Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. Today I'm joined by James

Meek, who has written an epic essay in the current LRB about the NHS. It's past, it's present,

it's future, it's a central reading, it's a central listening.

Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's

Leading Magazine of Books and Ideas. We've already had some LRB writers on this podcast

and we'll have some more soon. There's a reading list of pieces to accompany the podcast at

lrb.co.uk forward slash talking, along with a special subscription offer for talking politics

listeners. Twelve issues of fearless, expansive, elegant writing for just £12.

James Meek is a prize-winning novelist. The People's Act of Love, among many others, was long

listed for the Booker Prize. He's also a prize-winning journalist. He won the All-Well prize in 2015

for his book about the privatisation of Britain. He's sitting opposite me, so I don't want to embarrass

him, but he is in many ways the All-Well of our times in that he writes about the country we live in

and the services we all rely on. He tells us things that we took for granted. What it's like to work

in these industries, what it's like to rely on them. He's written in the LRB about fishing,

about farming, about the postal service, transport, housing, which we may get onto,

and the NHS. We're going to start with the NHS and then we'll see where we get to.

The piece James is set, like a novel is set, in Leicestershire, that's its location. It's a county

that people who don't live in probably don't spend a huge amount of time thinking about.

It's middle-England, and it's also, as you say, a kind of microcosm of the whole country.

So just tell us a bit about how Leicestershire can stand in for England.

The only way it's not like Britain is that it's landlocked, but what's interesting about it is

that at the centre of the county you have this city which is tremendously diverse, ethnically.

...