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The sub-title, Art and Society, is all-encompassing while the actual theme running throughout is, not. I’d been delving into this subject from an art point of view, with the idea of making a documentary film since 1998, gathering ideas and material, when, as luck would have it in 1999 the Stonor Saunders book “Who Paid the Piper? ...the CIA and the Cultural Cold War” came out. I’d heard something about a TV documentary but from Paris had not seen it. By this time I’d contacted many people and found, with one honorable exception, almost total disinterest and a certain distaste and/ or irritation that one should pursue an angle not liked by commerce or the establishment.

For very good reasons - by this time the aversion had passed into the “internalized principles” phase - a knee-jerk ostracism of the subject which neutered normal curiosity. The more I thought of it, the more stunning and actual the implications seemed to be - but after a while one learnt to say little or the outside world, including some insiders, would think you unbalanced to dwell on it.

The book (Piper) therefore came as a great relief but I noted it not exciting the thinking classes into serious alarm - helped by the fact it was seen as a small experiment carried out for a limited time - exposed and disposed of as a threat... Many in high places knew that not to be the case... but paternalizing the creative classes (such as they were by this time) was long taken for granted, as a covert activity of the neutral variety - while it set an extraordinary precedent.