“Artists shudder when they mention South Bank’s Royal Festival Hall; there is no concert hall like it in the rest of the civilised world.” Indeed, London’s South Bank has been a major cultural failure that has bedeviled generations of administrators. What’s the problem? “The arts centre is a 1950s conceit, based on new-town shopping malls where one stop covers all needs. It does not fit the specialised tastes of the 21st century.”