This approach affected how culture was covered by television, where the pressure to concentrate on popular subjects grew much stronger. This was the case even at the BBC, which as a publicly-funded broadcaster had absolutely no excuse to fear accusations of elitism or for that matter, low ratings. Art and history virtually disappeared from its schedules at one point, and although the situation has    undoubtedly improved, there is now the assumption that the audience has to be led through such subject matter by a reassuringly familiar celebrity face.         

Our state education system too gave way to the onslaught of cultural relativism. So, for example, if it was not considered to be within the culture of children from a particular social or ethnic group to like or value Mozart, they would not be able to relate to it, and nor should they be expected to. Hip-hop, perhaps, would be the thing instead. Children would be encouraged towards the less taxing creative pastimes. Mamma Mia! should be treated as being as worthwhile as Mozart. Well, you might agree that it is, but to do so you first surely need to know about both. And in higher education the preference for the less rigorously factual subjects, in which subjectivity and individual viewpoint are allowed to play much more of a part, and the creation of degrees for which the required expertise can only ever be superficial (such as the notorious media studies) have again drawn the emphasis away from cultural, historical and philosophical knowledge.  

This approach is now being seriously questioned, and for the first time in years there is a Secretary of State for Education who genuinely understands what is at stake. But a huge amount of damage has been done. The most basic knowledge of the arts—or for that matter history, or even general knowledge—is something which has effectively disappeared from sections of our society. My parents, both from working-class backgrounds, had certainly heard of Maria Callas and Rudolf Nureyev, even though they had never been to an opera or ballet. (According to one recent poll, a fifth of young people believe Churchill is a fictional character. What hope for Margot Fonteyn?) And along with this, the desire to want to appear cultured—something which is easily mocked, especially when exhibited by the socially aspirant—has given way to an aggressive hostility to all signs of "pretension".

Not for nothing has the theatre and film director Sir Richard Eyre spoken of a growing cultural apartheid in our country. "One of the bizarre things about the way the arts are treated is that they aren't treated like sport," he told me during a recent interview. "There's participatory sport that is encouraged, but actually what people admire is really gifted people doing something quite extraordinary, something the rest of us can't do. And that element, I think, should be encouraged in art. Now that's a view that is often completely mistakenly described as elitist. What's elitist about it?"

The collapse in confidence so far as cultural judgment is concerned has been cynically used by a new elite which, while modishly condemning the so-called paternalism of Lord Reith, behaves with outrageous condescension towards the "masses". They ape their supposed tastes, and suck up to them with talk about football and characters from television soap operas; a contemporary prime minister who celebrated his passion for opera or ballet in public is now pretty much inconceivable. This demotic populism certainly gives the impression of any easygoing classlessness, a society in which sharp delineations are a thing of the past. But that is all it is—an impression.