The Grand Tour: A Journey Through British Politics

Nov 17, 2024 8:46 AM

Author:Anne McElvoy,Anne McElvoy

Anne McElvoy presents this epic history of Britain's three biggest political movements, from their beginnings to the present day

In these absorbing series, veteran journalist and current affairs commentator Anne McElvoy examines the origins and evolution of the three pre-eminent political movements in British history. Using interviews, readings and fascinating anecdotes, she guides us through 300 years of Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism, deftly putting the emergence of these key ideologies in their historical and social contexts.

Conservatism tells the story of the big challenges that have spurred leading British conservative thinkers into action, from the French Revolution to the growth of mass democracy, the welfare state the permissive society and the rise of free-market economics. We meet some of the party's big beasts, including Edmund Burkem Benjamin Disraeli and Margaret Thatcher, and hear how an ideology that began by focusing on the land, paternalist benevolence, traditional social hierarchies and the Church of England transformed itself into something rather different.

Next, McElvoy charts the development of Liberalism, from the 'Glorious' Revolution to the Edwardian era, the Great Depression and the 1960s, when it reached its zenith. Taking in the life and work of pioneering philosophers and reformers including John Locke, Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft - as well as pivotal politicians such as William Gladstone, Millicent Fawcett and Roy Jenkins - she shows how fundamental liberal ideas came into being, explores contrasting versions of the political creed, and discusses how liberalism has come under pressure: and what this tells us about its limits and its future.

Finally, she traces the inception, growth and transformation of British Socialism, from its foundation in a 19th Century Scottish mill village to the Chartists, the Revolutionaries, the Fabian Society, the Women's Liberationists and the grassroots enthusiasm for Tony Benn in the 1980s. Along the way, she looks at the competing approaches to changing Britain in the interests of working people, and introduces us to a few of the iconic figures who shaped socialism, including Robert Owen, Keir Hardie, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, 'Red Ellen' Wilkinson - and Beatrix Potter.

From Utopian visions of government and revolutionary zeal to the inner workings of Parliament and the position of Britain on a global scale, this compelling, comprehensive and inspiring history explains just how we arrived at our current political climate - and why.

Presented by Anne McElvoy

Produced by Phil Tinline and Sarah Shebbeare

Conservatism featuring: Professor Richard Bourke, Professor Dinah Birch, Dr Tristram Hunt, Professor Jon Lawrence, Professor Richard Aldous, Dr Matthew Roberts, Fern Riddell, Professor Krista Cowman, Dr Dan Jackson, Professor Martin Pugh, Professor Simon Ball, Dominic Sandbrook, Dr Eliza Filby

Liberalism featuring: Justin Champion, Hannah Dawson, Amanda Foreman, Keith Tribe, Barbara Taylor, Richard Huzzey, Eugenio Biagini, Stuart Jones, Ben Griffin, Edmund Fawcett, John Lawrence, Richard Cockett, Elizabeth Crawford, Helen McCarthy, Rebecca Hamilton, Gerard McDermott, Debra Baker, David Feldman

Socialism featuring: Lorna Davidson, Gregory Claeys, Dr Katrina Navickas, Professor Malcolm Chase, Professor Jon Lawrence, Professor Tony Webster, Gillian Lonergan, Dr Tristram Hunt, Professor Mark Bevir, Professor Ruth Kinna, David Howell, Jim Smyth, Michael Ward, Baroness Dianne Hayter, Professor Steven Fielding, Laura Beers, David Howell, Professor Sally Alexander, Professor Barbara Taylor, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 2-13 September 2013 (Conservatism), 7-18 December 2015 (Liberalism), 19 February-2 March 2018 (Socialism)

Reviews

What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?' 'There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter'

—— P. G. Wodehouse

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life

—— Oscar Wilde

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society

—— Mark Twain

Original, moving and bracingly honest... often hilarious... Each room has particular memories for Klein. And her journey through them is also a psychological quest, an attempt to understand how the house shaped her personality and whether she can ever get free of her attachment

—— Blake Morrison , Guardian

Enthralling... a fascinating exploration of the influence of a domestic setting on mind and spirit, as well as of a fraught father-daughter relationship

—— Christina Hardyment , The Times

In this remarkable, moving tribute to a house and a father, Shelley Klein taps in to three universal emotions: our lifelong bond to the house we grew up in; our sense that our childhood home and our parents are intertwined; and our feelings of profound bereftness at saying goodbye to both parents and house ... beautifully illustrated ... Deeply affectionate

—— Ysenda Maxtone Graham , Daily Mail

A charming account of a daughter, a house and a fastidious dad: Secrecy is not a trait found in Klein's writing, which is at times disarmingly honest. Her openness pays off - we get a full and nuanced portrait of her life and all those in it

—— Lucy Knight , The Sunday Times

A moving study in grief

—— Craig Brown , Mail on Sunday

An honest, piercing account of love, death and everything in between... there is an undercurrent which makes this book special. It weaves the complexity of relationships and family into its pages. At its most compelling, it tackles psychodynamics, addressing the influence of earlier encounters and memories on future behaviour and emotions... A poignant homage to her father’s legacy

—— Amira Hashish , Evening Standard

The See-Through House is part of a lineage of central European history filtered through its buildings... In its curious mix of chicken soup Jewishness and Swinging Sixties creativity it also creates a very vivid picture of a minimal modernism almost overloaded with meaning

—— Edwin Heathcote , Financial Times

This unusual memoir is both a beguiling account of an adored yet maddening parent and his complex family history, and an affecting portrait of the grief that follows his death

—— The Bookseller

A touching and timely account of familial love, The See-Through House arrives with all the greater power in our period of lockdown, compelling readers to appreciate the importance of home and family anew.

—— TalkTalk

A touching and timely account of familial love, The See-Through House arrives with all the greater power in our period of lockdown, compelling readers to appreciate the importance of home and family anew

—— UK Press Sydication

The See-Through House is a beautiful testament to a father-daughter bond, an exploration of the complexities of grief and, all together, a quite stunning account of a one of a kind house

—— Aisling McGuire , Wee Review

Shelley is a deft writer, especially when conjuring texture and Kodachrome colours

—— Nick Sharp , World of Interiors

A journey through loss and questions of belonging, it's lit with colour and light

—— NET-A-PORTER

A moving memoir of loss

—— Daily Telegraph

Tightly conceived and distinctively written, perceptive, precise and unsparing... An elegiac examination of a Black woman's life and an acerbic analysis of Britain's racial landscape. Brown's rhythmic, economic prose renders the narrator's experiences with breathless clarity

—— New York Times

Stunningly good

—— Elizabeth Day, presenter of the 'How to Fail' podcast

Assembly is an astonishing work. Formally innovative, as beautiful as it is coolly devastating, urgent and utterly precise on what it means to be alive now

—— Sophie Mackintosh, author of 'The Water Cure'

Searing... A rousing, inspired voice demanding to be recognized and heard

—— Washington Post

Deft, essential, and a novel of poetic consideration, Assembly holds (the Black-British) identity in its hands, examining it until it becomes both truer and stranger - a question more than an answer. I nodded, I mhmmed, I sighed (and laughed knowingly, bitterly)

—— Rachel Long, Folio Prize-shortlisted author of 'My Darling From the Lions'

Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society: how it has poisoned even our language, making its necessary dismantling almost the stuff of dreams. I take hope from Assembly, not just for our literature but also for our slow awakening

—— Diana Evans, author of 'Ordinary People'

Mind-bending and utterly original. It's like Thomas Bernhard in the key of Rachel Cusk but about black subjectivity

—— Brandon Taylor, author of 'Real Life'

Brilliantly sharp and curiously Alice-like... It centres on a gifted and driven young Black woman navigating a topsy-turvy and increasingly maddening modern Britain... Her indictment is forensic, clear, elegant, a prose-polished looking glass held up to her not-so-post-colonial nation. Only one puzzle remains unsolved: how a novel so slight can bear such weight

—— Times Literary Supplement

A piercing, cautionary tale about the costs of assimilating into a society still in denial about its colonial past. Brown writes with the deftness and insight of a poet

—— Mary Jean Chan, author of 'Flèche'

Bold, elegant, and all the more powerful for its brevity, Assembly captures the sickening weightlessness which a Black British woman, who has been obedient to and complicit with the capitalist system, experiences as she makes life-changing decisions under the pressure of the hegemony

—— Paul Mendez, author of 'Rainbow Milk'

This is a stunning achievement of compressed narrative and fearless articulation

—— Publisher's Weekly

One of the most talked-about debuts of the year . . . you'll read it in one sitting

—— Sunday Times Style

Thrilling... Brown gets straight to the point. With delivery as crisp and biting into an apple, she short-circuits expectation... This is [the narrator's] story, and she will tell it how she wishes, unpicking convention and form. Like The Drivers' Seat by Muriel Spark, it's thrilling to see a protagonist opting out and going her own way

—— Scotsman

A nuanced, form-redefining exploration on class, work, gender and race

—— Harper’s Bazaar

Across 100 lean pages, Brown deftly handles a gigantic literary heritage... Her style rivals the best contemporary modernists, like Eimear McBride and Rachel Cusk; innocuous or obscure on a first reading, punching on a second... Assembly is only the start

—— Daily Telegraph

There's something of Isherwood in Brown's spare, illuminating prose... A series of jagged-edged shards that when accumulated form an unhappy mirror in which modern Britain might examine itself

—— Literary Review

A debut novel as slender and deadly as an adder

—— Los Angeles Times

A razor-sharp debut... This powerful short novel suggests meaningful discussion of race is all but impossible if imperialism's historical violence remains taboo

—— Daily Mail

Bold, spare, agonisingly well-observed. An impressive debut

—— Tatler

Excoriating, unstoppable... The simplicity of the narrative allows complexity in the form: over barely a hundred pages, broken into prose fragments that have been assembled with both care and mercilessness

—— London Review of Books

Beguiling and beautifully written, this is the work of an author with a bright future

—— Tortoise

Coruscating originality, emotional potency, astonishing artistic vim... This signals the arrival of a truly breathtaking literary voice... A scintillating tour de force

—— Yorkshire Times

Fierce and accomplished, Assembly interrogates the high cost of surviving in a system designed to exclude you

—— Economist

I was blown away by Assembly, an astonishing book that forces us to see what's underpinning absolutely everything

—— Lauren Elkin, author of 'Flaneuse'

Coiled and charged, a small shockwave... Sometimes you come across a short novel of such compressed intensity that you wonder why anyone would bother reading longer narratives... [Assembly] casts a huge shadow

—— MoneyControl

A masterwork . . . it contains centuries of wisdom, aesthetic experimentation and history. Brown handles her debut with a surgeon's control and a musician's sensitivity to sound

—— Tess Gunty , Guardian

An extraordinary book, and a compelling read that had me not only gripped but immediately determined to listen again... Highly recommended

—— Financial Times on 'Assembly' in audiobook

'As utterly, urgently brilliant as everyone has said. A needle driven directly into the sclerotic heart of contemporary Britain. Beautiful proof that you don't need to write a long book, just a good book'

—— Rebecca Tamas, author of 'Witch'

Every line of this electrifying debut novel pulses with canny social critique

—— Oprah Daily

Devastatingly eloquent, bold, poignant

—— Shelf Awareness

An achievement that will leave you wondering just how it's possible that this is only the author's very first work... Brown packs so much commentary and insight inside of every single sentence... Original and startling all at once. After reading Assembly, I cannot wait to see what Natasha Brown does next

—— Shondaland

[Brown's] work is like that of an excellent photographer - you feel like you are finally seeing the world sharply and without the common filters. That is hypnotising

—— Rowan Hisayo Buchanan , Guardian

A brilliantly compressed, existentially daring study of a high-flying Black woman negotiating the British establishment

—— Guardian, 'Best Fiction of 2021' , Justine Jordan

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