High Culture and the Western Canon: has the fightback begun?

With the BBC having announced a remake of Kenneth Clark's TV series Civilisation, and Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual cornucopia on Radio 4, In Our Time, now in its 17th year, we will be asking whether the mission of Lord Reith 'to educate, inform and entertain' is alive and well. Can Matthew Arnold, TS Eliot and FR Leavis sleep well in their graves? Has the era of dumbing down to ' widen access ' run its course? Why shouldn't ALL schoolchildren be asked to grapple with the 'difficult' texts, rich canvases or musical scores of our western inheritance? Why shouldn't everyone have the chance to join the 'elite'?

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at UEA. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and her literary journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, New York Times Book Review, and the Spectator, among others. She comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for UK television and radio, has judged many literary prizes, including the Bailey’s (Orange) Prize for Fiction and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she is the 2015 Eccles Centre Writer in Residence at the British Library.

Jonty Claypole is Head of Arts at the BBC.

Maya Jaggi has been a profile-writer and critic for Guardian Review since 2000, and is an award-winning cultural journalist. She has reported on arts and culture from five continents, and is an influential voice on world literature. Some of her interviews appear in the books Lives and Works and Writing Across Worlds. Also a presenter, she contributes to radio and television, and has judged literary awards including the David Cohen, Orange and Commonwealth Writers prizes.

Frederic Raphael, a major scholar in classics at St John's College, Cambridge, has written over twenty-five novels and volumes of short stories, as well as essays, biographies, translations and many reviews. His most recent book on the ancient world is A Jew Among the Romans| about Flavius Josephus. His second volume of autobiography, Going Up, will be published next year. So will his novel Private Views. Among his many film and television scripts are Darling, Two for the Road, the Glittering Prizes and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. His most recent script, This Man This Woman is due to be shot next year.

The LSE European Institute| (@LSEEI| ) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.

This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015| , taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

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