People

No such thing as too much Sir Peter Blake, obviously, but he is ubiquitous just now: a mighty retrospective of his work, the largest in over 20 years, opens at Tate Liverpool this week, and several of the pictures that got away turned up in last week's monster art auctions in London. The artist formerly known as the father of British pop art, having just celebrated his 75th birthday with a bash at the Arts Club in London, has been redesignated the grandfather of British pop art. The company was like a restaging of his Sgt Pepper's album cover - stilt walkers, jugglers, pearly kings and queens, and Countess
Carolinda Tolstoy
Jerry Hall and Harry Hill
Bill Wyman and Tracey Emin
Cilla Black and Justin de Villeneuve, all to a soundtrack from The Blockheads. The original cover, 40 years ago this year, included Carl Jung
Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde - and Mae West, despite her saying: "But what would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?"

Excellent leaving gift for Sir Neil Cossons, whose retirement has been deferred almost as often as Rod Stewart's, as the government struggled to find a new English Heritage chief acceptable to everyone, or indeed anyone. He is finally to be set free. There were speeches and presentations at a party last night, but the news just a few hours earlier from New Zealand, where the Unesco World Heritage committee is meeting, declaring that the Tower of London and Westminster palace and abbey are not after all going on the danger list, will have been the most welcome. The committee was concerned at the tall towers and other developments creeping up on Parliament Square and Tower Hill. "This represents a major vote of confidence in the UK's ability to manage and protect its most important historic sites," Sir Neil said. Well, up to a point: the committee wants an update next year, but that will be for the new chairman, Lord Bruce-Lockhart

As chairman of Warner Music, Rob Dickins signed artists including Madness, the Sex Pistols
Seal
Simply
Red
Enya and Cher - while collecting photographs of an altogether hairier crew. He has now presented his photographs of Victorian artists and writers - including Holman Hunt
Alma Tadema
Rossetti
Burne-Jones
Ruskin
Carlyle
Darwin
Tennyson
Dickens and many lavish sets of beards and whiskers - to the Watts Gallery at Compton, Surrey, for display in the autumn. "With their interest in sex, drugs and art, I think their lives were very rock'n'roll," Dickins said.