John Lanchester
speaker
548 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 27 Jun
John Lanchester’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think there was a shift around that that hasn't really gone away.
I think London is still a bubble and one of the things that worried me then and worried me more still is the way in which it's just different from the rest of the country.
I think it's an odd thing to have a capital city that feels so distinct and London still has basically all the money, all the power, all the culture, all the glamour, all the diversity, all the kind of opportunity.
And I think lots of people from the rest of the UK look at their capital city and feel they don't really recognise it.
And also just the sheer size.
I remember once doing a comparison for the purpose of something I was writing with the United States and you're having to add the cities and the states together to get an equivalent city of the size of London.
I can't remember, I think it was New York, LA, San Francisco,
You know, Dallas, Houston.
And you have to add the biggest, I think it's 30 odd, 35 cities in America together to get something that's the equivalent size and scale.
Proportionately to the population.
And I do think that, you know, that's a thing that we haven't solved and has got worse.
And especially as the economy struggle more.
And notice when you travel around the country now, you see places that since COVID really look like they're kind of,
if you'll pardon my Australian, they're on their arse, you know, a lot of places are ragged and tatty and people are struggling.
And it reminds me of the 70s, you know, where this country wasn't shiny and affluent looking.
And you would, you know, lots of things, you know, sort of threadbare things that semi-functioned was a sort of British norm.
And it's really sad and troubling that we've gone back to that.
I recommend the Alan Partridge on that bombshell.
After I finished, I was sort of noodling around with various things.
It's the title of a Taylor Swift song.
Showing 321–340 of 548 · page 17 of 28
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