Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
This is a fascinating book, remarkable for the depth of its archival research. It takes on the ambitious task of exploring the often surprising and nuanced nature of the relationship between the state and public culture in the post-war period. It explores its subject through a series of case studies – the development of the Arts Council, including its relationship with Black British writing, the ways The Satanic Verses staged a new conversation about community relations and the state’s relationship to the literary text, and the status of ‘cultural’ texts in the NEAB anthology for GCSE English. Despite its range, one of its greatest strengths is its specificity, in terms of both the acute focus of its approach and also the volume of detail, which is marshalled deftly into a convincing, compelling argument which encompasses the provincial and the global, and understands the relationships between them. The subject needs an approach which can encompass its labyrinthine, complex and contradictory impulses and expressions, and receives it here.