Mile End Institute Podcast

On 15 November 2022, ITV's Political Editor, Robert Peston, tweeted about being refused entry to a private members' club in Central London for wearing 'comfortable mid-top trainers' and sparked fierce debate about the traditions and standards of London clubs as well as their influence on public life in 2022.  In this special episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast - recorded earlier this Summer - Dr Seth Thévoz (a freelance historian and the foremost expert on 'Clubland') explores the fascinating story of the rise, decline, and resurgence of London's private members' clubs, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day.  Reflecting on his latest book, Behind Closed Doors, Thévoz explains that, while clubs may have started out as white, male, aristocratic watering holes, all sections of society built their own clubs and lived their lives there: highbrow and lowbrow; women and men; working-class, middle-class and upper-class; international and British. 

In the last episode of this series of the Mile End Institute Podcast, our Deputy Director, Dr Karl Pike, talks to Dr Liam Stanley from the University of Sheffield about his new book, Britain Alone: How a decade of conflict remade the nation, which was published by Manchester University Press earlier this year. Beginning with the global financial crisis of 2008, Britain Alone explores how a decade of 'austerity' as well as immigration and the hostile environment, nostalgia, race and the 'left behind', and the Covid-19 pandemic shaped Britain. Karl and Liam's conversation builds on these cultural, economic, and political themes and traces the 'complex nationalist path' that Britain found itself on after 2008. 

In this episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins talks to Dr Anna Neima about her new book, Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall which was published by Cambridge University Press in April. In this fascinating conversation, Lyndsey and Anna discuss how the 1200-acre estate at Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon was transformed into a 'social experiment of kaleidoscopic vitality' in the 1920s and 1930s by the American heiress, Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney) and her husband, Leonard.  They consider how a network of utopian communities across the United Kingdom shaped education, the arts, and agriculture in first half of the twentieth century and what policymakers today can learn from the 'cooperative and democratic' way of living, enriched by lifelong learning and 'a sense of creative and spiritual fulfillment', which was pioneered at Dartington Hall before the Second World War. 

On this week's Mile End Institute Podcast, the MEI's Deputy Director, Dr Colm Murphy, is in conversation with Dr John Davis (Queens, Oxford) about his 'kaleidoscopic' new book, Waterloo Sunrise, which explores how London was transformed into a 'vibrant yet divided metropolis' during the 1960s and 1970s. They discuss how Davis's vivid and immersive book charts everything from Soho strip clubs to London's docklands, the underlying tension between 'majority affluence' and 'minority deprivation' as well as how the key aspects of 'Thatcherism' emerged before the 1980s and continues to shape the Capital today. 

In this week's episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, our Deputy Director, Dr Karl Pike, talks to Dr Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool) and Dr Clare Mac Cumhaill (Durham) about their new book, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life.  A Radio 4 Book of the Week and one of The Guardian's 50 Hottest Summer Reads, Metaphysical Animals explores how Oxford became a 'crucible of a new kind of ethical thinking' and charts the work, life and loves of four of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley. 

In this week's episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, we are marking Refugee Week 2022 (which runs from 20 to 26 June) by exploring how Britain as a state and a society has responded to refugee populations since 1945.  In this conversation, our Deputy Director, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, is joined by Dr Anna Maguire (UCL) and Professor Becky Taylor (UEA) to examine the UK's attitude to refugees, explore the emergence of the 'Hostile Environment' in recent years, and 'historicise' the current refugee crises.  We hope that this week's episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast will be of particular use as a teaching resource for those studying the history of Britain's response to refugee crises and populations since the Second World War. 

In this episode, Professor Tim Bale welcomes Simon Kuper to the Mile End Institute Podcast to talk about his latest book, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, which was published by Profile Books this Spring. Tim and Simon discuss how the University of Oxford has produced the most prominent Conservative politicians of our time, the prestige of the Oxford Union and the unique opportunities it affords 18-year-olds to network and 'debate', and how power, privilege, and elite education have interacted to shape modern Britain. 

In this episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Dr Patrick Diamond talks to Dr Lise Butler (City, University of London) and Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) about the place of expertise in public life and how understandings of expertise have evolved historically.  This episode explores conceptions of medical expertise and how that expertise became more contested during the 20th century, alongside the increasingly important relationship between government and social sciences, as exemplified by the work of Michael Young. Patrick, Lise, and Agnes also discussed how it might be possible to forge a more productive relationship between experts and citizens in a liberal democracy in the contemporary era.

In the 60th episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, our Director, Dr Patrick Diamond, talks to Dr Kevin Hickson (Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool) about his new edited collection, reappraising Neil Kinnock's policies, impact, and legacy, which was published by Routledge last week. Neil Kinnock: Saving the Labour Party? offers a fresh perspective on Kinnock's leadership of the Labour Party 30 years on from his defeat in the 1992 General Election, featuring first-hand accounts from 'insiders' and Kinnock himself.  They discuss Neil Kinnock's political formation and his ideological position within the Party, his struggle with the 'Hard Left' and his relationship with New Labour as well as the enduring uncertainties about the future of the Labour Party. 

In this week's episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins talks to the award-winning writer and historian, Richard King, about his new book, Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales, 1962-1997, which was published by Faber earlier this year. Lyndsey and Richard are joined by Micaela Paines (a doctoral researcher at Cardiff University who specialises in working class women's labour activism from 1928 to 1969) to discuss Richard's groundbreaking study and the interweaving stories of deindustrialisation and nationalism until the referendum which brought devolution to Wales in 1997.