Books In Trouble? When Weren’t They?

“You’d think our literary culture is at a crisis point, and from here our nation will descend into illiteracy and intellectual decrepitude. Marjorie Garber, a professor of English at Harvard and author of several books about Shakespeare and literary studies, draws from hundreds of years of history to prove that literature always seems to be at a crisis point — and it always recovers.”

What’s Next After UK Arts Funding Cuts?

“The arts need to prepare for the fightback now. The cuts have been so long heralded that they have taken on a patina of inevitability. In fact much can change, even during this parliament. Many councils will change colour, returning power to the party which imaginatively transformed declining post-industrial cities through cultural development in the last hard times. Meanwhile any potential post-2015 government will need to be pressed to see this retrenchment as reversible.”