John Lanchester is the author of six novels – The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour, Capital, The Wall and Look What You Made Me Do, due in March 2026 – and a collection of ghost stories, Reality, and Other Stories. He has also written a memoir, Family Romance, and two books about the financial system, Whoops!, and How to Speak Money.
His first piece for the LRB, on Martin Amis, appeared in 1987, when he was a junior member of staff at the paper. He has since written well over a hundred pieces on subjects including agoraphobia, Don De Lillo, Anthony Powell, Ian Rankin, Ian Fleming, Rupert Murdoch, Google, Wal-Mart, Alastair Campbell’s diaries, Cityphilia and Cityphobia, the failure of the banking system in 2008, Marx, getting hooked on Game of Thrones, the PPI scandal, the robotified future, bitcoin, Facebook, Agatha Christie, Maigret, Universal Basic Income, the shipping industry, cheating in sport, Covid, statistics and the uselessness of modern finance.
In the world of money, there is always an Official Worry List, containing the next big things which are likely to go wrong or blow up. The items on the list are sometimes problems we’ve all heard of, with obvious political and human ramifications, such as the Ukraine crisis, or the rise of Isis. The macro-economic take on both of these has less to do with widespread suffering and...
Small boys of all ages and both genders look forward to World Cups. Perhaps nobody, though, looks forward to it more than actual small boys. I’ve been looking forward to them ever since my first, in 1970 – the best, I still think. The thing I remember almost as well as the drama and excitement of the football was my incredulous horror at the thought that I would be 12 before...
Early in the afternoon of 6 May 2010, the leading stock market index in the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, suddenly started falling. There was no evident external reason for the fall – no piece of news or economic data – but the market, which had been drifting slowly downwards that day, in a matter of minutes dropped by 6 per cent. There was pandemonium: some stocks in the Dow were trading for prices as low as 1 cent, others for prices as high as $100,000, in both cases with no apparent rationale. A 15-minute period saw a loss of roughly $1 trillion in market capitalisation.
The general election of 2015 will be unique in contemporary British history for coming at the end of a fixed-term Parliament. This has had the predictable consequence of giving us a run-up to the election so protracted that it has already begun, with the parties titivating their policies, importing electoral gurus and covertly making plans to book advertising space. None of this is new:...
When Ferran Adrià, the Spanish maestro who is undisputedly the most influential chef of the last two decades, gave up cooking at his restaurant El Bulli, he announced that he was going to be starting a number of projects. One of them is intended to be a foundation dedicated to the study of himself. Another was a collaboration on the subject of food and science with Harvard. I think...
John Lanchester and Rupert Beale talk to Tom about the spread of the latest variant, where we might stand in the story of Covid, and the failures of the state in coping with the pandemic.
John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about ‘visible’ cheating in sport, that is, the kind which is against the rules but within the ethos of the game, from diving in football to bodyline bowling in...
John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about his experience of being on a cargo ship blocked from entering the Suez Canal in 1967, his subsequent journey round the Cape of Good Hope, and the modern-day...
Patricia Lockwood talks to John Lanchester about her debut novel No One is Talking About This.
John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about the author of the Maigret stories, whose output was so prodigious that even he didn't know how many books he wrote.
John Lanchester discusses his chilling collection of short stories, which explores the uncanniness of modern life through demonic phones, haunted selfie-sticks and other technology gone horribly wrong.
John Lanchester reads his piece on the implications of the UK’s EU referendum.
We look back at 40 years of the LRB in our anniversary event at Conway Hall.
David and Helen talk to John Lanchester about banks, money and power. Why have so few bankers gone to jail since the financial crisis? Can the Euro survive? Should we be more frightened of unaccountable...
Toby Jones reads John Lanchester’s ghost story.
George Monbiot and John Lanchester discuss Monbiot’s latest book, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, and assess the state we’re in now. The event was recorded at the London Review Bookshop on 7 July...
John Lanchester explains what bitcoin is, and what it tells us about money.
‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions are how we got here, and what happens...
First, let me declare a disinterest. John Lanchester and I are both involved, in different ways, with the London Review of Books, but otherwise have nothing to do with one another. Now...
The name is ordinary, so the book announces itself as a book about no one special; though, of course, when men without qualities become the subjects of novels a certain gravity (if not grace) is...
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