Importance of culture reminder on night of Booker prize

It's lucky I left a gap in the reading for this month to have a book spare incase C didn't win the Booker prize. Sure enough that decision turned out to be a wise one as Howard Jacobson won with The Finkler Question.

Watching the coverage of the prize on the BBC I found the comments made by the chair of the judges Sir Andrew Motion were worth listening to and remembering. His passionate defence of culture in a time of cuts is one that hopefully government ministers will have picked up on.

Taking the axe to arts budgets seems to be an easy option in times of hardship but as Motion said the cultural richness of a nation is as important as its economic wealth.