Anthony Daniels, also known by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, has spent a career doing something very unusual for someone of his class: talking at great length to thousands and thousands of people at the very bottom of the socioeconomic heap.

Daniels is a doctor, as well as the author of dozens of books. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of perhaps his most famous, 'Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass', a collection of essays about Daniels' time working as a doctor at both an inner-city hospital and a prison.

One of his tasks in this role was to interview something in the region of 10,000 people who had attempted suicide. They would tell him about their lives, and about the lives of the people closest to them. "From this source alone," Daniels writers, "I have learned about the lives of some fifty thousand people: lives dominated, almost without exception, by violence, crime, and degradation."

Today we talk about what he surmised from these conversations – about the true nature of poverty, of domestic abuse, and the social fallout from the sexual revolution. We also talk about what the British elites fail to understand about the so-called underclass.

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In this bonus episode, I spoke with Ed West about the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Islamo-gauchist coalition, and Rupert Lowe's new Restore Party.

Discussed in this episode:

• Serial series on the Trojan Horse affair
• Hannah Spencer on Newsnight
• Tony Blair documentary series
• Pimlico Journal article on Restore

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this bonus episode, Rob Henderson and I discussed the legacy of Aaron Sorkin, and the end of the political era that his work represented.

Discussed in the episode:

• Sorkin interviewed on the BBC.
• Rob’s NYT piece on The West Wing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.