The uses and abuses of British political fiction or how I learned to stop worrying and love Malcolm Tucker

Abstract

Since Plato the arts have worried those concerned with the maintenance and stability of the polis. More recently politicians and commentators have expressed fears that the manner in which formal politics is depicted in fiction has been a contributory factor in the breakdown of trust in British political culture. By comparison the USA is pointed to as offering a far more positive tradition of cultural representations of politics and politicians. This article seeks to assess such claims arguing that neither tradition - British or American - can be so easily characterised. It goes on to argue for the importance of taking the fictional representation of politics seriously not only for its worth as a contemporary record of attitudes and assumptions about British political culture but also its ability to reveal and consider aspects of political activity that traditional methods might find difficult to measure and record. © The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society. All rights reserved.