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 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · John Lanchester & Hattie Crisell: Look What You Made Me Do · 27 Jun 2026 podcast

Yeah, I mean, I don't think if you're writing about happiness, I don't think a novel about marriage can only be a novel about happiness.

What's the point?

Yeah.

Well, thanks, Zoe.

I'll have to workshop that one.

I'm going to speak now.

I'm married to him.

What I was going to suggest is actually you don't write about a happy marriage because what happens, it's a spoiler, but that marriage ends quite, I'm spoiling things, that marriage ends quite quickly.

So actually it's not a book about a happy marriage.

It's a book about loss and lots and lots of other things.

And I think it's because it is very hard to write an interesting narrative book about a happy marriage because

you know, plot, novels, fiction, narrative, they're about conflict.

I mean, I suppose you could, it would be, it's an interesting question.

Could one write a whole book about a happy marriage in which all sorts of things happen?

One of the books I was hoping you were going to talk about, which you didn't.

is a book that came out this year called Drayton and Mackenzie, which I happen to think is terribly good, but it's about a friendship.

And it's about a very long, fruitful friendship.

And I think that's very unusual as well.

And I think the writer sort of manages, but it's about friction and difficulty.

So, you know, happy marriages, I think it's really hard to write about them.

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