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" The success of the arts has come through a mix of public subsidy, substantial private support, and good box-office receipts, but central to Labour's post-1997 programme has been a determination to increase access as much as excellence. "

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" I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee. "

Melvyn Bragg

Arts

Continue

Believe

" There are two big beasts in the arts: the BBC and Sky Arts - challenging, leading the way. "

" I enjoy what was called 'swotting' in my day. "

Melvyn Bragg

Day

Enjoy

" In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts - and achieved it. "

" Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District. "

" Like university science departments, the arts have shown how they can earn their way and point to an economically newborn future for this country. They show that the U.K. could be a prime provider of imaginative riches and intellectual adventure, which I think are the two great prizes of the 21st century. "

" The abolition of slavery was driven by the King James Bible. It gave slaves a common language and purpose. "

" A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going. "

" In the 1990s, from the estates of Scotland came the phenomenon of Irvine Welsh. 'Trainspotting' demanded its place not only in the high ranks of contemporary fiction but as a describer of a Britain that literally and metaphorically was in a deep mess. "

" I'm a class mongrel. "

Melvyn Bragg

Mongrel

Class

" In an arts programme, my job was to go where the talent was. And the talent was in popular culture. "

" In a sense, Bond ousted the cowboy as the screen hero, and Ken Adams replaced the horse with technology. "

" I wanted 'The South Bank Show' to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy. "

" People in jobs that they hate must be worn out. "

" The class barricades have been stormed by the forces of a broad culture, which is made up of clusters of individuals who have decided for themselves what they will be in society. "

Melvyn Bragg

Culture

Class

" Well, I don't think I'm good-looking... I know people who are good-looking, and I'm not good-looking. "

" Control, like curiosity, can be an exterminator. "

Melvyn Bragg

Curiosity

Control

" I don't get nervous when I'm interviewing someone on film - it can be cut, and we can do it again. It is quite nerve-racking doing things live. "

" We listened to a lot of drama, adaptations of books, comedy. There was a real love of music expressed in choirs, because you didn't have to have instruments except your voice. "

" The theatre always seems to be in trouble but always thriving. It's deeply comical to me that we agonize about our crap football teams and indifferent Test sides when in front of our noses is a great world success story that no one's interested in apart from those who work in it. "

" I've been writing since I was 19. "

" Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis. "

" I don't believe in a personal God, no. And I don't believe in resurrection as it is in the New Testament. "

" Miliband failed us, his Labour supporters. And Labour will now, because of him, be in a disaster zone for a long time. "

" The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying. "

" I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck. "

" Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it. "

Melvyn Bragg

Early

Music

" We start out as sand and soot out there in the universe, and who knows, in 40 trillion years' time we might come back. But if we come back without memory, it doesn't really interest me. "

" It was my idea for high culture and popular culture to be treated equally. "

" There's a lot of hours in the week if you use them properly. "