ABSTRACT
Should anyone claim not to understand my title, let them repair immediately to the pages of the posh newspapers: what they manifestly mean by these signifiers is what I also mean by them. This title has been chosen deliberately to avoid that contentious substantive, ‘culture’, and to allow me to address directly the two questions posed by the editors of this collection: first, how far (if at all) have political authorities influenced the production and reception of cultural artefacts?; second, what other, perhaps more fundamental, influences must we consider?
