Jonathan Coe can thank the government’s recent instability for making him (ever so slightly) late to our interview. “Sorry, I’ve spent all afternoon writing an article for [the Spanish newspaper] El Pais about the Conservative Party chaos of the last few weeks,” he explains, with scrupulous politeness. The novelist’s frown suggests that the process has been anything but therapeutic. “Er, no, hardly.”
Taxing though it may have been, the newspaper was right to seek his thoughts. Ever since his 1994 breakthrough novel, What A Carve Up!, a biting socio-political comedy and deadly critique of Tory rule under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Coe has established himself as one of our finest writers. He’s also one of the very best at nailing the British character – rather than caricaturing it – on the page. He’s written all sorts of novels – his most recent, 2020’s Mr Wilder and Me, recounted the autumn years of the legendary Hollywood director Billy Wilder – but has been most celebrated for his state of the nation books, among them 2015’s Number 11, and his 2018 Costa-winning Middle England, both of which also looked at politics and power, and then duly satirised both.
