Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain (Paperback)

Long Britain's best chronicler of culture and political policy, Robert Hewison turns his unflinching gaze on the New Labour era, a time of targets, access and excellence for all, complete with the National Lottery, Cool Britannia, the Millennium Dome and the 2012 Olympics. It's not a pretty sight, and his findings of folly, incompetence and vanity will entertain and disturb readers in equal measure. They should also embarrass any politicians and arts administrators who retain a degree of self-awareness. -- Alwyn Turner, author of A Classless Society
This is essential reading for anyone who has the slightest interest in the funding of the arts in this country. -- Richard Eyre
Robert Hewison's Cultural Capital is a brilliant analysis of the way that the intrinsic value of art was undermined by a Blair led government's attempts to control creative production and turn it into an instrument of social engineering. It is a timely warning about the dangers of political interference and a rallying cry for art to both be publicly supported and maintain a hard won independence. Art needs this independence from power in order to show us to ourselves in ways that the media and politics never do and never can. -- Antony Gormley
Hewison's analysis of how a golden age turned to lead is highly authoritative, well argued & conceptually robust. * Guardian *
I could hardly put it down: so forceful, lucid, objective, blackly funny, deeply depressing and URGENTLY NECESSARY. -- Rupert Christiansen * Daily Telegraph *