‘Making Britain a Gayer and More Cultivated Country’: Wilson, Lee and the Creative Industries in the 1960s.

Interrogating the Wilson administration's cultural agenda seems key given the seismic shifts assumed to characterise British society and particularly cultural life in the 1960s. Yet historians have given this little attention. Exploring Jennie Lee's tenure as Arts Minister this article discloses cultural besides financial tensions over the status and definition of the arts, both within government and between government, a vibrant artistic community and the public. Besides interpreting Wilson's government outside the declinist mainstream, it hints at links with New Labour's penchant for the creative industries and at post-industrial contexts for understanding British politics and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]