The book delves into the privatization of essential British services and infrastructure over the past thirty years, revealing the human impact of these changes. Through compelling portraits and narratives, it illustrates how public assets have been transferred to private owners, leading to rising costs for consumers while the new owners profit. Meek's urgent and poignant exploration serves as a critical examination of the nation's transformation, appealing to those interested in social and economic issues.
“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills. Meek explores the human stories behind the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only public enterprises that have become private property, but we ourselves. Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost and what losing it cost us – the rent we must pay to exist on this private island.
Set in modern-day London, the narrative intertwines themes of family, love, and science, exploring complex relationships and emotional connections. The story delves into the intricacies of human experience, showcasing the author's ability to blend imaginative storytelling with profound insights. As characters navigate their intertwined lives, the novel promises a captivating exploration of personal and scientific themes, reflecting the author's acclaimed storytelling style.
Set in a time of great social upheaval, warfare, and terrorism, and against a stark, lawless Siberia at the end of the Russian Revolution, The People’s Act of Love portrays the fragile coexistence of a beautiful, independent mother raising her son alone, a megalomaniac Czech captain and his restless regiment, and a mystical separatist Christian sect. When a mysterious, charismatic stranger trudges into their snowy village with a frighteningly outlandish story to tell, its balance is shaken to the core.
The new novel about home, belonging, love, courage and identity, set in the
fourteenth century, from the Booker-longlisted author of The People's Act of
Love
The Museum of Doubt is a new collection of surreal and unnerving short stories from award-winning writer James Meek. The array of characters who populate Meek's vague and elusive worlds are driven by paranoia and doubts, as well as hopes and fears of things only half-glimpsed.
Ritchie Shepherd, aging former pop star and wildly successful producer of a reality teen talent show, is starting to trip over the intricacy of his own lies. Gallingly, his sister, Bec, a scientist developing a crucial vaccine, is as addicted to truth-telling as Ritchie is to falsehood. Ritchie relies on her certitude even as he seethes with resentment. A devastating chain of events is set into motion when Bec tells her fiance, Val, a powerful tabloid editor, that she can't bring herself to marry him after all. Val has set himself up as the moral arbiter of the nation, which will turn out to be impeccable camouflage for an elaborate revenge plot intended to destroy Bec by exposing the people who are close to her - which now include Alex, a brilliant researcher in gene therapies who is so desperate to have a family of his own that Bec finds herself willing to lie and cheat in order to get him what he wants.
Reality-show producer and habitual liar Ritchie Shepherd can't stand his sister Bec's relentless honesty, while Bec helps a gene-therapy researcher build a family of his own, even as her ex-fiancé Val, a tabloid editor, plots to destroy Bec by exposing people close to her
