At one point the Commissioner pretended to be Jeremy Paxman in order to wangle a straight answer out of his colleagues (“Just yes or no. Sir Paul and his deputies scrambled over the media obstacle course, lurching from interview to interview as they tried to peddle a plausible “line”. Nor was it any old day: it was the publication date of the Macpherson report, with its damning conclusion that the police were guilty of institutional racism. In The Siege of Scotland Yard (C4) Roger Graef spent a remarkable day eavesdropping on the life of Sir Paul Condon, Commissioner of Police. Doesn’t this bring your leadership into question? Haven’t you lost the confidence of the community? Isn’t your position, um ,untenable?It is not only warriors who have to fight on this front The walls of our world have more than ears; they have flies. Mr Churchill, when you promise to fight on the beaches, won’t that lead inevitably to body bags, or at least have serious environmental consequences? With respect, Prime Minister, a few fine words can’t hide the fact that our army at Dunkirk has been crushed. The announcers seemed shocked as they delivered the tidings that one American soldier appeared to have “cuts and bruises”.Previous wars might have taken a different course had their protagonists been obliged to play the media so busily.

Last week it encouraged them to wriggle close to the mealy-mouthed promise that there could be such a thing as a war in which no one was killed – as if war were diplomacy by other means. But this 24-hour scrutiny presents politicians with an awkward new front. The harrowing pictures of exiled Kosovars reminded us what the war was about, and will hugely inflate the aid budgets required to alleviate their misery. Someone had forgotten to tell them they were supposed to be grateful.
We are still struggling to learn how to conduct or even witness war as a public spectacle on this scale. But once the camera crews had reached Macedonia our attention was diverted to the blank horde of refugees creeping along snowy mountain roads Some rode in tractors, some in wheelbarrows Most trudged along on foot Their faces were expressionless. As always, the availability of footage determined the story we were told.

At first we watched bombers leaving Fairford, or jets banking over Italy. After a while we, like the airmen, risked being what one American general called “weathered out”. There were clashing views, arguments, predictions, “defence analysts” and, increasingly, weather forecasts. There were lurid maps explaining where Montenegro was, or graphics showing how to blow up a missile launcher using only a Boeing, a glider and a Stealth bomber. Every day our news programmes filled up with heated talk about the Balkans.

Back in the days when careless talk was thought to cost lives, wars were prosecuted on the field; now they are conducted on screens. Last week’s assault on American computers by Serbian virus bombers gave a sharp twist on a now-familiar concept: infowar. As it is, today this great building – with its horrible photographic reproduction of the Gentileschi ceiling – seems sadly tacky.` at the Court of Charles I’: Sunley Room, National Gallery, WC2 (0171 747 2885), to 23 May.. Perhaps it should be an art gallery again; there are fine 17th-century pictures in the Royal Collection which could go there. Under Henrietta Maria, the Queen’s House held a rich collection of paintings that must have been an outstanding 17th-century ensemble. Caravaggio, Artemisia, or Orazio’s early David and Goliath would have given them a better idea of what they were in for – decapitation.On the other hand, the Cavaliers were good patrons. The Cavaliers were doomed in part by aesthetic illusions – they believed their own spin, in contemporary terms.