What a Carve Up!

"Yes, this is a book about Thatcherite wealth. I think it’s one of the most brilliant relatively recent novels about money and wealth. None of the book’s characters are quite super-rich, but they are clearly well on their way there. It’s about a family called the Winshaws who are described as—and I’m quoting here—as “the meanest, greediest, cruelest bunch of back-stabbing, penny-pinching bastards who ever crawled across the face of the earth.” It’s incredible. So, it’s about a young novelist who gets a commission to write a history of the Winshaw family. The family has its hooks into almost every aspect of British life in the 1980s: there’s an art dealer, a very cruel factory farmer, a politician, an arms dealer, a poisonous newspaper columnist. It’s very complicated, because the timelines are fractured, and there are coincidences everywhere. It’s written in quite a postmodern way. But its central depiction of a family on the make, all connected to and helping each other up the greasy pole is very relevant to life in Britain today. They are very Johnsonian, the Winshaws. No. But it’s easy to say that. If someone offered me a chance for a billion quid tomorrow, I’m sure I’d grab it with both greedy mitts. But I don’t think it would make me happier, or aid the development of my life. I don’t think it would help me do the work I love doing, and to improve at that work, which are two of the big elements of finding happiness and satisfaction. It would buy me freedom. That’s the great thing. But the complications that wealth brings seem a pretty big trade-off. I think so."