Seriously

Today's Observer offers a consideration of why few women get key jobs at the top of "the arts". The piece is moved by the recent appointment of Lord Hall to the BBC, and Alex Beard to succeed him at the Royal Opera House. Novelist Sarah Dunant says there was a false dawn of hope for feminists in the 1990s, and that on the whole, "men are still at the cultural controls." And she points to particularly to Alan Yentob and Melvyn Bragg, still leading cultural commentators and powerbrokers within the BBC and Sky Television; "Now I am not saying they are not good at it, but would a woman be able to do the same for so long?"

Here are recent pictures of our artistic oligarchs out and about...