The British Home Office Keeps Refusing Visas To Writers And Artists, Causing Big Problems For Festivals

The UK publisher of a Palestinian journalist whose visa was denied and denied before finally – too late for her to get to the festival, of course – being OK’d at the last minute: “It feels like we’re all sleepwalking into a new age of nativism. … We’re not just talking about classic, difficult-to-prove institutional racism. We’re talking about quiet, effective cultural censorship. The Home Office is saying, in effect: British readers shouldn’t be hearing from other perspectives at our book festivals; their voices are of less worth; British voices first.”