesty, said: "The story of Christ - arrested, tortured and executed for peacefully expressing his opinions and for challenging the authorities of the time - still resonates around the world today. The sculpture is a strikingly vulnerable figure and is representative of the type of cases that we at Amnesty still work on today - the oppressed individual caused to suffer simply for their beliefs”. 

Why would the BBC chose to ignore this news item? 

1. Is it because there is a Christian message that does not suit the BBC narrative?
2. Is it because Christ is represented as ‘hideously white’ or some might say gay?
3. Is it because the re-siting was sponsored by Amnesty?

Personally, I find that  the work lacks a true Christian message. The guided barbed wire crown of thorns is the only real link to Ecce Homo - Behold the Man. With this removed, the piece would be similar in concept to Antony Gormley’s figures, where the siting of the work speaks more loudly than the sculpture itself. Christ’s face does not reflect any of the suffering which is central to the Christian message - the face is impassive - even vacant. 

Aside from the strange decision of St Paul’s Cathedral themselves to allow Amnesty as a strictly non-religious organisation to sponsor the work of an atheist artist on their doorstep, the BBC’s determination not to mention it is difficult to explain - the silence is deafening. I understood that Amnesty were as one with the Labour Party - which you would think would lead the BBC into making something of it. Alternatively, does the BBC have a policy about support for charities other than its own in house versions - Children in Need etc? Or, is the work of Amnesty too close in its principles to that of Liberty, in which case they might have been frightened off by Shami? 

The only other angle on this is the involvement of  Hauser & Wirth, a Swiss art gallery, who I guess would have exhibition rights to the piece.

I'm not sure why the BBC hasn't covered this. It would normally be right up the corporation's street. It's a modern art piece in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. Radio 4's 'Sunday' has done several reports on 'Homeless Jesus' - another piece of point-making sculpture - and Will Gompertz has just been in Venice exulting over some anti-national borders, globalist exhibits at the Biennale there.

I can't say that I'm overly impressed with Mark Wallinger's Jesus either though. Expression-wise, he looks just like me after I've fallen asleep during 'The Antiques Roadshow'....

....unlike this chap outside Coventry Cathedral:

Auntie's Bloomers

Where there's a will there's a Bob Dylan impersonator

Samira Ahmed's Newswatch certainly has its moments.

This week it featured emails from BBC viewers mocking Will Gompertz's BBC One News at Six report on Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature.

While Will was wusy waxing wyrical about Dylan having "his own literary voice, his own sense of metre, rhyme, metaphor and meaning", black-and-white footage was being shown of Dylan performing Like at Rolling Stone. 

Having broadcast the end of Will's report, Samira asked, "Does he really as bad as that?"

And the answer was no. BBC One's News at Six had given us given us some 20 seconds of "a third-rate Dylan impersonator" by mistake!

The BBC obviously got itself all Tangled Up in Bloopers there. (Sorry).

Still, that was nowhere near as funny as this from the £3.7 billion-a-year-licence-fee-funded BBC...:

Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo

As you might expect from the BBC, the initial main focus of today's BBC News article announcing the public's selection of JMW Turner to replace Adam Smith on the £20 note lies with the debate over 'gender diversity' - i.e. whether there are enough women on British bank notes.

The last seven paragraphs, however, do turn to the question of why Turner might be a good choice (as the public evidently thinks he is).

In contrast, Sky News's equivalent article doesn't discuss the 'gender' question at all. 

At the end of the BBC's article the corporation's Arts Editor Will Gompertz adds his 'analysis', including his 'personal' choice for who should have been on the note - and, guess what, it's a woman!:

But, and this is only a personal opinion, I really wish they had gone for the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

Genuine personal opinion? Or virtue-signalling (@Caroline Criado-Perez, so to speak)?

That said Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs are quite something. As it's Shakespeare's 400 anniversary today, here's her photo of the leading Victorian Shakespearian actress, Ellen Terry, from 1864: