I took the sub-title of Tom Shapcott’s book to be mildly ironic. His ‘brief history’ is not brief, nor is it a history in the conventional sense. It is a hefty compilation of lists– lists of writers assisted by the Literature Board, lists of projects, lists of payments and awards to authors, lists of publications –together with long extracts from official reports, board minutes and documents of various kinds, all impressively tabulated and cross-referenced, with codes and file numbers in abundance. And at first sight it looks pretty dull. Surely a prose narrative would have brought the story more vividly to life? Surely Tom Shapcott, the Board’s respected director since 1983, could have presented this laborious aggregation of data in more digestible form, enlivening his history with the occasional sharp anecdote, dwelling here on a notorious personality, here on a clash of wills, here perhaps on the tiny scandal or neglected cause celebre?

Yet the more one examines this absorbing publication – a better sub-title might have been ‘Selected Papers’ – the more useful and in­structive it appears. One is gratified to discover, for example, among the list of Literature Board fellowship­ holders, the names of Max Harris and Barry Humphries – writers renowned for their public hostility to ‘subsidised culture’ and arts funding of any kind. Shapcott has taken the view that the best way to present the history of the Board is simply to record what it has done – everything it has done – if necessary in copious and unvarnished detail. Thus one notes the discreet annotation (‘aban­doned’) against Lady Frances McNicoll’s biography of Menzies; one wonders what became of Tina Jorgensen’s stage musical Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, assisted in 1977, or Peter Jones’ Historic Motor Cycling. As­siduous readers, of course, will be able to calculate at leisure which writers have received most in subsidy and produced least in return, which universities have had most writers-in-residence, which poets have won most prizes. The possibilities are enticing.