Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai and Lydia Wilson
Featuring Barbara Serra, Michael Peel and Karl Sharro
Produced by Finbar Anderson
Listen to and follow The Lede
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podbean
There was no one event that drove journalist Michael Peel to write his book “What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except The British)”. Rather, he told a live audience in London gathered to celebrate The Lede’s 100th episode, it was an accretion of small oddities that eventually drove him to commit his experience of being a foreign correspondent in the U.K. to paper.
Peel explained that being an outsider offers a valuable perspective to the foreign correspondent. “There’s a big emotional change,” he told our live audience. “You’re outside the sound and fury of the politics and the cultural zeitgeist of your own country, living in a different place and looking at it from the outside. And in some sense, perhaps able to be a little bit more objective about certain things or at least detached.”
“You’re outside the sound and fury of the politics and the cultural zeitgeist of your own country, living in a different place and looking at it from the outside.”
Our other guests at this live event celebrating the podcast’s 100th episode were the foreign correspondent Barbara Serra and a returning podcast panelist, satirist Karl Sharro.
It was a fun and lively discussion, ranging from the Second World War to the effect of Brexit, Tony Blair and climate change.
Serra suggested that while the U.K. might have lost some of its global influence as a result of Brexit, the ubiquity of the English language continues to inflate the country’s international standing.
“We never just speak a language, we always speak the culture of that language,” said Serra. “I cannot see that soft power and cultural influence of the U.K. dissipating any time soon.”
Sharro offered an alternative, predictably humorous take on Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, noting, “You look at the recent elections in Western Europe and you think, ‘We dodged a bullet by not joining this club of fascists,’ you know what I mean?”