The Edition: Scuzz Nation, the death of English literature & are you a bad house guest?

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🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

Scuzz Nation: Britain’s slow and grubby decline

If you want to understand why voters flocked to Reform last week, Gus Carter says, look no further than Goat Man. In one ward in Runcorn, ‘residents found that no one would listen when a neighbour filled his derelict house with goats and burned the animals’ manure in his garden’. This embodies Scuzz Nation – a ‘grubbier and more unpleasant’ Britain, ‘where decay happens faster than repair, where crime largely goes unpunished, and where the social fabric has been slashed, graffitied and left by the side of the road’.

On the podcast, Gus speaks to Dr Lawrence Newport, founder of Crush Crime, to diagnose the issues facing Britain – and offer some solutions to stop the rot. (01:28)

Next: is it demeaning to study Dickens?

In the magazine this week, Philip Hensher reviews ‘Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain’ by Stefan Collini. Philip’s main gripe is that the history stops short of charting the threats posed to the study of English literature in the past fifty years. Accessible, ‘relevant’ short stories are increasingly replacing the classics, as the monuments of Victorian literature defeat today’s undergraduates.

So can English literature still teach us how to read deeply in an age of diminishing attention spans? Philip joins the podcast alongside Orlando Reade, author and assistant professor at Northeastern University London, where he teaches English and creative writing. (17:47)

And finally: are you a bad house guest?

In the magazine, Christa D’Souza bemoans terrible house guests. Set against the idyllic backdrop of her home in the Greek Cyclades, she gives an account of the trials and absurdities of hosting – from towel-hoarding Americans to the toddler-like breakfast habits of many grown adults.

She joins the podcast alongside our very own agony aunt, Mary Killen, to discuss further – and hopefully offer some advice on how better to deal with rude house guests. (29:04)

Hosted by Lara Prendergast and Gus Carter.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Thursday, the 15th of May, the Spectator is hosting a live book club event. Sam Leith will be joined by
0:07.0	former Telegraph editor-in-chief and military historian Max Hastings. It will be an opportunity to talk
0:12.3	about Max's new book, Sword, D-Day, trial by battle, as well as mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
0:19.6	The full details are as follows. 730 on Thursday the 15th of
0:23.3	May at the Shaw Theatre in Houston, London, and tickets start from £27.50, although I believe
0:29.6	there are ticket options that include a signed copy of the book. For those tickets, go to
0:34.4	www.spectator.com.com.live. We look forward to seeing you there.
0:43.8	Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shed a little
0:52.7	light on the thought process behind putting
0:54.7	the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. I'm Nara Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor.
1:01.0	And I'm Gus Carter, the Spectator's Deputy Features Editor. On this week's podcast, Britain's
1:05.6	slow and grubby decline, where English students are turning against Dickens, and are you a bad house guest?
1:18.0	Gus, you've written the cover piece this week. The headline is Scuz Nation.
1:23.6	Could you first of all start by talking us through what Scuz Nation is? Well, Scuz Nation is a place that
1:30.4	looks very much like Britain. In fact, it is Britain, but it's a lot scusier than it was 10 years ago.
1:35.9	It is a place where there is antisocial behaviour, low level criminality, and no one seems to know
1:42.2	how to deal with it. So I look at some of the examples where
1:46.2	Britain is getting worse and to discuss that further, I was joined by Dr Lawrence Newport,
1:52.8	who set up the organisation Crush Crime to try and deal with some of the issues I identify in the cover
1:59.3	piece. And I started by asking him to tell us a little bit
2:02.2	about his research and his campaign group. So I run the campaigning organization, Crush Crime,
2:08.4	where we focus on a variety of anti-crime campaigns from the Arizona justice system in terms of
	...

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