Jonathan Meades

Luc Tuymans’s painting The Walk shows Hitler and Speer silhouetted in early evening light on the Obersalzberg. The photograph that the painting is based on is mute. Tuymans’s manipulation of it is anything but. His Hitler, the Führer, the guide, is indeed guiding, just. He is stumbling awkwardly towards the last of the light while the upright Speer holds back, following certainly, but cautiously, tentatively, allowing his idol and besotted patron first dibs on divining the future – which may prove to be less golden than the sun’s shafts seem to promise. What if the guide has lost his touch?

The Queen unveiled the Bomber Command Memorial at Hyde Park Corner on 28 June. ‘Sixty-seven years too late’ according to a chorus of jingoists who have apparently long been militating for such a memorial. The urbane Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede designed by Edward Maufe was evidently reckoned insufficiently specific. And the appetite for acknowledgment was hardly sated by the...