Hello, my name is David Rundsenman and this is Talking Politics. I am sitting in the

stationary cupboard at the London Review of Books, not because we're hiding, but because I think this

is where we'll get the best audio. And I'm delighted that I am here with the philosopher and

writer John Gray. Many of our listeners will know John's work very well.

He is one of the most interesting and challenging commentators not just on politics,

but if this doesn't sound too pretentious, the human condition.

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, John Lancaster, Mary Beard,

and we hope to have some more soon talking about the state of democracy and the state of the world.

As well as politics, the LRB has book reviews, essays about art, poetry and exhibitions.

Whether you want to get a deeper understanding of world events or just get away from it all

and read about Picasso and Octopuses, the LRB will have something fascinating for you.

John Gray has written a very wide range of books, including straw dogs,

the silence of animals, and most recently the soul in the marionette,

which is about human freedom.

And we may get on to human freedom a bit later, but I think we should

start with politics, given that's our subject matter, though we always get onto bigger themes too.

John, you wrote recently of Jeremy Corbyn and the political phenomenon that surrounds him,

that this is, and I'm quoting you here, populism for

the middle classes. And there's always a lot of argument about where populism starts and where

it ends, but it's not usually thought of as a middle class phenomenon. So what exactly did

...