This question comes up on occasion, when I discuss with the polite and cultured people in London my rôle as a self-styled art critics’ critic. The polite and cultured often think of him as the city’s top dog. “Well,” I usually shrug my shoulders, “critics like Sarah Kent or Waldemar Januszczak rile me up every now and then, but his Holy Grumpiness leaves me completely cold.” The fact is that he simply bores me. Once you have read one of his reviews, you have read them all. Come to think of it, though, he is best described as the captive of the polite and cultured—his Nineteenth Century audience.