Three weeks ago iconic British playwright Mark Ravenhill publicly declared what many in the arts have been thinking in private. In a piece published in the Guardian newspaper’s arts section, Ravenhill said the battle over Lottery funding in the run up to the 2012 Olympics “reflects a much wider split in our culture.”
A self-confessed hater of sports, Ravenhill argues that we are now witnessing a showdown between sport and culture that has been brewing since the Romantic Movement “introduced the idea of the artist as wan, contemplative and lost among some daffodils.”
