Literature in the Public Service

Literature in the Public Service

Also by Ceri Sullivan AUTHORS AT WORK: The Creative Environment (edited with G. Harper) DISMEMBERED RHETORIC: English Recusant Writing, 1580 1603 THE RHETORIC OF THE CONSCIENCE IN DONNE, HERBERT, AND VAUGHAN THE RHETORIC OF CREDIT: Merchants in Early Modern Writing WRITING AND FANTASY (edited with B. White)

Literature in the Public Service Sublime Bureaucracy Ceri Sullivan

Ceri Sullivan 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-28741-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44970-5 ISBN 978-1-137-28742-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137287427 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Ian, with respect and relief!

Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction: Weber, Bureaucracy and Creativity 1 Creative bureaucracy 12 2 The 1650s: Milton and the Beginning of Civil Service 20 The Commonwealth s public service 20 From personal servant to public servant 28 Milton as Latin secretary 39 Heaven, Hell and the ideal bureaucracy 46 3 The 1850s: Trollope and the Height of Civil Service Ambitions 65 Impetus for reform 66 A literary civil service 79 Combining writing and civil service 92 Novelists are also public servants 96 Trollope writes about civil service 99 4 The Present: Hare and Shrinking Government Provision 114 Introduction 114 New public management 116 National theatre 122 Service by or to the people? 126 Hare s plays on public service 131 Conclusion 153 5 Coda: Bureaucratic Creativity 155 Notes 158 Bibliography 190 Index 210 vii

Acknowledgements Stephen Colclough, Tom Corns, Ian Gregson, Margaret Kean and four anonymous readers for Palgrave and the AHRC very generously took time from their own research to read and comment on mine, incisively, persuasively and in detail. Palgrave staff (in particular, Paula Kennedy and Ben Doyle) and their colleagues at Integra (Devasena Vedamurthi and Kate Boothby) have been consistently open-minded, rapid and expert. Linda Jones did heavy-duty work on the bibliography and proofed a draft of the manuscript. Nathan Abrams, Tony Brown, Gordon Campbell, Ian Davidson, Katie Evans, Eliane Glaser, Lois Godfrey, Ann Hughes, Claire Jowitt, Ian Leggatt, Pam Michaels, Andrew McNeillie, Andrew Moor, Sue Niebrzydowski, Bjorn Quiring, Timothy Raylor, Sue Ralphs, Sam Rayner, Valerie Rumbold, Peter Shapely and Stan Smith kindly gave me leads to follow up. In terms of resources, the English Subject Centre funded a project on English graduates in financial institutions; the British Academy and the Folger Library contributed travel grants; and Bangor University gave a period of study leave to finish the book. Just as welcome were beds for the night near depository libraries, from Lucy Cottrell, Andrew Moor, Mavis Howell, Clare McManus and Paddy Rudden. As ever, library staff at Bangor University, the Bodleian, the British Library, the Folger, the John Rylands Library and Senate House have been courteous and efficient. My greatest debt is to historians of administration, and to literary critics working on Milton, Trollope and Hare. I am always grateful for the loan of another s insights, but given the cross-period argument of this book the borrowings have had to swell to mortgage size. It simply could not have been written without other people s scholarship. Conversely, and more than for most projects, the errors are definitely mine! It is an impertinence to stroll out of the early modern and into colleagues periods, but I hope they will forgive me. I spent a decade as a chartered accountant in KMPG, VSO and Oxfam, auditing or running the financial and administrative systems of a variety of banks, public services and NGOs. I saw how the new managerialism of the 1980s and 1990s had little time for the professional expertise and core values of the public sector. Recent renewed attacks on both the ethos and the funding for the public services in Great Britain which include universities have worried me enough to set aside academic prudence. Thus, this book is a thought experiment in respect. viii