PREVIEW: Literature about - and after - Corbyn's Labour Party

Suite (212)

In this preview of our subscriber-only episode about how British literature might write about Corbyn's Labour, the aftermath of the 2019 General Election and the 2020s, Juliet talks to novelists Sam Byers and Carl Neville about Ed Luker's 'How Did You Survive January?' and how poetry and film were better able to capture the emotions of 'the Corbyn project'. Carl discusses the difficulties of writing counter-factual literature about the 2017 and 2019 elections given the likely response of the state to a Corbyn victory, and how the actual reaction of the state, the media, the Tories and the Labour right to a left-wing Labour Party was far more savage than that portrayed in Chris Mullen's novel A Very British Coup. Finally, Sam talks about how artists and writers may find themselves co-opted into the culture wars that have subsumed the Labour left's structural and material analyses of British society, and the need to be brave in the face of relentless ridicule and hostility. To hear the full episode, subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.