Thomas Marks
From Gold to Lead
Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain
By Robert Hewison
Verso 288pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
‘Tory dossier says Labour will cancel cuts to the arts budget. We won’t.’ So tweeted the Labour press office in the first week of 2015, fashioning a first-rate PR balls-up from its efforts to defend the shadow chancellor’s spending policies. There’s no easier way to rile the arts establishment in Britain than by disparaging its central funding arrangements; even after years of austerity, it still feels unexpected to hear tough talk on the arts from the party that, in the guise of New Labour, made so much effort in the late 1990s to cosy up to artists and performers.
Then again, the tactless tone of that tweet seems only too familiar. Increased government support for the ‘creative industries’ in the last two decades has had many positive outcomes, but it has also repeatedly shown up the jarring imperatives of politicians and those who work in the arts, and the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers