James Meek

James Meek is a British journalist and novelist. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and has written extensively on politics, economics, and international affairs. His journalism has taken him to Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and he is widely regarded as one of the most gifted long-form journalists writing in English. Meek's nonfiction book Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else (2014) is an incisive investigation into the privatisation of British public utilities and services, examining how the sale of water, electricity, the Royal Mail, railways, and other national assets has affected ordinary citizens. The book won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2015 and was widely credited with helping shape public debate about privatisation in the United Kingdom. As a novelist, Meek is the author of several works including The People's Act of Love (2005), which won the Ondaatje Prize and the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award, and To Calais, in Ordinary Time (2019). He has received the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction and is regarded as one of Britain's most important writers of both fiction and nonfiction.