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Back in the 1980s, Andrea Orcel’s university thesis was about hostile takeovers. Almost four decades later, the ambitious UniCredit chief finds himself at the heart of the biggest European banking drama in years — taking on the German government in what could be the first big cross-border banking deal in Europe since the financial crisis.

This week the Milanese lender raised its stake in rival Commerzbank to 21 per cent, pending approval from the European Central Bank. This would make UniCredit the largest shareholder, overtaking the German government. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called the stake-building “unfriendly” and “hostile” but Orcel has said he had no plan to engage in a fist fight with Berlin.

“Andrea isn’t naive, he’s a tactician and I think he’s well aware of what he’s doing . . . he knows exactly how he plans to reach his end goal . . . we may not know exactly, but he does,” says Alessandro Profumo, the former CEO of UniCredit.

Berlin’s refusal to negotiate has reportedly frustrated Orcel, who does not usually take no for an answer. Rising before dawn for his daily sports session, he has been working nonstop with bankers at Barclays and Bank of America to find a way through.

His devotion to the job, coupled with his ability to advise CEOs on near impossible deals, have built Orcel, 61, a reputation as both smart and ruthless. “Andrea is pragmatic and articulate . . . because he’s very demanding, people can feel he’s too demanding . . . but what he asks from others he asks from himself,” says Andrew Gazitua, the former chief operating officer of investment banking at Merrill Lynch, where Orcel cut his teeth. He can also be down to earth — he goes by his first name in a country where many CEOs demand more formality.

Raised in Rome where his mother worked for the UN and his Sicilian father ran a small leasing company, Orcel went to the prestigious Lycée Français Chateaubriand, home to the children of aristocrats and diplomats. While on holiday from Rome’s La Sapienza university, he decided he wanted to become a banker instead.

After stints at Goldman Sachs and Boston Consulting Group, Orcel joined Merrill Lynch in 1992, where — after a 20-year streak of successful M&A deals including the €21bn merger of Italy’s Credito Italiano with UniCredito to create UniCredit — he was dubbed “the Cristiano Ronaldo of bankers”.

“He was extremely knowledgeable and always available, plus he built a network of personal relations that facilitated access to the decision makers,” says Profumo who helmed Credito Italiano at the time.

Along the way, Orcel, who was president of UBS from 2014 to 2018, struck up friendships with the likes of late Santander chair Emilio Botín — whom he advised on acquisitions that transformed the lender into a global banking group. But he also racked up enemies.

His relationship with the Botíns soured in 2018 when Santander withdrew its offer to make him CEO over pay. When Orcel launched a multimillion-euro lawsuit, the world of high finance thought he was crazy. But the courts ultimately awarded him €43.5mn. “He just does what he thinks is right even if it makes him look like an arse but he’ll always be accountable for his actions . . . I hate to say it but most of the time he’s right,” says a senior banker in London.

One time he may have been wrong was when he advised on the disastrous acquisition of ABN Amro by RBS in 2007. He once told the FT that “with the benefit of hindsight we should have done things differently. I cannot help but feel responsibility for my role.”

His transformation of UniCredit, with the share price climbing almost 400 per cent since he joined in 2021, is his most important one yet. Securing the Commerzbank deal would earn him a lasting place in Europe’s financial firmament. Yet, German finance minister Christian Lindner told lawmakers this week that “in terms of their style and their communication, UniCredit’s actions didn’t contribute to strengthening the trust of the government”.

It is not the first time Orcel, who has little time for diplomacy, has locked horns with public institutions. In 2021, Mario Draghi’s government in Italy had hoped to sell Monte dei Paschi di Siena to UniCredit. The parties failed to clinch a deal and Orcel walked away. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Orcel has also been at odds with the ECB on how to deal with UniCredit’s ongoing Russian presence. “Andrea is no politician, he’s a no bullshit guy,” says Davide Serra, founder of asset management firm Algebris, friend and longtime UniCredit investor. “Moral suasion doesn’t work with him . . . which is why those who don’t like him say he has a bad character.”

Commerzbank may well be worth the latest fight. Orcel’s preferred option, say insiders, would be to merge it with UniCredit’s existing German subsidiary HVB. At the right price, it would be hard for the Germans to refuse. This time, the Italian government also has his back.

Orcel may be divisive — “he’s a bit like Marmite: either you hate him or you love him,” says Amir Hoveyda, who worked with him at Merrill Lynch and UBS. But he has once again managed to leave his counterparty’s weaknesses exposed. A master of game theory, his latest move will force a reckoning among regulators that have pushed for greater EU banking integration for years. As for those rivals who have long wondered if an Italian bank — even an enlarged one — will ultimately be enough for such an extraordinarily ambitious executive, they may not stop looking over their shoulders just yet.

silvia.borrelli@ft.com

THE best hotels in the world have been revealed, from beachfront resorts to towering city skyscrapers.

And I was lucky enough to visit one during my trip to Hong Kong, when I stayed in The Peninsula.

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The Telegraph recently named the prestigious hotel as one of of the world’s best, after looking at everything from in-room perks, personal reviews and staff-to-guest ratios.

The Peninsula, which came in fourth, is the oldest in Hong Kong having opened in 1928, and nicknamed the “Grande Dame of the Far East.”

They certainly show you on arrival why they are the creme de la creme.

All guests get picked up from the airport in their own branded Rolls-Royce cars in Peninsula green, as well as a complimentary newspaper inside.

It’s not always faster, what with Hong Kong traffic sometimes making the public transport a quicker option.

But it’s certainly one in style.

The grand Art Deco lobby is rather breathtaking too, with huge marble columns and glass chandeliers lining the corridors,

I was stunned that all of the staff seemed to know my name by day two of staying (and not because of any bad behaviour).

The rooms

With 300 rooms, the best ones are the suites overlooking the river.

My room had its own lounge, bedroom and two bathrooms (one for ‘guests’) with the main one having a corner bath overlooking the city.

My bedroom even had its own telescope for looking out to the waterfront.

One very exciting element I had never seen were drawers that had their own chargers in, as well as wireless chargers.

The food and drink

There is enough to explore in Hong Kong but the hotel does its best to keep you there.

There is its own on-site chocolate shop, where you can watch as they make everything in house.

I was greeted by a different chocolate work of art in my room most days, from planes to passports… all handcrafted.

You won’t get hungry with the huge number of restaurants on-site either.

There is the one Michelin-star Gaddi’s, serving French cuisine, as well as the Michelin-starred Spring Moon serving traditional Cantonese.

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A Swiss-themed restaurant will take you straight to the Alps, or you can go to the Japanese restaurant Imasa.

The rooftop bar Felix is a must too with even more amazing views, abd tge miost deliciously fresh melon yuzu cocktails.

I dined with their nine course menu with all of the decadent dishes you can think of – by that I mean truffle gnocchi and juicy scallops.

What we didn’t realise was there is often an evening light show, which was an amazing surprise as we finished off our drinks.

I also tried the hotels’ amazing breakfast buffet in the Verandah restaurant, which blew me away with the choice.

Already a dim-sum obsessive, every morning i gorged on juicy prawn dumplings, refreshing cold noodle soups and my favourite – congee (think a savoury rice porridge).

Of course there were also Western options if you don’t fancy the local cuisine.

The only sad thing was not being able to sit outside, but there was nothing tempting me to be in the humidity.

What is it like to go to Hong Kong?

The Sun’s Deputy Travel Editor Kara Godfrey visited Hong Kong – and found amazing food and stunning beaches.

Hong Kong is the perfect stopover destination between trips to Australia and New Zealand, and is easier to get around that London.

The Metro is simpler than the London Underground and you can even hop on a “ding ding,” one of the many double-decker trams.

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But exploring by foot, a food tour let me explore everything from mango tofu puddings, egg waffles and milk teas.

If you fancy a quieter hike, less than an hour from the city centre is Sai Kung, known as the “back garden of Hong Kong”.

The region’s bright-blue waters and hiking trails, as well as the golden sandy beaches surrounded by huge green slopes, made me feel like I was in Hawaii.

Its bar scene is unmatched too, from the Early Grey Caviar Martinis at Quinary named one of Asia’s best bars, or Ozone, the highest rooftop bar in the world.

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The amenities

The Peninsula has is its own shopping arcade, albeit with expensive designer brands such as Chanel and Prada.

And the extremely beautiful swimming pool on the ground floor comes with ornate water fountains and sun loungers.

Make sure to check out the spa with massages also overlooking the Hong Kong skyline.

You can even tour its helicopter pads on the roof which only the elite guests use.

Even if you can’t stretch to a stay at the hotel, you can book its famous Afternoon Tea, loved by the locals and with live music.

Can’t quite swing to Hong Kong? The Peninsula London opened last year, becoming the city’s first billion-pound hotel.

Otherwise here’s a hotel in Greece that was named the best in the world by TUI.

And this hotel has one of the best views in the world.

It is now 65 years since the British writer and scientist CP Snow gave his famed Cambridge lecture on “The Two Cultures”, in which he lamented the seeming intellectual divide between the humanities and the sciences. The mood of the lecture, and the subsequent book, was subdued, bordering on gloomy. “There seems . . . to be no place where the cultures meet,” wrote Snow, citing his personal experiences of sterile High Table conversations at his Cambridge college. “I am not going to waste time saying that this is a pity. It is much worse than that.”

Flash forward to present-day Los Angeles, where Snow’s thesis is receiving an unlikely multimillion dollar stress test. It comes in the form of PST Art: Art & Science Collide, a months-long collaborative series of exhibitions across Southern California, involving more than 70 galleries and some 800 artists, opening this month.

The Getty foundation-funded exercise, comprising $20mn worth of grants, brings a bewildering diversity of works and themes to the exploration of the Two Cultures debate. Is it possible for the arts and sciences to move constructively forward, or are they doomed to permanent irreconcilability? Where Snow’s melancholy observations seem steeped in the claustrophobia of the senior common room and focused on literature, PST: Art finds cause for a sunnier outlook, through a series of arresting visual art shows. 

“The title was a provocation,” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “It was partly to get the attention of audiences, and get them to ask that question — do [art and science] really collide? And you will see various interpretations and answers being offered here. The general view of the community is that, of course, they have long had something to do with one another. But there was this rupture that was created [by Snow’s book]. It was a kind of mythology which has had an amazing hold for a long time.”

There are some well-known areas of mutually rewarding collaborations: one of them is explored in the Palm Springs Art Museum’s radiant show Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science 1945-1990, which explores the influence of space-age technology on painting and sculpture. The imagery and highly polished finishes used in locally based aerospace technology had a powerful effect on artists of the time.

Frederick Eversley’s sleek, subtly hued sculpture “Untitled (Black)” (1978), mesmeric in its dense opacity, owes much to the artist’s training as a designer of labs for Nasa’s Gemini and Apollo missions in the late 1960s. His experiments were mathematically inspired; few artists of the time knew what a plano-concave cylindrical parabolic lens was, let alone how to make one and turn it into a thing of beauty.

Co-curator Sharrissa Iqbal explains that West Coast Abstract Expressionism took its cue from the climate of scientific experimentation. “It is less about interior emotion than it is about atomic physics,” she says. “[The Californian minimalist painter] John McLaughlin differentiated himself from the East Coast painters by saying they were expressing themselves in their paintings, while he wanted viewers to see the work first of all, and then look inward and see themselves.”

At the UCR Arts centre, in Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World, there are examples of early digital trials that were scientifically inspired, yet coincidentally sparked the interest of local artists. “They knew something was happening in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Nasa, and said, ‘Hey, what are those people doing, and how do I get into that lab?’” says Douglas McCulloh, who conceived the show.

Once inside the action, there was conflict rather than collusion, he says. “There is some hilarious correspondence from the scientists essentially asking, ‘What the hell are they doing here — this is a misuse of our technology!’ But they didn’t really know how to take advantage of what they were creating, or what to do with it.” Artists, on the other hand, became enraptured by the immediacy, and even the otherworldly glitches, of the nascent digital technology. 

The blockbuster show of PST Art is at the Getty Center itself, and takes a richly historical view of art’s obsession with light. Lumen: The Art and Science of Light digs deep into medieval and Renaissance scientific theory, and how it enmeshed with the theological beliefs of the time. It was an era in which geometry and philosophy were innately twinned, and its artists responded with breathtaking originality and skill.

A 14th-century pinnacle of an altarpiece by Giotto shows two angels on either side of God, who are peering towards him using darkened glass frames, a symbolic reminder of our inability to perceive him. In an illustration of The Miracle of Mount Gargano, shortly after 1053, an archer pulls the string of his bow only for the arrow to enter his own eye. What looks comical to the 21st-century viewer has a humbling allegorical explanation: it is the arrow of truth that invades his body, enabling his soul to acquire spiritual vision.

Among the few contemporary works littered among this feast of images is Anish Kapoor’s “Non-Object Black” (2018), coated in “Vantablack”, the darkest material known to us, which absorbs 99.965 per cent of visible light and dramatically reduces our ability to perceive depth and texture. Here is another rendition of the unknowable, science deployed not to clarify but to portray transcendence. Not so different, perhaps, from the artistic travails of 1,000 years ago. Has science now become the new religion?

A vibrant presence in PST Art is that of indigenous technology, which is based on tradition and continuity, rather than the constant urge to innovate. In Blood of the Nopal at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Mexican-American artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez deliver powerful ecological messages using natural fibres and dyes including cochineal, a red pigment derived from a tiny insect which has been used by the Zapotec people since about 500BC.

It is Aguiñiga’s contemporary work that most captures the eye however: “Exercises in Understanding” (2020) uses pulverised rust from the US-Mexico border fence — another natural dye — to draw a blood-red ladder on to a wide strip of cotton, winding its pointless way up the gallery wall. “We feel we do not have the right to imagination,” she tells me of the precarious sociopolitical plight of her people. “It is really hard and really sad. But is so important for us to let the entire world know that we are here.” 

Weinstein describes the number of indigenous projects put forward for inclusion in PST Art as a “wonderful surprise. One of the things that we have been able to think about is, ‘What is that relationship between indigenous knowledge and western science?’ I like the fact that, while some of the exhibitions are looking to the ancestral past, others are looking towards an indigenous future.

“The climate crisis has created an acknowledgement of how much we need to learn from indigenous technology. Particularly here in California, scientists are turning to indigenous communities to understand things like cultural burns, ritual burning that is meant to control fire, knowing when to cut back, when to let growth continue. It is very humbling.”

She cites the words of the New Mexico-based artist Cannupa Hanska Luger: “He says, ‘People are trying to figure out how to live through a dystopian present, well, look at us, we have been living through your dystopia for quite a long time now! We are the ones who can imagine a different future.’” 

The dizzying array of viewpoints in PST Art is a smart fit for Los Angeles. It is hard to imagine any other city in the world that could pull it off with such zesty aplomb. Katherine Fleming, president and chief executive of the J Paul Getty Trust, speaking at its formal launch, went so far as to compare the city to “fin-de-siècle Vienna or Periclean Athens” in its ability to capture the cultural moment of the 21st century. She also announced that the event, now in its third incarnation following similar series of shows in 2011 and 2017, will become a regular fixture to be held every five years.

Opening celebrations were concluded at the LA Coliseum with a stunning five-act firework performance devised by the Chinese pyrotechnician Cai Guo-Qiang, with the aid of artificial intelligence powering more than 1,000 aerial drones. The artist gave a running commentary on the show which ended with two thunderous blasts of “divine wrath”. “Humans forever vacillate between fear and hope for salvation, with courage and unease, determination and doubt coexisting,” he recited. “This is the current state of our exploration of AI.”

It might have been described as art, or science, or both; but the collision of the two cultures finally meeting was palpable for miles around.

Details of exhibitions at pst.art

Four (more) shows to see at PST

Lightscape

Doug Aitken

Aitken is an astute and versatile observer of LA popular culture. Lightscape is described as a “shape-shifting act of contemporary storytelling” unfolding in various stages: a feature-length film, a multi-screen fine art installation, and a series of live musical performances. The film version, featuring the LA Phil New Music Group and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, premieres at Walt Disney Concert Hall on November 16; the exhibition follows at the Marciano Art Foundation from December 6.

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Free the Land! Free the People!

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Crenshaw Dairy Mart

An exhibition of eco-pods, loosely based on the work of Buckminster Fuller, channels the hippy spirit of California. Crenshaw Dairy Mart styles itself as an Inglewood-based artist collective “dedicated to shifting the trauma-induced conditions of poverty and economic injustice” through its designs for self-sufficient modular geodesic domes. To February 15 2025

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Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics

LA Municipal Art Gallery

Stars of the show in this homage to the late Da Costa, an interdisciplinary artist who combined robotics and microelectronics with political interventions, are the (stuffed) pigeons carrying mini-rucksacks on their backs. These were employed in Da Costa’s PigeonBlog (2006-08) to upload air quality data as they were flying around LA. To January 5

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Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema

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Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Outcasts and rebels fight against political corruption and berserk technology against spectacular dystopian backdrops: the Academy museum, a newcomer to the LA scene, traces the history of one of the more stylish movie genres of the past half-century, starting with 1982’s Blade Runner and brought right up to date with the Afrofuturism of 2021’s Neptune Frost. To April 12 2026

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Douzens is a little village of fewer than 800 inhabitants, strung out along what was once the main road between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in the south of France. Now it’s distinguished for wine lovers as being, most unusually, home to four certified organic wine growers who all get along with each other swimmingly.

I pointed out the rarity of this co-operative spirit to the rather serious Jean-Pierre Py (pronounced “pee”) who runs the biggest of the four enterprises, Domaine Py, and for the first time during our encounter he smiled and agreed. “Yes, and it’s super! In other villages, they think other producers are competitors.” I wondered whether it was a question of terroir or personalities. “Both,” he said firmly.

Every Wednesday evening at the little fête in the village square, they take it in turns to supply the wine. Adrian Moréno of Domaine Régazel can bring his bottles by hand. His slightly ramshackle barn of a winery is just around the corner from the square. He told me how when his wine press broke down on the first day of the 2022 harvest, all his fellow vignerons rang him to offer the use of their press. Meanwhile, Jennifer Buck and Didier Ferrier of Colline de l’Hirondelle, at the eastern end of the village, routinely use Moréno’s pneumatic press for their white wines.

It all works because the four of them are committed to the same principles and benefit from their proximity (there’s less chance of agrochemical sprays drifting across boundaries), but produce quite different wines from one other. These include thoroughly modern orange wines, voguish red and white grape blends, pet-nats, no-sulphur-added wines and boxed wines.

As for terroir, Douzens is in the far north of the Corbières appellation and has the distinction there of altitude. The commune is dominated by the 600-metre-high Montagne d’Alaric, the northernmost Pyrenean foothill, and the soils and rocks around Douzens are particularly varied according to local oenologist Olivier Mérieux, who has clients all over the western Languedoc.

His Douzens client is Dom Ste Marie des Crozes, run by the spirited Christelle Alias. Her father was not only a local grower but also a wine broker, selling bulk wine to local merchants. The previous generation were driven by quantity not quality. Py’s father was a grower-broker too, and I asked him how his father felt about his son’s decision to go to the trouble of having his own vineyards certified organic (and subsequently biodynamic). “My father didn’t have the same philosophy as me, so we did exchange views a little,” he admitted, rapping his knuckles together.

Alias owns 35 hectares of vines and, as was evident during a hair-raising tour in her little white, open-sided jeep, she revels in their varied terroirs. She claims that wines grown on the slopes of the Alaric have a special freshness and character that makes them stand out in a blind tasting.

The major problem for all these growers, apart from the fact that most of their wine is red while demand for white is growing, is drought. Although this spring was unusually wet, they saw barely a drop of rain between October last year and April. Dark-skinned Grenache has suffered particularly, while Carignan, which has a long history in the Languedoc, manages to hang on to its freshness and acidity come what may. The problem is that appellation regulations for Corbières limit the use of Carignan to a maximum of 50 per cent in any blend, and the equally well-adapted Cinsault to 20 per cent, privileging the imported Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre vine varieties instead. Rather than submitting to these limitations, this foursome chooses to label many of its wines simply Vin de France.

While Alias, Py, Moréno and Ferrier all come from families that have been growing vines for several generations, Ferrier’s wife Jennifer Buck is an exotic import from Berkeley, California. When the couple decided to give winemaking a go, she signed up for all sorts of courses in organics and took her notebook to the local co-op, where she asked: “How do you make grapes ferment?”

It took 10 years to convert the La Joupatière vines to organic viticulture. ‘It’s like taking someone off drugs,’ Buck said. ‘The vines really suffer. It’s horrible to watch’

The wines of all four are imaginatively labelled and named, albeit each with their own identity. Py makes 13 different wines, Alias 10 (though one changes every year), Moréno seven and Buck 11, including La Joupatière, their pride and joy, from a small vineyard planted with at least 16 different ancient Languedoc varieties. The grapes used to go to the local co-op with all the others. It took a Californian to recognise the current value of “field blends”. It apparently needed about 10 years of Ferrier’s vineyard magic to convert the La Joupatière vines to organic viticulture, however. “It’s like taking someone off drugs,” Buck told me. “The vines really suffer. It’s horrible to watch.”

All these producers, with the possible exception of Moréno (who also grows asparagus that he sells at the cellar door in season), wish they had slightly fewer vineyards so they could concentrate on their best. The current challenge isn’t making wine, it’s selling it. As Py, who is diversifying into pistachios, pointed out as we surveyed his vines by the motorway, “Three or four years ago, this would have been worth €12,000 to €16,000 a hectare. Today, it’s more like €7,000 to €12,000.

“Sadly, Corbières just isn’t in vogue,” he said. But among those interested in a more collaborative, less harmful future for wine, it should be.

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The number of films I have seen this year is zero. The number of books I’ve read this year is zero. It’s five months since I last saw a play, and seven months since I last visited a gallery. On both occasions, I was planning an exit before the show was half done.

What might sound like philistine posturing is medical necessity. Last December my left eye blew a gasket. You don’t need to know the cause, only the effect, which is that I can’t hold my attention on anything for long. A good day might mean 45 minutes of televised football, though I’ll soon be counting each head knock and VAR check in dread of injury time. On average days, I max out at one episode of Bluey.

This creates a problem, having been asked to write for a section called Life & Arts, as I have little recent experience of either.

To be sure, better writers have done more with less. John Milton went blind then wrote Paradise Lost. Alice Walker lost her sight in one eye and won a Pulitzer. Fading eyesight inspired Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce to reinvent contemporary fiction, but they must have lacked my capacity for self-pity. The only human condition I can think to talk about is my own.

It all boils down to one problem: too much information. 

The most common response when you tell someone of your incurable condition is for them to tell you about their incurable condition. A fortunate few who have nothing to report will cast around family, friends and neighbours for any malignancy. The world is now full of strangers I know only by their faulty gonads and gallbladders. Giving away too much about myself would only mean that I’d instead hear about all the ways an eye can fail, so this, relatively, is better.

After going half-blind, escapism by the established routes is a big ask

Everyone, too, has a story about the National Health Service. You don’t need to read again about how it’s a broken organisation full of heroes who work in intolerable conditions. My experiences of waiting lists, lost records and wards at breaking point are no different from anyone else’s. We’re all in the same mess. 

But learning to navigate the NHS is part of the coursework that comes with a chronic condition. Each prognosis has footnotes. Every appointment is a new adventure in dysfunction. Microbiological or macropolitical, there’s always something to learn about how complex systems fail.

And mostly, it’s independent learning. The eyeball is structurally a simple thing, a few crystallin proteins buffered by goop. How it connects to the brain is complicated, and aphasia takes many forms. Whether mine is similar to migraine-like distortions caused by patchy vision, or whether it’s the kind of ceaseless degeneration that leads men to mistake wives for hats, won’t be investigated until the effects can no longer be ignored. Neurologists are busy. The needs of others are much more urgent. Still, anticipating what comes next is extra homework. 

Information overload might be why I don’t miss films and books enough to countervail their absence. Podcasts that might fill the void have not, because what I listen to instead is pabulum: minimal dubstep and metronomic techno; compilations with names such as 10hr Lo-Fi Study Mix; media devoid of meaning. 

It’s a trend I’ve come to very late. Years before the pandemic, YouTube content factories were drawing huge audiences to hardcore pabulum of pressure washers and sand slicers. These videos, along with rediscovered antecedents such as Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting, made mindfulness mainstream-compatible by preserving its vacancy while removing all the quacky overtones. No-brow has overtaken low-brow. 

Recently on these pages, Janan Ganesh annoyed centrist dads by arguing that Oasis have a more significant cultural wake than their art-rock contemporaries. I’d go further. Three-minute pop songs are too much information. The most important artist working today is C418, who writes incidental music for Minecraft. Like a pressure-washed patio, C418’s music has no meaning beyond itself. It’s Brian Eno shorn of mid-wit intellectualism. Measured by minutes played, C418 may be the most popular composer ever to have lived.

And I think I understand why. Going half-blind has taught me about always feeling vulnerable in unfamiliar ways, surrounded by critical system failures and talk of negative outcomes. It’s a common life experience, I imagine, and a big ask for escapism by the established routes.

What works better is nothing. Even if my eyes allowed it, I’m not sure I’d have the bandwidth left to read a whole book or watch a whole film. The only antidote for too much information is the opposite.

Bryce Elder is the FT’s City Editor, Alphaville

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