Cultural figures find themselves on one side of the great divide in British life, but the country needs them to venture across the rift and interpret the fractured country, says Charlotte Higgins.
"We had a headache,” wrote Philip Pullman on Twitter on Friday, “so we shot our foot off. Now we can’t walk, and we still have the headache.”
There is, of course, no one like a novelist to reach for the apt and telling metaphor at a time of chaos. The referendum result rings particularly bleakly for Britain’s cultural world. Most artists, curators, musicians, directors and scholars think of themselves as instinctively and reflexively open to the world, optimistic about its possibilities and curious about its imaginative byways. Supporting Britain’s membership of the EU has been a natural part of that. The same is true of our universities... Keep reading on The Guardian
"We had a headache,” wrote Philip Pullman on Twitter on Friday, “so we shot our foot off. Now we can’t walk, and we still have the headache.”
There is, of course, no one like a novelist to reach for the apt and telling metaphor at a time of chaos. The referendum result rings particularly bleakly for Britain’s cultural world. Most artists, curators, musicians, directors and scholars think of themselves as instinctively and reflexively open to the world, optimistic about its possibilities and curious about its imaginative byways. Supporting Britain’s membership of the EU has been a natural part of that. The same is true of our universities... Keep reading on The Guardian