Not worth the virtual paper they are written on

Leave the arts alone!

Every few months the UK press seems to pick a creative sector, hold it up to the light, and declare it dying, failing, or somehow culturally illegitimate. The latest target: “Women’s Commercial Fiction”. Apparently, success is now suspicious. Popularity is a problem. And an industry that still generates millions in tax revenue — directly through sales, indirectly through employment, retail, events, and film/TV adaptation pipelines — is treated as if it’s a frivolous indulgence rather than a functioning part of the UK economy.

It’s a strange national habit: criticising the very industries that keep the cultural and economic lights on. Publishing is one of the few creative sectors that has weathered digital disruption with resilience. It has adapted, diversified, and continued to produce work that people actually want to read. Yet the moment a genre becomes commercially successful, the commentary shifts from celebration to sneering. Why?

Perhaps it’s because fantasy, escapism, and emotional storytelling don’t fit neatly into the UK’s preferred narrative of “serious culture”. But that’s precisely the point. The beauty of the internet — and of art in all its forms, books included — is that it gives us permission to wander into other worlds. To lose ourselves. To imagine differently. To breathe for a moment outside the grind of everyday life.

In a country where people are working harder for less, where public services are strained, and where the news cycle feels like a conveyor belt of anxiety, fantasy isn’t a crime. It’s a tonic. A pressure valve. A way of staying human.

Criticising readers for choosing joy, escape, or emotional connection says more about the critic than the art. And criticising an industry that still contributes significantly to the UK’s cultural identity and tax base is even stranger. If anything, we should be protecting these spaces — not undermining them.

Let the arts do what they’ve always done: offer refuge, imagination, and possibility. Leave the arts alone. Let people dream. Let people read. Let people create worlds that make this one feel a little less heavy.