On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Eleanor Margolies wrote:
> A footnote on the British Council...
British Council libraries develop on a combination of local enthusiasm and
central munificence. The central bit is often a hit-and-miss affair, of
course - a buying-into cultural studies programmes and selected literary
agendas, with someone else doing the selection. But the local enthusiasms,
as Eleanor notes, are often remarkable and exciting. There are other
members of this list who've riden a mile or so on the old Britco horse,
and wouldn't like to see it shot just yet... my own experiences have been
more-or-less all benign: great visits masterminded by local hosts,
culminating last year with the Brno Conference at which Maggie O'Sullivan,
Lee Harwood, Tony Baker and I performed for and talked to an amazing mix
of people. I'd like to imagine that this wasn't a one-off, but...
They send me, from time to time, their literature newsletter, which shows
the full range of writings they support. I was interested to note how many
UK crime writers they send to crime writing conferences in South America,
Kuala Lumpur, Durban etc - it would be mildly interesting to have someone
correlate these events with the locations of crime novels published, say,
2-3 years after such gatherings.
The general principle, that the centre supports centrality, while the
margins support marginality, shouldn't be big news to anyone.
RC
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|