Roundheads and Middlebrows Before I'm accused of begging a million
que's- Lions I should declare my own interests, which can most simply be described as highbrow 00 the one hand and lowbrow on the other. The areas which seem to me unhealthy are the bad- lands. of the middlebrow. In so far as it is true that the advent of commercial television pushed a large lump of the BBC's production out of that sterile no-man's-land, so far should we be grate- ful to hard-faced men in pursuit of profit. To say as much is not in the least to be 'anti-BBC, I'm much given to the BBC, but I should be genuinely surprised to learn that Mr. Hugh Carleton Greene himself did not think that the Pilkington Report went a trifle far in its par' ticular praise of his Corporation. For the real basic question is not how excessive profits can be trimmed, or how the 'public service' aspect of the 'communications industry' can be P113" tected and extended. The basic question, as always, is how we can circumvent the manoeuvres of the roundheads of our day who know Shat is best for everybody else, who bring the livelY arts into disrepute by their incessant prating about an imprecise concept which they Insist on labelling 'culture,' and who would like nothing better than to see us middlebrow to a man. BY all means let there be more of everything, 01 less; but let its range be as wide in refinement and in coarseness as society at large will albs' and if some people make profit in the process, s° what?
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