I didn’t realise they were chic, sexy, dynamic, Madonna-style people. But how could I have been so blind? As we speak, the world is waiting to hear whether prison awaits Alfred Taubman, the former chairman of Sotheby’s, who was found guilty of a colossal, transatlantic, price-fixing scandal involving Christie’s and its former chairman, Sir Anthony Tennant. The combination of names from Central Casting (you can picture Taubman as the Bronx go-getter, Tennant as the smooth British knight) and what we know of the cloak-and-dagger secret meetings, million-dollar stitch-ups and private jets revving on the runway has all the glamour of escapist fiction. The actress Sigourney Weaver apparently came to the court hearings to check out the demeanour of Dede Brooks, the Sotheby’s chief executive, in the hope of playing her in a forthcoming movie. And you thought auction houses were all Peter Wilson banging his gavel and shouting “Sold to the lady in the heliotrope mules”? Think again. We’re talking global intrigue here, and the glamour of fraud. Write it all down, put in a scene where the defrauding duo snort a line of cocaine off a Rubens, get Guy Ritchie to direct it, and you’ll clean up.We’re talking Jilly Cooper as well.

The mistress of the schlockbuster has a new 550-page novel out next month. Entitled Pandora, it’s set in “the international art world where the more beautiful the picture, the greater the backstabbing”. It’s all about a stolen painting by Raphael and a hunt to retrieve it, culminating in an Old Masters sale at Sotheby’s. And in William Boyd’s new novel Any Human Heart, the diary-writing Logan Mountstuart hits his prime in 1950s New York, running an art gallery and trying to buy as many Jackson Pollocks as he can after the artist’s death.When did we get so keen on the art world as the source of imagination and the epitome of modernity? It’s not as if we spend many waking hours buying artworks and bidding at auctions. But the combination of beauty, high sensibility and unscrupulous dealings is irresistible to the western spirit ­ the pictures and works of art becoming emblems of purity, to be fought over tooth-and-nail by terrible, mercenary soldiers in a secular crusade. Madonna’s character in Up for Grabs, the Sothebys price-fixers and Jilly Cooper’s shrieky dramatis personae are all driven by greed and money-fixation; but the presence of art as the currency in which they deal somehow ennobles their behaviour. Would Madonna have agreed to take part in the play if the role had been a junk-bond trader? No way.

Would Taubman and Tennant have been so abused had their cartel been price-fixing tinned tomatoes? Absolutely not. How intriguing to find that the big concept of Art still lurks, like God the Holy Ghost, behind our trendiest and our most venal impulses. j.walsh independent.co.uk
More from John Walsh. For the pioneering ecologist Sir George Stapledon, the “shapely outline” of the Cambrian Mountains was of such beauty that any intervention by man would constitute a criminal offence. But many villagers now see the move as stifling the only industry likely to revive the area after foot-and-mouth and agricultural depression.To Peggy Litford, who runs a bed-and-breakfast in Cwmystwyth close to where the first wind farm at Cefn Croes would be seen, the developments would be a death knell to an already struggling tourist industry. “We have had foot-and-mouth and the turbines will completely kill us off People … come here to escape from urban surroundings and industry and they don’t want to see an industrial power station,” she said.Dave Ormerod, a retired BT engineer from Chester who settled in the area after taking early retirement, denied accusations that much of the opposition was nothing more than “nimbys” refusing to accept the need for renewable energy.

“Nobody wants them and the powers-that-be think this area does not matter because there’s nothing here. They’re nimbys as much as us and there’s more of them than us.”However, another hotelier, who did not want to be named given the strength of local opposition, said wind farms could actually bring tourists to the mountains. “If they are marketed properly as a centre for green energy they could attract visitors. They won’t harm the wildlife; sheep can still graze round them, birds can still fly past them.”A nearby hydroelectric project had involved “drowning” a house and a chapel, she said, whereas the wind farms harmed nothing except a view that was often obscured by mist anyway. Those opposing the schemes risked damaging the tourism they claimed to support by repeating the message the landscape would be destroyed, she added.Gerry Jewson, director of the Renewable Development Company, which is behind the Cefn Croes development, insists that stopping the wind farms would damage more than the landscape. “There is no evidence to suggest that wind farms put off tourists. The harsh reality is that the mid-Wales economy is in decline through foot-and-mouth, agricultural problems and tourism dropping off.”The developments could revitalise some of the local villages and stop some of the depopulation that is taking place.” He accepted the number of permanent local jobs could be no more than seven, but said that was “quite a lot” in such a rural place.However Martin Wright, head of the campaign against Mr Jewson’s development, argues that a post-war consensus that exceptional landscapes are worth preserving would be shattered.