Hello, my name's David Rumsman and this is talking politics.

Today I'm talking to Andrew O'Hagan about the Grenfell Tower fire.

What happened? What happened next? and what it means for politics.

Talking politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books,

the magazine that publishes its political analysis in between essays on art and history,

philosophy and technology, Princess Margaret or the Garden of Eden. Visit lrb.co.combe.org

forward slash talking for a reading list of similarly eclectic pieces to accompany today's episode

and a special subscription offer for Talking Politics listeners,

six months of the LRB for just one pound an issue.

I spoke to Andrew Hagen in Cambridge about 10 days ago.

There has been a lot of interest in his article about Grenfell, quite a lot of pushback,

including some quite angry pushback. We talk about that in the conversation too. You'll hear

that towards the end. The London review of books in the current issue has published a series of

responses to Andrew's article and Andrew's response to them, and you'll see how some of that plays out.

That's all available at lrb.co.uk.

We'll also tweet links to some of the other responses to the piece that have happened in the last

couple of weeks.

This is a slightly longer conversation than we normally have and it is just me and Andrew talking.

There was a lot to discuss and a lot to cover. I began by asking him, when did he first go to Grenfell and start

researching this story? I went there on the 14th of June for the first time. That was the first

full day of the fire. And I didn't go right into the thick of it that day.

I simply was struck as soon as I saw the images on television by how big a story this was going to be.

...