Philips D & Whannel G (2013) The Trojan Horse: The growth of commercial sponsorship. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781472512024 

Using material not widely available in the public domain The Trojan Horse is the first book to investigate the growing culture of commercial sponsorship, an area that had not previously been addressed by academics or policy makers.

Presenting an important political intervention into the current debates on the state and culture, the authors have conducted the research from their own collection of newspaper, company and union reports to chart the growth of commercial sponsorship in the post-war period, and its widening scope under the Thatcher, Blair and Coalition governments.

The book argues that commercial sponsorship has been a Trojan horse, serving to usher in and naturalise the increasing presence of private finance in the public sector, and that sponsorship has been a central plank in the discourse of the inevitability of privatisation from the 1980s. By highlighting how the Coalition government has continued to undermine the Welfare State in the Age of Austerity, this book forcefully argues that a reliance on private funding in the public sphere is an extremely dangerous strategy.