In 2018, we need more BBC Four and less eating in theatres

We need the arts. In fact, they can seldom have been more necessary as a beacon to light us beyond the muddy gutter of fake news, abusive tweets and sordid sex scandals, reminding us of higher values and different worlds of experience, as well as providing the welcome escape of entertainment.

So here is a basket of wishes – some more urgent and serious than others – for the coming year. How many of them will be fulfilled come 2019, I wouldn’t like to guess.

1. The BBC does something about BBC Four

This channel has a remit to broadcast “an ambitious range of innovative, high-quality programming that is intellectually and culturally enriching, taking an expert and in-depth approach”. But its budget is nugatory (£54 million annually) and since 2016, it no longer has its own controller. The result is a mishmash of evenings devoted to mining the Top of the Pops archive, repeats of celebrity-led documentaries and drama that doesn’t make it to BBC One or Two. It’s just not good enough, and BBC supremo Tony Hall should make injecting more ambition and imagination into its output a priority.

2. The National Trust goes back to basics

In March, Hilary McGrady will replace the much-criticised Helen Ghosh as director-general of this deeply challenged organisation. McGrady is an insider – effectively Ghosh’s number two – but let’s hope that her appointment signals the winds of change, in particular a renewed commitment to presenting historic properties in a manner less driven by the shibboleths of inclusivity, diversity and access, and more respectful of the dignity and integrity of its treasures.

3. The First World War centenary comes to a sublime end

So far we have done a brilliant job of commemorating it – who could forget Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, the flood of poppies at the Tower of London in 2014, or the ghostly soldiers of the Somme at our railway stations in 2016? Marking the Armistice of 1918 may be trickier: we do it solemnly every Remembrance Sunday in any case, and perhaps there is no more to be said. Is it too much to hope that however this event is marked, the imagery will somehow present our relationship to continental Europe in a way that transcends the divisions of Brexit and emphasises the blessings of cooperation and conciliation?

4. West End theatres ban eating

Everyone who visits London’s theatrical heart has long been aware of Byzantine pricing policies that make the low-cost airlines look like exemplars of honesty and transparency. But in recent years another menace has mushroomed: the sale of food and drink for consumption in the auditorium. The consequent slurping and crunching is madly distracting for the performers as well as non-partaking members of the audience, and stands as further evidence of producers’ relentless drive to fleece playgoers of every penny they have. Full marks to Imelda Staunton, who has campaigned against this plague, and can we make 2018 the year in which in-seat guzzling becomes unacceptable?

5. Our new museums are given the funding they need

This year will see the inauguration of some magnificent cultural edifices across the country: a revamped Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, the V&A’s outpost in Dundee, and a new boating museum on Windermere among them. All will benefit from a rush of publicity and curiosity, but then what? New museums can’t sustain themselves on entry tickets alone: grants from local authorities are essential to their survival, and one can only pray that hard-pressed town halls will continue to sponsor facilities that contribute as much to the life of the community as libraries or swimming pools.

6. Music education is prioritised once more

President Emmanuel Macron, a highly cultured man with an unabashed love of classical music, has decreed that every secondary school in France should have a choir. He has allotted €20 million for this ambitious project and allowed two years to achieve the goal. What an inspiration this could be for Justine Greening, the Education Minister.

7. Daniel Day-Lewis reneges on his retirement

This talented actor has announced that he is retiring from acting, but doesn’t quite know why. He has also announced that he can’t bear to watch his performance in the forthcoming film Phantom Thread, for which all previews imply that he is a shoo-in for Oscar and Bafta nods. Perhaps he will eventually sneak into his local Odeon and come out relenting. And even if he’s finished with the films, how about a return to the stage – something he hasn’t undertaken since he walked out halfway through a performance of Hamlet in 1989?

8. The Nobel Prize for Literature goes to a worthy candidate 

The committee that administers this supreme honour keeps getting it wrong – this year’s laureate Kazuo Ishiguro seems an even dodgier choice than 2016’s Bob Dylan. Might this year the award pass to someone who surely ranks as the English language’s greatest living novelist – Philip Roth, now aged 84?