Human Revenue
James Meek, 5 April 2012
James Meek's article in this issue first appeared on the LRB blog. You can read it here.
James Meek
James Meek is a contributing editor at the LRB. His new novel, Your Life without Me, will be published in 2026.
From The Blog
20 March 2012
The privatisations are joining up. First it was gas. Then telecoms, oil, electricity, public housing, water, the railways, the airports. There are moves afoot to obliterate the concept of the council house; NHS hospitals are to be privately run, built and managed; now David Cameron wants to get private companies and foreign governments to 'invest' in Britain's roads. What does it all mean? The episodic character of privatisation – one sector being sold, then a pause, then another – has hidden a meta-privatisation that's passed the halfway point. The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It's the public itself. It's us.
Diary: In Athens
James Meek, 1 December 2011
Darkness has fallen, and with it, a dynasty. George Papandreou, the prime minister, is on the car radio, making his parting speech. Since 1944 he, his father Andreas and his grandfather Georgios have been prime minister six times between them. Papandreou 3.0’s premiership was blighted from the start. On 20 October 2009, only 16 days after his mild-soup PASOK socialists had come to power, his finance minister piped up at a meeting with European counterparts in Luxembourg. Reminding them of Greece’s already high budget deficit, he confessed that, actually, it looked like being about twice as high. Sorry! It’s been downhill ever since, as the assortment of Greek and foreign lenders who allowed the country effectively to run up a huge mortgage jacked up the interest rate on that mortgage to fantastic levels.
Short Cuts: In the Ghost Library
James Meek, 3 November 2011
‘For voters, feelings prevail over beliefs,’ Peter Mandelson writes in The Third Man. ‘People may be torn between their head and their heart, but ultimately it is their gut feeling that is decisive: they vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not necessarily the one who presents the right arguments.’ This clear and succinct expression of the idea that...
From The Blog
22 September 2011
You can understand how they might be grouchy at UBS, the Swiss bank that reckons it has lost $2.3 billion through alleged jiggery-pokery by one of its employees, Kewku Adoboli, only three years after the bank was bailed out by the Swiss government. When one of UBS's economists, George Magnus, says that French banks are now the ones that need to be bailed out – as he did this morning in the Financial Times – you might suspect a tinge of schadenfreude.
Podcasts & Videos
Podcast
Putin's Mistake
James Meek and Thomas Jones
1 March 2022
James Meek talks to Tom about the events leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from the fall of Yanukovych to the wars in the Donbas and Nagorno-Karabakh, and considers what may happen next.
Video
Between Mykolaiv and Kherson
James Meek
17 August 2022
James Meek reports from Mykolaiv and the area of southern Ukraine that has become a crucial battleground in the war, as Russian forces seek to maintain control of the land they’ve occupied west of the...
Podcast
Between Mykolaiv and Kherson
James Meek and Thomas Jones
17 August 2022
James Meek, recently returned from Mykolaiv, talks to Tom about the area of southern Ukraine that has become a crucial battleground in the war, as Russian forces seek to maintain control of the land they’ve...
Podcast
Shamed in Afghanistan
James Meek
18 December 2014
James Meek reads from his piece on the British army’s eight years in Afghanistan.
Video
Robbing the Poor
James Meek
15 February 2016
James Meek argues that the Robin Hood myth has been turned on its head by the wealthiest and most powerful, so that those who were previously considered 'poor' are now accused of wallowing in luxury.
Video
James Meek: Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
James Meek
13 March 2019
James Meek talks to Chris Bickerton about his new book, Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, which features writing published originally in the LRB.
Video
Tony Wood and James Meek: Russia without Putin
James Meek and Tony Wood
5 December 2018
Tony Wood talks to James Meek about his book Russia with Putin, which looks at, among other things, the legacy of Soviet infrastructure and the extent of political opposition in today’s Russia.
Podcast
James Meek on Healthcare: from WHO to NHS
David Runciman and James Meek
6 July 2020
David Runciman talks to James Meek about what the Covid crisis has revealed about how we understand healthcare and how we think about the organisations tasked with delivering it. Their conversation covers...
Pieces about James Meek in the LRB
Planes, Trains and SUVs: James Meek
Jonathan Raban, 7 February 2008
James Meek’s last, bestselling novel, The People’s Act of Love, published in 2005 to great critical acclaim, was set in 1919, in ‘that part of Siberia lying between Omsk and...
Dynamite for Cologne: James Meek
Michael Wood, 21 July 2005
James Meek’s early fiction is alert, acrid and funny, and only slightly too insistent on its own quirkiness – as if it were hoping reviewers would call it surreal (they did) and...
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