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On a list of the world’s most influential art people, Gil Peretz ranks No. 50, according to Art Review Magazine. And who is Gil Peretz? “He’s a 52-year-old Puerto Rican who lives in Queens with his wife, his 22-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son. And what does he do? Are we soon to be favoured with one of his installations in Tate Modern’s turbine hall? Not even close. Has he got an unexpectedly large collection of hitherto unseen Breughels in his house in the Hamptons? Hardly. No, Perez is arguably the world’s most important doorman. He stands at the door of the Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters in New York greeting clients and helping to organise auctions.”

Important archaeological finds were made all along the route of the high speed trains for the Chunnel between England and France. “Hundreds of archaeologists, working over a period of 15 years, have salvaged vast stores of finds from the path of the 185mph trains, as well as recording scores of sites which will remain safe but buried beneath the tracks. One long string of pearls seems to be everyone’s favourite description.”

The Palace of Versailles is to be given a €400 million restoration that will take 20 years. “The Sun King’s 700-room palace and 800-hectare (2,000-acre) garden are to be given a long-overdue facelift aimed at restoring their lost sparkle – recapturing their architectural purity and rendering them safe for the 10 million people who visit each year. This is the first big restoration programme for Versailles since the early 1800s, and the biggest such undertaking in France since the remodelling of the Louvre in the late 1900s.”

A scuplture commemorating composer Benjamin Britten in his beloved town of Aldeburgh has provoked protests, with many townsfolk calling it an eyesore. “The eyesore is a glorious thing, four tonnes of steel cut and shaped into giant scallop shells, which will rear up from the beach. From the shore the cut-out letters against the sky will read as a line from Peter Grimes: ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned.’ The artist is despondent over the reception his work is getting: “It never crossed my mind that it would be in any way controversial. I thought that people might come up and say thank you – more fool me. My own newsagent just said to me, ‘Hello, how’s the eyesore coming along?'”