James Meek

James Meek’s Private Island, a collection of his LRB pieces, won the Orwell Prize in 2015.

In the LRB Archive:

• Short Cuts: Fan-Owned Politics · 1 June 2017

• Somerdale to Skarbimierz · 20 April 2017

• Refugees from the Past: Jameson on Chandler · 5 January 2017

  • Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality by Fredric Jameson

• Diary · 28 July 2016

• Where are we now? Responses to the Referendum · 14 July 2016

• Video: The decline of fishing in Britain · 22 June 2016

• How to Grow a Weetabix: Farms and Farmers · 16 June 2016

• Trains in Space: The Great Train Robbery · 5 May 2016

  • The Railways: Nation, Network and People by Simon Bradley

• Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity · 18 February 2016

• Video: Robbing the Poor · 15 February 2016

• After the Vote · 17 December 2015

• Diary: Real Murderers! · 8 October 2015

• From Wooden to Plastic: Jonathan Franzen · 24 September 2015

  • Purity by Jonathan Franzen

• Why are you still here? · 23 April 2015

• Video: In Grimsby · 23 April 2015

• The Shock of the Pretty · 9 April 2015

• Worse than a Defeat: Shamed in Afghanistan · 18 December 2014

  • The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan by Jack Fairweather
  • Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War by Frank Ledwidge
  • British Generals in Blair’s Wars edited by Jonathan Bailey, Richard Iron and Hew Strachan
  • An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict 1978-2012 by Mike Martin

• In Farageland · 9 October 2014

• The Leopard · 19 June 2014

• Putin’s Counter-Revolution · 20 March 2014

• Where will we live?: The Housing Disaster · 9 January 2014

• Memories We Get to Keep: James Salter’s Apotheosis · 20 June 2013

  • All That Is by James Salter
  • Collected Stories by James Salter

• The Depositor Haircut · 9 May 2013

• How to Shoe a Flea: Nikolai Leskov · 25 April 2013

  • ‘The Enchanted Wanderer’ and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
  • The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov, translated by Ian Dreiblatt

• Short Cuts · 21 March 2013

• It’s the moral thing to do: ‘Breaking Bad’ · 3 January 2013

  • Breaking Bad: Complete Seasons 1-4 produced by Vince Gilligan

• Cloud-Brains: Mikhail Shishkin · 22 November 2012

  • Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin, translated by Marian Schwartz

• How We Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity · 13 September 2012

• Short Cuts: Yulia Tymoshenko · 7 June 2012

• The Debt Quilt · 10 May 2012

• Diary: Bobos for Boris? · 26 April 2012

• Human Revenue · 5 April 2012

• Diary: In Athens · 1 December 2011

• Short Cuts: In the Ghost Library · 3 November 2011

• It’s already happened: The NHS Goes Private · 22 September 2011

• In the Sorting Office · 28 April 2011

• Some Wild Creature: Tolstoy Leaves Home · 22 July 2010

  • The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910 by William Nickell
  • The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy translated by Cathy Porter
  • A Confession by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs
  • Anniversary Essays on Tolstoy by Donna Tussing Orwin

• On the Coalition · 10 June 2010

• Polly the Bleeding Parrot: David Peace · 6 August 2009

  • Occupied City by David Peace

• When the Floods Came: England’s Water · 31 July 2008

• Dead Not Deid: A Great Radical Modernist · 22 May 2008

  • Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

• Hooyah!!: The Rise of the Private Army · 2 August 2007

  • Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill

• The Original Targets: The Birth of al-Qaida · 8 February 2007

  • The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida’s Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

• It’ll all be over one day: Our Man in Guantánamo · 8 June 2006

  • Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantánamo and Back by Moazzam Begg and Victoria Brittain

• In fonder times, the tsar scalded and stabbed to death a prince: Ivan the Terrible · 1 December 2005

  • Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia by Isabel de Madariaga

• Crocodile’s Breath: The Tale of the Tube · 5 May 2005

  • The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City For Ever by Christian Wolmar

• Schlepping around the Flowers: bees · 4 November 2004

  • The Hive: The Story of the Honey-Bee and Us by Bee Wilson

• Reasons to be Miserable: The Day My Pants Froze · 8 July 2004

  • The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia out in the Cold by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy

• Trillion Dollar Disease: Fat · 7 August 2003

  • The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin by Ellen Ruppel Shell

• Run to the hills: Rainspotting · 22 May 2003

  • Rain by Brian Cathcart

• Take a nap: keeping cool · 6 February 2003

  • Cool Comfort: America’s Romance with Air-Conditioning by M. Ackerman

• Every Young Boy’s Dream: Michel Houellebecq · 14 November 2002

  • Platform by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Frank Wynne

• Everyone has a voice: Biotechnology · 11 July 2002

  • A Grain of Truth: the Media, the Public and Biotechnology by Susanna Hornig Priest
  • Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone by Mark Winston
  • Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops by Per Pinstrup-Andersen

• If they’re ill, charge them extra: Flamingo Plucking · 21 March 2002

  • Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
  • Salt: Grain of Life by Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader

• Where does the rubble end and the ground begin?: in Afghanistan · 3 January 2002

• Nuremberg Rally, Invasion of Poland, Dunkirk …: the never-ending wish to write about the Second World War · 6 September 2001

  • Ghost MacIndoe by Jonathan Buckley
  • The Twins by Tessa de Loo
  • Riptide by John Lawton
  • The Day We Had Hitler Home by Rodney Hall
  • Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
  • The Fire Fighter by Francis Cottam
  • The Element of Water by Stevie Davies
  • The Bronze Horsewoman by Paullina Simons
  • The Siege by Helen Dunmore

• We Do Ron Ron Ron, We Do Ron Ron: Welcome to McDonald’s · 24 May 2001

  • Fast-Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

• The reproduce, but they don’t eat, breathe or excrete: The history of viruses · 22 March 2001

  • The Invisible Enemy: A Natural History of Viruses by Dorothy Crawford

• Sex is best when you lose your head · 16 November 2000

  • Promiscuity: An Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition and Sexual Conflict by Tim Birkhead

• Drowned in the Desert · 20 July 2000

  • A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solves Crimes by Lee Goff

• Chemical Soup: embalming Lenin’s body · 18 March 1999

  • Lenin's Embalmers by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson

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