Hello, you're listening to Better Known, where each episode a guest makes a series of recommendations of things which they think should be better known.
Our recommendations include interesting people, places, objects, stories, experiences, and ideas which our guest feels haven't had the exposure that they deserve.
The only conditions for discussion are that our guest loves it and thinks it merits your attention as well. My name's Ivan Wise and this week's guest on Better Known is Andrew Hindmore.
So you're a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield and your new book is Haywire, a political history of Britain since 2000.
You summarise the three biggest issues over that time as low political trust, contested political boundaries and economic stagnation.How close are we to rectifying any of these three?
I think right now from where we're sat, I'm going to have to say I think that there's probably room for a sequel.
So the idea that Britain's in decline, that it faces a series of intractable-looking problems, is of course a bit of a longstanding one, indeed probably a cliché.It's been around for well over 100 years now.
But at the same time, and whilst recognizing that it is a bit of a cliché, I don't think it's ever felt quite as true as it does now.I think that low trust, low growth, eye-watering public debt, shoddy infrastructure.
I think they're all the new normal.
And in the Conservative wing, they're all talking about planning.We need to get rid of regulation.We need to get rid of bureaucracy.Other people talk about skills gap.We just haven't got the skills we want.
Do you have any sense from your research since 2000, is there one silver bullet?Is there one big issue that's causing all this decline or perception of decline?
The thing that stands out above anything else is relatively poor levels of business investment. a pretty inconsistent state investment and above all else, falling productivity.
So people have to work harder in Britain to produce the same amount relative to now an increasingly long list of other European countries.
So if you can fix investment and you can fix productivity on which there seems to be a broad consensus, then you're at least part of the way through the end of the story that you might want to get.
The kind of million dollar question is how you do that one.And that's kind of where the parties disagree.But at the moment, on most of the metrics, it's hard to see any immediate uptick at the moment.
Okay, well, we'll try and do what we can to sort that out.So you've chosen six things to discuss.Your first choice is North Stradbroke Island, which is off the coast of Queensland in Australia near Brisbane.So when did you first go and visit there?
I think I was first there in the mid 1990s when I was visiting for the first time my now wife's family and friends in Brisbane.
And just looking at some of the photos, it's obviously got amazing beaches and marine life as you'd expect of the East Coast, Australia.What did you particularly enjoy doing when you were there?
Brisbane's a pretty nice place to live, but the thing about it is that it is just absolutely stinking hot for large chunks of the year.
So upwards of 35 degrees regularly in the city centre and incredibly humid, you know, that kind of step out the door and you feel drained instantly.So the nicest single thing about Stradi, about North Stradbroke Island,
is that it's always cooler there.There's always a sea breeze.It's always a few degrees cooler.The second thing is I just think it's got the most spectacular beaches.
Australians are convinced that they have the best beaches in the world, and they are, in my view at least, pretty much consistently wrong about that.
A lot of the beaches in Australia are just very long, dozens, sometimes hundreds of miles long, and a little bit barren.They're just strips of sand. The beaches on Straddy, I just think they're beautiful.
Think of the best of Cornwall, Northunderland or the Pembroke coast in Wales, but warmer weather, more dolphins and more whales swimming by and I just think the nicest place to hang out.
And lots of people do travel quite near there, just slightly further north to the Great Barrier Reef.And Kate James, a former Queensland politician, described North Stradbroke as one of the most beautiful places in the world.
But why do you think more tourists do go to places like Kigari or Fraser Island slightly further north?Why are they not going to North Stradbroke Island so much?
They've just got such a strong car culture. So the islands to the north, Fraser Island is probably the most famous one you can drive.You can drive there in five hours and you can drive your car along the beach.
Bradbroke for me is attractive precisely because you have to catch a boat there and because for a lot of the beaches, not all of them, but for a lot of the beaches, you're not allowed to drive your car on.And I think that puts a lot of people off.
So you can never used to cease to amaze me.
that you could bump into people in Brisbane and they'd say, oh yeah, I've always wanted to go to Stradbroke Island, as if they were talking about some distant island, hundreds and thousands of miles away, but amazing numbers of people living in Brisbane and on that Southeast Queensland coast, just don't go there, because it seems like a bit of a faff, frankly, I think.
It's an odd thing about islands, isn't it?Lots of British people have never been to any of the main islands around them, and maybe the Isle of Wight is not quite a patch on North Stradbroke, but there seems to be a psychological barrier.
Yeah, and it's the oddest thing about it that basically it's the single most pleasant journey that you can possibly imagine.
But you are right, there is just something there about not being able to travel it by car, not having all of your stuff with you that just puts so many people off from travelling.
All right, so North Stradbroke Island.Should be better known.
Your second choice is the Americans TV series, which tells the story of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, an American couple living in a suburb of Washington, D.C., who are undercover Soviet agents.It stars Kerry Russell and Matthew Rhys.
So why did you particularly recommend this series?
I'm not sure how well known The Americans is.I suspect not nearly as well known as it should be, because I think it's just a compellingly good drama. The storyline keeps moving across the different series and you see the characters evolve.
There are moments of drama when either Philip or Elizabeth seem inevitably that they're going to get caught by the FBI.There are compelling moments of Cold War history.
It's set in the 1980s when they both become caught up in what were real world events.But there's other kind of box sets.I guess the Sopranos would be a pretty obvious example.Breaking Bad would be another.
where the premise of the story is to juxtapose normal kind of family life against something that people do that is incredibly different and dramatic.So the Americans fits into that story, but I just think it does it incredibly well.
And it made me wonder from your description, whether it was based on real life people, I mean, presumably, they have a number of challenges actually fitting in and not getting discovered.
Yeah, they do.And so they kind of they're all they want to be the all kind of the standard Americans growing up in suburbia.And then occasionally, one or both of them will disappear off whilst they go on some secret mission.
And, you know, the idea that they were deeply embedded Soviet agents is I think, as I understand it broadly true, I'm not sure of the history of what happened to them.
But it strikes me as a plausible enough starting premise for a story, even if the events that then occur around them are clearly fictionalised.
And what's interesting about it is that one of the tensions between them is the impact of America upon them and their enduring ideological convictions.
So Elizabeth remains steadfast in her beliefs and her commitment to the Soviet Union and the communist cause.But one of the strains in the marriage is that Philip wavers, far less committed.
And there are times when he starts to doubt himself, doubt his cause, and kind of clearly enjoys that American life.And that's a really interesting tension between them. But you then also see kind of played out with their parenting.
So you've got the two kids, Holly and Henry growing up as embodiments of the all American suburban life that their parents are tasked with subverting, but also at the same time enjoying.
And I just think the way it plays with that one over a number of series is just incredibly well done.
And obviously a programme like this could flounder if viewers saw them as the enemy, the outsiders.So how likable do you find Philip and Elizabeth?
Yeah, that's absolutely the key.So even in their worst moments, when they're blackmailing or murdering, they nevertheless both remain characters with whom it's kind of impossible not to emphasise and care about.You just don't want them to get caught.
You don't want their relationship to break up.You don't want the kids to grow up without their parents.That might be, for me, what sets the Americans apart, which is the Breaking Bad and Sopranos.
Look, it's not that you necessarily grow to loathe the characters, but I think in both cases, the main characters, at best, you're going to feel ambivalent about them.
And increasingly, as both of those series go on, it seems to me that they become less likable, that they become more corrupted by the lives that they lead.
Whereas I don't think that's true of the Americans consistently throughout, and even when the net is closing around them at the end, you do sympathise with them and the predicament in which they find themselves.It's just a great watch.
So the television series The Americans should be better known. Your third choice is hitchhiking – a way of travelling for free by sharing lifts with strangers.So, where were you when you first went hitchhiking?
I think I was probably about 18 and at the time hitchhiking was not nearly as rare as it is now.
It wasn't necessarily common – I don't want to paint a picture of a dim and distant world in which everyone stood by the edge of a road with their thumb out – but you'd Seeing hitchhikers was a common enough sight.
I think for the simple reason that at that point you didn't have cheap bus companies offering to get you to London for a couple of pounds.So a lot of people hitch.And I used to regularly hitchhike from University College Wales Aberystwyth.
I used to hitchhike down to London for a weekend.So I'd stand outside on a Friday afternoon after classes had finished.I used to stand on the edge of Aberystwyth with my long student hair.
and my long student earring and my long student coat and wonder why it was that I wouldn't get a lift out of Aberystwyth that would take me directly to London.
Hitchhiking often works, but if you're going to have a go at it and start it, I wouldn't stand outside Aberystwyth.There was a memorable incident where when the Berlin Wall came down, me and a mate set off to hitchhike.
We got our way down to Dover, caught the ferry across and then set off to hitchhike to Berlin. without any map or clear idea looking back on it or where Berlin was or how far away it was from France.This is pre-mobile phone.
You can't look this stuff up.And after a full day hitchhiking, ended up bailing out in Amsterdam, which we decided, for reasons that you can probably guess at, was going to be a pretty acceptable substitute for Berlin for a couple of days.
And so obviously the driver for hitchhiking was that it was obviously cheaper than paying for tickets.But presumably an added advantage is you do presumably meet some quite interesting people on the way.
Yes.I mean, clearly there are safety issues with hitchhiking and I'm not inviting anyone to just think that there potentially are. But for me, hitchhiking was always, I found it a safe experience and hugely enjoyable.
So one of the things about it is just the randomness.I mean, we're kind of used to rail travel nowadays being a pretty random experience, but hitchhiking kind of ups that one.
You stand there by the side of the road, you don't know how long you're going to be stood there for.If a car stops, you don't know where it's going to be going to, whether it's going to take you half a mile down the road.
which is invariably what happened when I eventually got picked up outside of Aberystwyth.Someone would say that they were literally going to their house 300 yards away.Or they could be taking you to your destination.
You don't know who's going to be behind the wheel.You don't know whether they're going to want to chat or what they'll want to chat about.So I kind of really, on the occasions that I do it now, and I still do it now and again, I really enjoy that.
And then obviously it's just those moments of kindness, someone buying you a coffee, they feel sorry for you or taking you out of your way to drop you somewhere.
So if you get stuck there, and you don't get stuck very often, but if you get stuck, it can be a pretty bleak experience.
But in terms of kind of affirming the kindness of strangers, I just think hitchhiking is right up there, which is why when I still do it, I just find it an amazing experience.
And as you say, there presumably were always risks involved in doing it.But over time now, to be a hitchhiker feels much riskier than probably it is.And to be a driver and pick somebody up makes you feel like maybe I shouldn't be doing this.
What am I doing putting myself and them in this situation? Has it become a self-fulfilling prophecy that something that was once thought to be relatively sensible, now both sides have decided to back away from it?
Yeah, I think that's right.And maybe this is just nostalgia picking through here.So yeah, you see a hitchhiker and it looks odd.From it looking odd, you infer that it is an odd thing to do and therefore you don't pick people up.
When you get picked up in the UK, it's often people who hitchhiked when they were younger and feel like they've got favours to repay, which is always a nice moment. But yeah, it's not hard to see the dynamics there.
The one exception and the kind of the time that I guess when I hitchhike nowadays, I do it is where you can be placed.So if I'm off walking somewhere, I'm going to come to hill walking a little bit later on today.
But if you're off hill walking, you've got a rucksack on your back and boots on your feet and you stood at the bottom of a hill at the end of the day, people can kind of place you, understand why you're there and you don't then appear as odd and you can get picked up.
I had a bit of hitchhiking this summer bailing out from some hills in the Pyrenees where the rain just threatened to wash everything away.
Stood bedraggled by the side of the road looking really, really desperate and it looking really obvious what I was doing and why trying to get out to the nearest town and didn't stand there for more than two minutes.
There was plenty of other walkers or people passing who knew what you were doing and whisked me away to the refuge of a rather nice hotel down in the valley.
All right, so hitchhiking should be a better name. You're listening to Better Known with my guest today, Andrew Hindmore, who's been choosing a series of things which he thinks should be better known.
So far, we've had North Stradbroke Island, the Americans and hitchhiking.Now, we've talked very positively so far, but as well as things which should be better known, is there anything really famous you wish was much less well known?
OK, so mine here is a pretty broad category I'm going to go for. And I'm going to say it's the 1980s.It kind of feels like the 1980s was the music was the era I grew up in.
And so the music feels pretty special to me, even when that music I recognize at some objective level is frequently awful.And it just seems to me you can't go into a pub or a restaurant nowadays without 1980s music playing.
I can't believe it's just me who noticed this, but it's become kind of the ubiquitous backdrop to public music. And I just sometimes feel it's my decade.Leave it alone.It's my music.I want to feel like it's special to me.
And other than anyone else who has the advantage of being born later than me and therefore being younger than me, it seems unfair that you also get to free ride on 1980s music.
Well, it's odd, isn't it?Because obviously you lived through it, and presumably the music that's now played back to you as the 1980s is not necessarily the music that you liked or enjoyed at the time.
So it's this weird disconnect between the reality as you remember it, and the kind of ersatz version now served back to you.
Yeah, so for, you know, from a generation where everyone watched Top of the Pops, on a Thursday evening all of the time.One of the things that you get, and it's kind of seared into me, is that most of that music most of the time was pretty awful.
So you do, it's very true, get a kind of super refined version of it.
And maybe picking up on that, and maybe you're dead right, maybe that's kind of deep down what I resent, that the people listening to 1980s music now only gets the kind of the cream of it
Whereas I had to sit through all of the dross that was sitting alongside it.So maybe it's about earning your spurs and doing the hard yards here that I just wish people would leave the 1980s alone.
And to turn this into a positive, is there one song that you remember from the 1980s that you really liked that doesn't seem to form part of the retrospectives that you hear nowadays?
I'm going to slightly duck it and claim that the all time definitively brilliant Sheffield based ABC and The Look of Love remains one of the all time classic pop songs and doesn't get quite the coverage that it deserves.
And which one would you like to consign to the dustbin that you still hear?
Amadeus by Falco occasionally crops up.You hear it's the kind of thing you might hear in a lift if the lift was about to get stuck between floors.And that's probably one that if I never heard again, I'd be quite happy.
What would Mozart's family make of that?
Yeah, I think if they if they heard what had been done to it, they would approve entirely.
Okay, so we're trying to hear a little bit less about the 1980s.Your next choice is the data on happiness and life satisfaction from the Office of National Statistics.
So on balance, British people, when asked to rate how happy they are, they say there are seven and a half out of 10.So what are the major factors that affect how happy people are?
Yeah, I just find this fascinating.I suspect almost everyone listening will have come across a newspaper story at some point or other about happiness or life satisfaction.It gets measured in various ways.
What are the major factors affecting happiness?Well, in my book Haywire, I talk a little bit about geography at one point, and most of the happiest parts of the country
are frequently amongst the remotest ones in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the least happy ones in the country are consistently in London.So nothing to do with income at all, but rather with the kind of quality of life that you get.
What are the other major factors that affect how happy you are?Well, the absolute standout is health.Poor health and long-term sickness, by far more than anything else, are the thing that destroy individual happiness.
After that, having a job, feeling that your job is worthwhile and socially worthwhile is an important one.Commuting's bad for happiness.And income, income but income only up to a point.Most studies show that beyond a certain point,
Increases in income don't result in higher sustained levels of happiness.Initially, average happiness levels increase as income goes up, but beyond a certain point, that relationship either gets very weak or breaks down altogether.
And I think that's an interesting thing.
Oddly, I think a lot of people suspect that but still forget to apply it to their own lives.In terms of people's life events and kind of how their happiness varies over time at different ages, what are some of the key changes there?
Yeah, they're kind of the things there that you might expect.So it's the big life events, illness, which we kind of already touched upon, grief, and divorce.
I mean, divorce just absolutely jumps out as things that are something that kind of results in a prolonged trough of unhappiness.
And over an individual's lifespan, they often talk about a U-shape to the happiness curve, as in there's a big dip in midlife.Is that broadly true?
Yeah, that's pretty much consistent.And it's pretty much consistent across a lot of countries.It's a U-curve.So high, low, and then high, and then high again.
So with the low points coming on average in the people's mid to early 50s, and if that feels like for a lot of people a pretty bleak period, I guess the good news story is that consistently the happiest average period of people's lives by some margin is through their 60s and right through into their 70s.
So I think we get this idea that average levels of happiness will start to fall as you get significantly older.The data doesn't actually show that.Right up until towards the end of people's lives, which would be associated with a period of illness.
People tend to be amongst the most happy that they've ever been in their lives.And so that's kind of a quite nice thing to look forward to, especially if you're sat there in your early or mid fifties, wondering where it all went wrong.
Well, exactly.It's always worth keeping hope and hanging in there as it may turn around.And obviously, this is statistics you're interested in, but how much analysis is there underneath that in terms of what's the kind of core explanation for it?
People find contentment in their life in terms of settling and accepting where they are.So career can be this huge source of satisfaction for people.I said that one before.
But that pressure to achieve once that's lifted from you just seems to make a big difference.The other thing I recall reading something about is how much more people enjoy grandchildren than they enjoy their own children.
Or at least what they enjoy is the memory of their own children refracted through the easier parenting experience of being a grandparent.
So the data on happiness and life satisfaction should be better known.Your next choice is Philip Short's biography of Vladimir Putin.So Philip Short was a BBC correspondent and he spent eight years writing this book, which came out in 2022.
So Putin needs no introduction.He's clearly a significant world figure.What sort of sense do you get about his political outlook and how it was formed from reading this biography?
Yeah, like all good biographies, it just kind of gives you an insight of how someone's got to where they are.
And the standout moment in his book is Putin's time as a middle-ranking KGB officer in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and East Germany collapsed and the Soviet Union was humiliated and all that was solid melted into air.
So the famous moment here, the story that gets recounted again, Short just does it in superb level of detail, providing the context for it.
when some of the East German crowd who was storming the local Stasi HQ turned their attention to the house just over the road where the KGB was based, and the crowd was turned back, but when Putin then calls for help from a nearby Soviet army garrison, he gets told, Moscow is silent.
We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow, and Moscow is silent.And then suddenly this moment where he realizes political authority is collapsing around him.
And this state, whose job it has been of his to keep on the communist straight and narrow, has just disintegrated in such a short period of time.
kind of clearly has this earth shattering effect on Putin, who next to no time ends up back in the Soviet Union, coming to realities with a new life.So that's the absolutely formative experience.
I think Short just tells it and kind of really gives you a sense of how that would have looked to Putin at that point, living that comfortable life that he had in East Germany and seeing the world that he thought he was occupying shattered around him.
And so Putin then becomes this political fixer in St.Petersburg.How does the book portray that period?
He captures it this absolute Wild West moment in which the economy is collapsing, political authority is collapsing.Estonia, which is only 100 kilometers or so from St.Petersburg, is beginning to break away and declaring independence.
So he's fled from East Germany.He ends up in this other place that then starts to collapse around him.And he becomes a political fixer for the local mayor and then works his way up through the system.
And that's a fascinating story because it gives you this insight into just the kind of Hobbesian levels of chaos at the time in the Soviet Union as it fell apart.
But what it also captures is this sense of just how effective a political figure Putin was.
how amidst all of this chaos he got things done, how he negotiated deals, kept his own cards very much to his own chest, and on what my reading of what Short says, kept himself relatively clean, accepting gifts when they were being offered to him.
but by the standards of the day, acting in a relatively uncorrupt manner.He doesn't emerge from that as a hero, I wouldn't say that, but from the account as I read it, you get this sense of grudging admiration for him, and as he gets spotted
and moves to Moscow and then very rapidly gets promoted.It makes it explicable how somebody who was such an outsider works their way to the top so quickly.
And it's a difficult trick, isn't it, to write a book about someone who's not from the past, but he's a widely disliked, criticised dictator from the present.
So how effectively does Short make you understand Putin, what fires him up, what he's all about, without feeling sorry for him or making excuses for him?
Yeah, he that's, I think that's the best single thing about the book is that you come out reflecting on Putin, but you kind of avoid either of those poles.
So I certainly didn't come out feeling for Putin, the way that I ended up feeling for the fictional Philippine Elizabeth from the Americans.
But at the same time, you know, what you capture is there a moment, particularly when it comes to the eastwards expansion of NATO, that what Short shows you is how and why Putin ends up thinking about the West in the way that he does.
Now, that doesn't mean to say that he's right, but his worldview begins to make sense.And that feels to me far more preferable to descriptions of Putin just as a maniac or a fantasist or as a thug.
You understand the worldview, you understand Putin's capacity to tap into Russian's fears about the West, how he can mobilise political power around him.It's a very impressive exercise in biography.
So Philip Short's biography of Vladimir Putin should be better known.Your final choice is an alternative walk from Wasdale in the Lake District.So what walk do most people take in that area?
So Wasdale is the valley, it's over towards the coast, not a million miles away from Sellafield.
And it's the Valley and the Lakes where most people park their car before walking up Scarfell Pike, England's highest mountain at just under a thousand metres.And on a busy day in summer, the path up to Scarfell can be packed out with people.
But I think there is a better option of a walk very close by if you ever find yourself in the Lake District.
So if you are looking for an alternative walk, the one that you recommend, I think takes seven hours.So where does it take you?
Yeah, seven hours at a pinch.I wouldn't want someone writing in to complain if it took a bit longer.But you park up in the same place, which is Wosedale Head, just above the lake at the top of the valley.
And what you do is you turn in the opposite direction from Scarfell.So you go up into Mosdale. And then you do a giant horseshoe, which takes in a series.And I just I'm going to read out the names because they're so evocative.
Doorhead, Red Pike, Wind Gap, Pillar, Kirk Fell and Great Gable.You do this giant horseshoe and then you end up dropping down off the hill at the end, exactly back to where you started.It was in Worsdale.
And I think it's just one of the finest walks that are going.There's a little bit of scrambling there as you come up onto Kirk Fell and then up onto Great Gable. but it's just spectacularly beautiful, just feels incredibly remote.
And it's pretty much nearly always, even on the busiest of days, deserted and certainly deserted compared to the walk up Scarfell Pike.
Right.And I think you compared it to being more like the Scottish Highlands in the Lake District because of that lack of people.So is that a big part of the appeal for you?
Yeah.I mean, kind of in terms of walking in the UK, probably hitchhiking as well, going back to where we were before.I just think, you know, the Glencoe
and then pushing down through the West, through the Highlands and coming out somewhere near the Isle of Skye.I think they're the most spectacular mountains that you can get in the UK.
But if you live in Sheffield, let alone if you live South of there, the rather inconvenient fact that they're a long way away.So Glencoe from Sheffield, if you set off early in the morning, you can do in six or seven hours.
By comparison, the lake's about three hours away.You can make it for a weekend.Now, Wosedale's right around, tucked away at the back of the lake, so it's a little bit further.
But I think it's the bit that's attractive because it gets you closest to that feeling of the deserted Scottish Highlands that you can get in England.
That feels like a really backhanded compliment to say something is really great because it's like a kind of version of something else.And I don't quite mean it like that.But what you get that sense is of really high hills a long way from anywhere.
And as you look out from that walk, you can see the sea on one side and then just see a stretch of endless hills on the other.And I just think that kind of
That's something that you get in Scotland, but by and large, you might not often get in the Lake District.
And for people looking to improve their life satisfaction levels, might this do the trick?
As walking in England goes, it's as good as it gets.It also starts and finishes with a rather nice pub.
That's the final item on the list.So today we've had North Stradbroke Island, the Americans TV series Hitchhiking, the ONS data on happiness and life satisfaction, Philip Short's biography of Putin, and the alternative walk from Wosdale.
So out of these six choices, Andy, which one do you feel most strongly?Should be better known.
partly because I'm lucky enough to be travelling to Australia next week and looking forward to going there, and partly because lots of people do go to Australia and go to Brisbane and it isn't always the nicest of cities, I'm going to say if you ever get the chance to go to North Stradbroke Island,
Get on a train, get on a ferry and get yourself there because it's the most beautiful spot imaginable.
Thank you very much to Andrew Highmore for his choices.We'll post links to all the topics discussed so you can decide for yourself whether they should indeed be better known.
You can subscribe and listen to all our previous episodes at betterknown.co.uk.My name's Ivan Wise and we look forward to talking to you again for the next episode of Better Known.
