Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.
Friday, April 01, 2016
'The best must be made more widely available...'
'The best must be made more widely available...'
Dotti Irving:
What’s the collective noun for a gathering of the great and the good of the contemporary cultural world? That was my question as I looked round the room at the top of the Royal Festival Hall last week. There must have been at least 300 people there, representing every aspect of the UK’s cultural scene, local and national, private and public alike.
The occasion was the publication of the DCMS’s Culture White Paper, the first white paper for culture in more than 50 years and only the second ever published. Presenting the paper, Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey paid tribute to Jennie Lee, the originator of the 1965 paper which underlined the then government’s obligation to sustain the arts and ensure that ‘the best must be made more widely available’.
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