Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain - Softcover

Praise for "Culture and Consensus" "Hewison's survey is immensely impressive ... He brilliantly relates cultural trends to political and economic history." --"New Statesman" "Thoroughly researched, nicely paced, and convincingly argued." --"Independent" "This is an honest book." --"Sunday Times" "Robert Hewison's study seeks to do for culture what Peter Hennessy's "Never Again" did for socio-political history and Will Hutton's "The State We're In" did for economics." --"Literary Review" "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

What was Creative Britain? Was it the "golden age" that Tony Blair vaunted in 2007, or a neoliberal nirvana? In the 21st century, culture - the visual and performing arts, museums and galleries, the creative industries - have become ever more important to governments, to the economy, and to how people live. Cultural historian Robert Hewison shows how, from Cool Britannia and the Millennium Dome to the Olympics and beyond, Creative Britain rose from the desert of Thatcherism only to fall into the slough of New Labour's managerialism.