Patrick McGuinness reads his diary from our 6th June issue about his family’s hometown of Bouillon in Belgium. He reflects on the linguistic and national barriers he crossed to return there each year; on the changes wrought on the town by the end of the industrial era; and on the ways that history and global politics can shape a locality beyond recognition.

Read the diary here: https://lrb.me/mcguinnesspod

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The worst thing you can say to anyone who works in hospitality, Mendez writes, is ‘Maybe you’ll meet someone!’ But a chance encounter while waiting tables lead to their new niche. In this episode, Mendez reads their recent piece about the art of audiobook narration and how they became the voice of Pelé.

Find the original piece and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mendezpod

Learn more about the Charleston Trust: https://www.charleston.org.uk/exhibition/anne-rothenstein/

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John Lanchester, Tom Crewe and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite join James Butler to dissect Keir Starmer's victory and the historic collapse of the Conservative Party. They discuss what the result tells us about the needs and frustrations of the country, the ways in which the new Labour government might achieve some of the things it’s promised and why comparisons with Harold Wilson have been so prevalent.

Read Tom Crewe on fourteen years of the Tories:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/tom-crewe/carnival-of-self-harm

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The day before the election, James Butler is joined by William Davies to talk about something everyone seems to agree on: the very poor state of the UK’s public finances. The past fourteen years of Conservative rule began with the technocratic austerity of George Osborne and ended with the return of the ‘grown-ups’, Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak, to inflict more pain. In between came the chaos of Brexit and the Truss-Kwarteng ‘mini-budget’. What will a likely Labour government pick up from this? Are we still stuck in the age of Osborne, or will something resembling the public investment strategy of Bidenomics emerge through initiatives such as the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy, as Rachel Reeves has promised?

Read Will's latest LRB piece: https://lrb.me/davieselectionpod

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