Authors attack 'propaganda' of government-sponsored novels

When Fay Weldon accepted £50,000 to write a novel extolling the virtues of the jewellery company Bulgari, her decision was dismissed as a minor act of folly by a playful iconoclast.

But less than a year later, the literary establishment is in for a shock. "Sponsored" novels are about to come into their own with the launch of a new company that aims to provide respected authors to write specially commissioned novels for government departments and big business.

The brainchild of advertising executives turned novelists Adam Lury and Simon Gibson, Narration Ltd will produce fictional stories on demand for firms and public bodies seeking to explain "difficult ideas" to the public.

Already there are takers. The Foreign Policy Centre, an independent think tank whose chief patron is Tony Blair, has spent £15,000 on an online novella called Need to Know about an anti-globalisation campaigner who abandons direct action in favour of protesting via the internet.

Other titles will be far more accessible. By next year, it is anticipated that commissioned novellas bearing the names of established authors will line the shelves of Waterstones, with only the logos of their patrons to distinguish them.

News of the impending wave of "sponsored" fiction was greeted with disdain yesterday by leading writers including Will Self and J G Ballard, who said those who took part would be little more than propagandists for hire.

"I wouldn't want to buy a novel whose point was that I should eat less saturated fat or drive more slowly," said Ballard. "This sounds deeply sinister. It's all part of the corruption of the mental environment we inhabit."

He said he did not believe the public would want to buy a book written to an organisation's agenda. He added: "I'm all for the old style of public information stuff that told you how to stop your granny falling down the stairs, but when it gets to the point where you pick up what you think is going to be a successor to Anna Karenina and it has some sort of message about the dangers of sexual entanglement issued by a branch of the nanny state, that is, I think, sinister."

Will Self said: "I return to the words of Bill Hicks when he said, 'If any artist ever endorses a product then they have completely destroyed their status as an artist.' I don't care if they shit Mona Lisas on cue, they've destroyed their reputations, and advertising for the Government is much more pernicious."

Describing the books as tantamount to "advertising", David Lodge said: "There's a long tradition of using fiction to get across ideas and there's nothing wrong with that. But this has nothing to do with literature." Weldon was more open to the idea, saying that public information literature could provide income for hard-up writers. But she said she would oppose the use of authors as propagandists.

Mr Gibson insisted that Narration Ltd will produce stories that explore "both sides of the argument". But he added: "If I felt I was simply the pen to somebody else's pushing, I wouldn't do it, but if I'm asked to write an interesting book that explores issues around GM foods, why not?"

A short history of selling out

Suzi Feay, Literary Editor

Historically, there have been many cases of authors willing to use their skills to further a particular cause. Milton produced republican and religious polemics and was appointed to an official position under Cromwell, and during his lifetime the poet Andrew Marvell, who had close personal and financial links to Cromwell, was better known for his political writing than for his lyrics .

These authors were writing for causes in which they believed: Daniel Defoe seems to have been more slippery and pragmatic. He was in the pocket of a Tory politician who arranged a pardon for him when he was imprisoned for his political writings in 1703, and then used him as a spy and made him write to order.

Under the system of patronage, poets were supported by aristocrats in return for glowing panegyrics. (The most prestigious post of all was, and remains, that of Poet Laureate.) John Donne wrote anguished poems on the death of his patron's child, although he'd never met her. Yet the system began to break down: in 1755, Dr Johnson said to Lord Chesterfield: "Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?" The Romantics swept away notions that poetry could be bought by the yard, and freedom and self-expression became the maxims. Byron and Shelley were wealthy enough to do what they wanted. Keats and Wordsworth were content to lead simple lives to free their muse.

Recently, though, poets have again found patrons, sometimes in unlikely places. Writer-in-residence schemes have led to incongruous pairings such as Roger McGough at BT, Ian McMillan at Humberside police, Lavinia Greenlaw at lawyers Mishcon de Reya and Peter Sansom at Marks & Spencer. So if the poets' muse has already put it about, why not the novelists'?