Owen Hatherley
, April 17th, 2021 08:57
Owen Hatherley interviews Jonathan Meades about his new book
Pedro and Ricky Come Again, a massive collection of his writing from 1988 to 2021 – and on why he’s no longer making television
Photo by Pablosievert. CC BY-SA 4.0
The last time I saw Jonathan Meades was in May 2018, in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. In a flat surrounded with books, paintings, pictures, and postcards he’d made himself, and as we got through several bottles of rosé, he said he wasn’t fit enough to come up to the building’s famously sculptural roof terrace, with its running track, its kindergarten, and its view across the city, the mountains and the Mediterranean. Although he wasn’t able to leave his flat at the time, he was still planning another film in his informal series for the BBC on the architecture of 20th century dictatorships –
On restaurants, cooking and French cuisine. In conversation with Tracey MacLeod.
This is an online event hosted on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.
Writers Bill Buford and Jonathan Meades talk to broadcaster and restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod about their shared passion for food, honed through residence in France
A few years ago, following a lifelong urge, but without any formal training as a chef or a word of French, Bill Buford moved his young family to the city of Lyon, the historic gastronomic capital of the world. Studying at L Institut Bocuse, cooking at the storied, Michelin-starred La Mère Brazier, enduring the endless hours and exacting rigeur of the kitchen, he gradually earned the acceptance of the locals and his fellow chefs, and came to understand the true grit, precision and passion of the French kitchen. His acclaimed recent book
Longevity is thankfully becoming more important than novelty
âElegancy is refusalâ: Diana Vreeland in New York in 1974. Photograph: New York Times Co./Getty Images
âElegancy is refusalâ: Diana Vreeland in New York in 1974. Photograph: New York Times Co./Getty Images
Sun 4 Apr 2021 02.45 EDT
Last modified on Sun 4 Apr 2021 03.12 EDT
The problem with a lot of fashion writing is that it is just a shopping list fleshed out with adjectives. Its engine, noisy and restless, is acquisition. It couldnât give a damn that the single most precious item in your wardrobe is not the modish dress on which you lavished far too much cash only the other week, but the square-cut shirt with a jungly pattern and buttons the size of dinner plates that your granny stitched for your mother in the 1950s.
What with one thing and another, for ages now I’ve been depressed. Nothing has been stimulating. The salt lost its savour, to coin a phrase from the gospels. Then this whopping book arrived. It has
Cultural critic Jonathan Meades
Credit: BBC/ Production
Jonathan Meades is the most significant cultural critic writing in English today. His range is so broad: the wider public know him for his BBC series on architecture and his columns about food, but he can be just as insightful and provocative on music, politics, topography, literature, pop culture and painting; and seems to have an all-embracing knowledge of those things in relation to most western and northern European countries, notably France, where he has lived for the past 15 years.
Now the full bouquet of Meades is available in a vast and handsome book Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988-2020 (Unbound, £30). Meades is a master of observation, the arresting phrase and the illuminating metaphor. He also has an irresistible urge to show the cloven hoof; even, and especially it seems, when having given his readers the notion that he is writing about someone or something he admires. For example, after praisi