Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, and Lord Smith, the former culture secretary, have launched a campaign to stem the flow of famous writers’ archives being sold to universities in America. They are leading a 15-p group of eminent literary figures demanding tax breaks, government funding and lottery cash to help British institutions match the bids of their rich American rivals. The campaign comes amid fears that the papers of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, may go abroad. All three are understood to have been approached recently by agents acting for institutions in America.
In recent years British authors whose papers have been sold abroad include the novelists Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes and Malcolm Bradbury and the playwrights David Hare and Tom Stoddard. The works of JM Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, Graham Greene, DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh are already held abroad. In 1997, a year before his death, Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, sold his archive for about ￡500,000 to Emory University in Atlanta. While taxpayers may be happy to fund purchases of famous paintings so that they remain in the country and be put on show, it is less clear what the immediate benefit would be in paying for authors’ archives to be kept here.
Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons culture select committee, said public money should be spent on "more pressing" projects. "The fact that archives such as this go abroad is, I’m afraid, the reality of the world," he said. "We have many artifacts in the UK that belong to other cultures. " The campaign argues, however, that valuable research sources are being lost. Foreign institutions sometimes charge for access to the material and, as the authors retain copyright, the papers cannot be made available on the internet.
"This is about our cultural heritage as well as the obvious research opportunities," said Motion, whose campaign group includes Michael Holroyd, the biographer and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, and Richard Ovenden, keeper of special collections at Oxford University. They are calling for the culture secretary to be given the authority to delay the export of items considered a significant part of the national heritage to enable British institutions to put together bids. The campaigners want an increase in direct grants and the removal of Vat from unbound papers, which increases the cost of purchases in this country.
Smith, who was culture secretary from 1997-2001, said: "It won’t cost the Treasury an arm and a leg—we’re talking pennies, really." The campaigners say American universities are targeting young British writers and offering between ￡50,000 and ￡300,000 for their notebooks, manuscripts and letters. Joan Winterkorn, a broker who negotiated the sale of the papers of Laurence Olivier and the writers Kenneth Tynan and Peter Nichols to the British Library, said the cream of British archive material will continue to be "up for grabs" unless the tax laws are changed. "American universities are increasingly creating a working relationship with younger and younger writers, so this is not something that is going to go away," she said.
It is understood that an academic from one American institution was flown to London this month with a specific brief to "nobble" Ishiguro at the Booker prize dinner in London. Ishiguro, 50, who was nominated for his novel Never Let Me Go and who won the Booker in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, has not yet made a decision, according to his spokeswoman. She said he had been approached by a number of US universities. Arnold Wesker, best known for his plays Roots and Chips with Everything, sold three tons of letters, manuscripts and papers to an American university in 2000. "I was offered a derisory ￡60,000 from the British Library and ￡100,000 from the University of Texas at Austin—there was no contest," said Wesker, 73. "I would much sooner have had my work here in London but the gap was too large... it is a shame."
A source close to Rushdie, whose papers stretch back to the publication of his first novel, Grimus, in 1975, said he had received "scores" of approaches from America. The author, who now lives mainly in New York, said this weekend that he had "no immediate plans" to sell his archive. Were he to sell abroad, it is likely that there would be a public outcry given the amount of taxpayers, money spent on his protection following the Satanic Verses affair. Zadie Smith, the author of White Teeth, which won the Whitbread award in 2000, has also received "several approaches from buyers," according to a friend. The University of Texas at Austin spends an estimated ￡3m a year on its collections. It specializes in British and Irish writers and includes the papers of George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Edith Sitwell among its possessions.
When the Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders says the fact that the British writers’ archives "go abroad" is "the reality of the world," (para. 3) he most probably implies that ______.
A．this kind of trading is quite normal and should not be surprising
B．the public money should be used to retain the manuscripts of these writers
C．the British have also bought these artifacts from artists from other countries
D．it is not well-grounded to use taxpayers~ money to keep British writers’ archives
