Episode description

How does money shape history and how do we write about it? Anne McElvoy discusses those questions with a finalist in the political writing category of the 2022 Orwell Prize. In Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire, Kojo Koram traces the some of the economic problems faced across the world today with wealth inequality, with sovereign debt, austerity, and precarious employment and how they are bound up in decolonisation. She also talks to leading UK economist Richard Davies about how Covid has had an impact on our understanding of economics. And John Ramsden is concerned with restoring the forgotten place of economics in poetry from Coleridge's interest in cycles of boom and bust to Jonathan Swift's fascination with trade sanctions. Dhruti Shah is a journalist and the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A bestiary of business terms.

Kojo Koram teaches at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line and author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire.

Richard Davies is the author of Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future Limits for the World’s Economies. A former adviser at the Bank of England and HM Treasury, he now runs the UK’s Economics Observatory.

John Ramsden is a former career diplomat and ambassador. He is the author of The Poets’ Guide to Economics

Dhruti Shah is a journalist and the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A bestiary of business terms.

The Orwell Festival of Political Writing, held across Bloomsbury and online from 22nd June to 14th July, when the winners are announced: https://www.orwellfestival.co.uk/

Producer: Ruth Watts