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...

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...

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)...

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'...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In the latest episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Professor Tim Bale is in conversation with Dr Hannah White, the Deputy Director of the Institute for Government, about her new book, Held in Contempt: What's wrong with the House of Commons?, which was published by Manchester University Press last month. They discuss how the reputation of the House of Commons has been in 'a downward spiral' in recent years, explore how the increasing frequency of referendums has challenged the supremacy...

In this episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast (recorded before the latest industrial action at QMUL), Lyndsey Jenkins talks to Dr Emily Harmer (University of Liverpool) and Dr Sally Osei-Appiah (University of Leeds about Dr Harmer's new book, Women, Media, and Elections: Representation and Marginalization in British Politics. They discuss how women candidates, voters, activists and party leaders have been portrayed in the British Press since women's enfranchisement and how the roles of...

In this episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Professor Tim Bale speaks to the President of the Liberal Democrats, Dr Mark Pack, about his new book, Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls (Reaktion Books, 2022), which was released earlier this month. They discuss how opinion polls work, whether they can be trusted, and how polling methods have been abused in the past. 

After the recent industrial action across the Higher Education sector, the Mile End Institute Podcast returns with a fascinating discussion about the history and future of the Aylesbury Estate in South East London, which was once described as one of Britain's 'more disastrous experiments in postwar municipal housing' and a 'byword for crime and deprivation'.  The Institute's Deputy Director, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, is joined by Dr Michael Romyn (QMUL) - the author of London's Aylesbury Estate:...

To mark the start of Women's History Month 2022, the MEI's Deputy Director, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, sat down with Dr Eve Worth (Oxford) and Dr Ruth Davidson (Visiting Research Fellow, MEI) to discuss Dr Worth's new book, The Welfare State Generation: Women, Agency and Class in Britain since 1945. They discuss how the growth of the welfare state after 1945 and its contraction in the 1980s was central to the lives of women born in Britain between the late 1930s and early 1950s and conclude that...

Anne Longfield CBE is the former Children's Commissioner for England. In this podcast, she discusses her vision for 'building back better' after the pandemic, and the work she is doing through her independent commission on how to protect children and young people from crime, violence and gangs. 

In this episode, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins (QMUL) and Dr Alexandra Hughes-Johnson (Oxford) discuss their recent book The Politics of Women's Suffrage: Local, National and International Dimensions in collaboration with Dr Kate Connelly (Arcadia). Interviewed by Dr Anna Muggeridge (Worcester), they discuss their respective contributions to suffrage historiography, especially in London, reflect on the legacy of 2018, and look forward to 2028.

In her recent book, ‘Race, Rights and Reform: Black Activism in the French Empire and the United States from World War 1 to the Cold War’, Sarah C. Dunstan (Glasgow) discusses African American and Francophone black activist struggles for rights and citizenship in their differing contexts, tracing their transatlantic collaborations as well as their contrasting attitudes to race, empire, and republicanism. Hosted by MEI Visiting Fellow Daniel Frost, in this podcast Sarah brings her work into...

Gavin Barwell has done just about every job in the Conservative Party that it's possible for anyone to do: he's been a grassroots activist, worked on campaigns at CCHQ, become an MP and a minister, entered Number Ten as Chief of Staff to the PM and is now a Tory peer.  Here he talks about what made him a Conservative, about what's happened to the Party in recent years, and of course about his turbulent time in Downing Street with Theresa May - the subject of his recent, and highly praised...

In this episode MEI Deputy Director, Dr Karl Pike, speaks to Professor Lea Ypi, author of the new book 'Free: Coming of Age at the End of History' - a memoir of childhood at a time of political change in the 1980s and 1990s. In the podcast, Professor Ypi talks about writing, the story of 'Free', and the philosophical theme of the book.

Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute is joined by Visiting Fellow Freya Marshall-Payne, Professor Sasha Roseneil from UCL, and Rebecca Morden, one of the driving forces behind the oral history project Greenham Women Everywhere, to discuss Rebecca's new book, written in collaboration with Kate Kerrow, Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981-2000'.  The book reunites the trailblazing women from the Greenham Peace Camp and charts their recollections of camp life,...

This week on the MEI Podcast, Deputy Director Colm Murphy was joined by two editors of the newly released book ‘The Neoliberal Age?’, Aled Davies and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite. They discuss the contested meaning of the term 'neoliberalism' and its relevance for understanding Britain since the 1970s.

This week, MEI Director, Patrick Diamond was joined by Paul Cairney and Emily St. Denny, authors of Why isn’t Government Policy More Preventative? They discuss the dichotomy between policy aspiration and policy delivery, and the challenges that governments have faced in both defining ‘prevention’ and implementing preventative policies. The authors also offer their reflections on whether the Covid-19 pandemic will serve as a critical juncture in deepening the commitment to prevention-focused...

In this episode, Colm Murphy was joined by Emily Munro (National Library of Scotland) and Ewan Gibbs (University of Glasgow) to discuss the distinct and powerful relationship between Scotland and the politics of energy in the context of events since the Second World War and the current COP26 conference taking place in Glasgow. The episode uses audio clips from Emily Munro’s new documentary, 'Living Proof: A Climate Story'. More information on this film can be found here:...