John Lanchester is the author of five novels – The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour, Capital and The Wall – 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.
Through the post arrives an artefact of a vanished civilisation, trailing that nimbus of mystery and sadness and forsaken possibility that belongs to reminders of a world we have lost. It comes in the form of a cheque from the state, made out to my son, for £1024. The cheque isn’t actually signed by Gordon Brown, but it might as well be. The Child Trust Fund was a New Labour...
It is easy to misunderstand what contemporary finance is and does. Common sense, and the textbook, both say that finance is the business of moving money from A to B. There are times when money in place A, a saver’s bank account, say, would be usefully deployed in place B, a business needing cash to expand, or an individual wanting a mortgage to be able to buy somewhere to live....
It’s a 19th-century story; it’s a 21st-century story. The process takes a decade and a bit. A philosophical idea starts in Oxford, spreads rapidly, finds a believer who becomes famous and grows in fame with him, thrives despite loud criticism, and then undergoes a huge scandal as the famous person does something which confirms the charges the movement’s detractors have...
At a dinner with the American ambassador in 2007, Li Keqiang, future premier of China, said that when he wanted to know what was happening to the country’s economy, he looked at the numbers for electricity use, rail cargo and bank lending. There was no point using the official GDP statistics, Li said, because they are ‘man-made’. That remark, which we know about thanks to...
Picture the following age-old scene: a writer sitting at a kitchen table, pretending to work. Set it forty years ago. The Conservatives are in power and everything is broken, but our subject is the writer’s stuff. On the table is a typewriter; to one side is a radio, to another is a phone; also in the room are a fridge, an oven, a hob, a toaster, a set of car keys and a vacuum cleaner....
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.
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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