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Hello, I'm Angus Colwell and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week, a few of our favourite writers read their pieces from the latest issue of the magazine.

This week, Melvin Bragg reads his diary, Svitlana Moriniette and Why Ukrainians Fight,

Matthew Paris defends Carrie Johnson, and Lionel Shriver on the madness of Central Banks.

First up is Melvin Bragg.

In 1977, when I set up the South Bank show for ITB, I wanted Paul McCartney to be on the first programme. His unique talent

apart, I thought he would be the key to unlocking one of my cheap aims in the new programme,

which was to disrupt the accepted order of play

in which classical music, ballet and opera were at the top of the pyramid while down at the bottom

was pop music. McCartney took some netting, but he came on and we met at Abbey Road Studios at about

midnight and the programme was launched, Not without criticism, that the Daily

Telegraph critic, for example, wrote that as far as arts programmes were concerned, it drew the line

at Lennon McCartney. Those were the days. Clive James saw what the programme was trying to do and backed it

and that was vital. Forty-five years on, pop music is now well dug in as one of the major creative

springs in the arts, and at 80 years old, even more impossibly handsome, relentlessly prolific

and immovably grounded, McCartney still seems to be a ruler in that world. His lyrics now run

alongside contemporary poetry, his music is orchestrated, but above all the songs

go on and so does he. Who would have thought that an eight-year-old would dominate festivals and

television as he's done over these past few weeks? What happened to 64? Hunter Davis, author of 103 books,

wrote the first full biography of the Beatles in the 1960s.

...