Darren McGarvey

Darren McGarvey is a Scottish rapper, writer, and social commentator who performs under the name Loki. Born in Glasgow in 1985, he grew up in poverty in Pollok, one of Glasgow's most deprived communities, and has drawn extensively on his own experiences with poverty, addiction, violence, and mental health to create work that challenges both left and right-wing orthodoxies about deprivation in Britain. Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass (2017) is McGarvey's debut book, a memoir and polemic about growing up poor in Scotland. The book argues that the left's approach to poverty is itself often patronising and counterproductive, and calls for more honest engagement with the internal dynamics of deprived communities. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2018 and the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. McGarvey has since written The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Power Has Destroyed Our Communities (2022) and continues to work as a rapper, broadcaster, and public speaker. He is one of Scotland's most distinctive and challenging public intellectuals.