Terse, alliterative and memorable, dumbing down is a good label — in fact too good, as it has ended up dazzling us. It has fooled us into seeing intellectual standards as a one-way street, heading downhill. But this is a one-eyed, Grumpy Old Men view of what is really going on. A more accurate picture would show a two-way street with heavy traffic on both sides. There is plenty of evidence of the opposite of dumbing down: wising up. Our appetite for culture is growing. Last week Malcolm Gladwell, a successful journalist and author but hardly a household name, gave a pair of talks at a West End theatre to promote his new book. He charged up to £25 for tickets and sold out. A writer was being treated like a rock star.

At the Arts Council, they keep count of the number of literary festivals in Britain: in October 2008 alone, there were 43. Hay-on-Wye expects to sell 165,000 tickets next year. At the first Hay festival, 20 years ago, that figure was 2,000. The great museums are packing them in like sports grounds...Tate Modern with 5.2 million, the British Museum with 4.8 million, and the National Gallery with 4.1 million.

From a comment by Tim de Lisle in ‘The Times’, London