Enough with this ghettoisation of culture | Arts & Culture | Free speech | spiked

Some would say that all art is artificial. Latinists would point out that the word ‘artificial' quite literally means ‘to make art', which is also why Latinists tend to be single. Not that any of this would matter to those who routinely invoke ‘cultural appropriation' in their ongoing attempts to police art and individual expression. In the insular world of these faux-liberal gasbags, artistic freedom must be limited to creating work that is solely concerned with one's own lived experience.

By these standards, all fiction should be considered a form of imaginative autobiography. As Horowitz points out, the ‘logical extreme' of his editor's advice would be to make all of his characters ‘62-year-old white Jewish men living in London'. This seems fair enough to me. Accordingly, if I ever write a novel, I must remember to ensure that every character is a highly intelligent gay man blessed with a surplus of charisma and sexual magnetism.