A splendid dinner at Whitgift, the public school in South Croydon, to celebrate the 500th anniversary marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. The table decorations are of red and white roses with pomegranates, Catherine’s badge; the wine is English and Spanish; and the music is by the schools own 16th century ensemble, complete with a unique shawm modelled on one found with the Mary Rose. For the dinner is more realistically to celebrate the exhibition the school has on of finds from the Mary Rose wreck. How the headmaster Christopher Barnett managed to persuade the Mary Rose Trust to put this show on is a mystery, but he did and the result would not disgrace a national museum. The real question is, why can’t it be seen anywhere else? Surely to tour it around the country to places where state school pupils could see these extraordinary artefacts – including the heads of the bosun and gunner reconstructed from their skulls – wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of the state, and seems to be exactly the kind of thing the newly retitled Creativity Culture & Education, formerly Creative Partnerships, could spend some of its large resources on. The dinner was fabulous, but it needs be obligatory…