Literature in the Arts Council Garden

Recent Arts Council soul-searching will affect 'literature policy' in fundamental ways. Hitherto, critics have asked: should literature be publicly funded? Now the question is: can it be? The Arts Council Literature Director himself raised the matter frankly. He answered it, too: no, it cannot; two decades of funding have had little effect on the literature of these islands, whatever they may have done for literary amenities and writers.

I write as an editor and a publisher whose work would not now be possible without Arts Council support. You, reading PNR, are beneficiaries of this support, holding in your hands £1.35 or so of public subsidy, considerably less than other subsidised journals, but a significant portion all the same. PNR might still be here without the Arts Council. But if so, it would be in quite a different form. Who is to say that a form more responsive to 'demand' than PNR would not be a better, more useful one? Is the freedom to identify a readership rather than a market and to address it in 'our' terms rather than 'its' worth buying with public money? The price is relatively small, but what is at issue is the principle of subsidy and the freedoms it buys.

After two decades it should be possible for the Arts Council to declare: we have given these writers this money and they have written the following important works as a result; we have assisted these publishing ventures and they are now thriving ...