The Past Master in His Most Candid Interview yet, Art Supremo Sir Timothy Clifford Reveals His Dreams for the Future and Tells How Dyslexia Shaped His Controversial Reign Over the National Galleries of Scotland

Summary

---

Sir Timothy Clifford used to punch people - and take punches in return.

The departing general director of the National Galleries of Scotland is many things: a flamboyant connoisseur; an enthusiast for a multitude of interests, from butterflies to Bernini, from moths to Michelangelo; a respected and celebrated director who has spent 20 years transforming the galleries in Edinburgh - but he is also a fighter. Today, we're sitting in the resplendent drawing room at his home in Tyninghame House, East Lothian, on a unique occasion:

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

The Past Master in His Most Candid Interview yet, Art Supremo Sir Timothy Clifford Reveals His Dreams for the Future and Tells How Dyslexia Shaped His Controversial Reign Over the National Galleries of Scotland

Clifford has allowed us into his personal world. He says he wants to explain things, to talk things over in the one place he feels most relaxed, most himself.

In his time Clifford has been a controversial and a transformative presence at the galleries on The Mound in Edinburgh. He will leave in January next year, when he turns 60, to be succeeded by John Leighton, the quietly spoken director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Right now, though, Clifford is talking about boxing.

He boxed for one of his schools, Sherborne in Dorset, which he attended after an unhappy time at schools in Kent, where he grew up the son of Derek Plint Clifford, a poet, arts expert and writer, and Anne, who excelled at pottery.

Perhaps it was at Sherborne where Clifford learned to stand his ground. Still, it seems odd now to think of the elegant art expert, fists up, popping a bounder on the nose. His territory is usually sharp words,...

See the full content of this document

---