BOOKS READ:
- Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit—Craig Oliver
- A Life of My Own—Claire Tomalin
- The Lonely City—Olivia Laing
- The Party—Elizabeth Day
BOOKS BOUGHT:
- The Last Poets—Christine Otten
- Whatever Happened to Interracial Love—Kathleen Collins
- To The River: A Journey Beneath the Surface—Olivia Laing
- The Book of Forgotten Authors—Christopher Fowler
- Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements—Bob Mehr
- Vernon Subutex 1—Virginie Despentes
A couple of weeks before the referendum in which the British people decided they no longer wanted to be part of the EU, I went to a literary festival in Stoke, a couple of hours north of London. Until that day, I had been working on the assumption that my countrymen would decide, without any great enthusiasm, not to rock the boat. Nobody loves the EU, but the chaos that threatened to engulf us if we chose to leave seemed real enough to deter risk. The time I spent in Stoke, however, taught me more than any amount of time spent reading The Guardian, listening to the BBC, and talking to my North London friends and colleagues, and what I learned was that there was real trouble brewing.
I was shown around Stoke by an enthusiastic local employer who loved the place, and had just moved there after years spent commuting to the city. Stoke, she pointed out, had once been a mining town, but the mines were now closed; it was also part of the region known as the Potteries (the local football team is nicknamed the Potters), but nearly all the potters had gone, too, mostly abroad. She was hopeful that better times were around the corner, and she told me about a scheme whereby anyone wanting to settle and work in the city could buy a house for a pound. American readers may be aware that there is a similar deal available in Detroit, and though it’s an imaginative response to a terrible problem, it’s not altogether good news, for obvious reasons. Later, I met the local Labour MP, who, unlike his leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was strongly committed to Europe. He told me glumly that he hadn’t yet met a single resident who was going to vote Remain, and I started to feel prickles of alarm down the back of my neck. “What are you doing about it?” I asked him. “Well,” he said, “at the moment I’m just not telling people there’s a referendum on. That’s about all I’ve got left.”
Later on, I watched the TV news. We were being warned that a vote to leave would take thirty thousand...
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contributor
contributor
Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including High Fidelity, About a Boy, and, most recently, Just Like You. He has also published several works of nonfiction including his ground-breaking debut, Fever Pitch, and has written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild, and State of the Union.
