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 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.

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

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.

Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.