Of all the overhyped exhibitions opening in London, from "Leonardo da Vinci" to "Damien Hirst", the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy is one of the few that deserve the breathless publicity.

Perhaps our greatest living painter (though he dismisses the phrase as "newspaper stuff"), Mr Hockney has filled the gallery in Piccadilly with large canvases depicting the east Yorkshire landscape - and a series of pictures created on his iPad. Mr Hockney, now 74, said of the show: "If you're my age and you find something that's exciting, you stick with it." The poet Craig Raine, who writes about Hockney on page 40, says that the show deserves four hours of your time. If you are lucky enough to get a ticket, that is.