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Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947)[1] is an English writer and film-maker.[2] His work spans journalism, fiction, essays, memoir and over fifty television films, mainly for the BBC.[3][4][5][6][7][8] His most recent novel, Empty Wigs, was published in February 2025.[5]

Key Information

He has described himself as a "cardinal of atheism"[9] and is both an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society[10][11] and a Patron of Humanists UK.[12]

Meades was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019.[13]

Early life and education

[edit]

Jonathan Meades was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, the only child of John William Meades, a biscuit company sales rep, and Margery Agnes Meades (née Hogg), a primary school teacher.[1][14][15] The family lived in an "unbelievably cramped" terraced, thatched cottage in the East Harnham area of the city. Meades was educated until the age of 13 at the nearby Salisbury Cathedral School, within Salisbury Cathedral Close.[15][16]

He discovered a fascination for place and the built environment whilst accompanying his father on sales trips during school holidays; he would be left unattended and free to explore while the elder Meades conducted his business with the grocer. This later developed into a full-blown passion for architecture following a visit to Edwin Lutyens' Marsh Court on a school cricket trip at the age of 13.[17][14][15] He also developed an early love of France on the frequent trips which his family took there, made possible by his Francophile mother's father, who worked for Southern Railway, the company which ran the Saint-Malo and Le Havre ferries.[14]

In 1960 he was sent as a boarder to King's College, Taunton, which he has described as "a dim, backward, muscular Christian boot camp". He later "walked out" of the school and was sent instead to a crammer in London, where he lodged with the painter Vivien White, daughter of Augustus John.[18][15]

After a year at the University of Bordeaux[19] and unsure of what to do next, he decided to become an actor after a chance meeting with Charles Collingwood[20] and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) from 1966 to 1969.[21][22][23] His contemporaries there included Robert Lindsay, David Bradley, Stephanie Beacham, Michael Kitchen and Richard Beckinsale.[24][21] He later described it as a "Sandhurst for chorus boys"[24] where students were "martially drilled",[25] teaching them the value of discipline, craft and technique.[7]

Although he ultimately decided against joining the acting profession,[20] the training which he received would prove essential in his later television career,[24] as would his extra-curricular interest in French New Wave cinema, in particular the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Robbe-Grillet.[26][15] His regular Sunday pastime of exploring the capital with his Pevsner Architectural Guide would also benefit him later.[27] On leaving RADA, he was told by the Principal, Hugh Cruttwell, that he might as well abandon acting until he reached middle age, at which point he might become an interesting character actor. When the two met again decades later, after Meades had established himself on television, Cruttwell joked that he had not realised that the character would be called "Jonathan Meades".[9][21]

Writing

[edit]

Journalism

[edit]

Following a period as a freelance copywriter,[19] Meades began writing for the literary magazine Books & Bookmen in 1971, setting him on a career as a journalist and critic.[9][28] In 1973 he reviewed a V&A exhibition on Victorian architecture for the magazine, igniting a passion for the style and prompting him to explore even more of London than he had to date. Using the unlimited travel afforded by Red Rover bus passes, he rode on random buses for 20 minutes and then got off, no matter where he was.[29]

After leaving Books and Bookmen in 1975 he wrote for the sex education magazine Curious and joined the staff of Time Out, then became The Observer's TV critic in 1977.[24][28] This led to the publication of his first book, This Is Their Life, an A to Z of TV star biographies with an introduction by Mike Yarwood.[30] He moved to Architects' Journal in 1979 and around this time worked on another book, The Illustrated Atlas of the World's Great Buildings, with Philip Bagenal.[28][31]

In 1981 he became the editor of Richard Branson's short-lived listings magazine Event, then from 1982 was the features editor of Tatler.[28][20][9] It was here that he first had the opportunity to write about food, filling in as restaurant critic after Julian Barnes resigned, using the pseudonym "John Beaver". He was also invited to contribute to the bi-monthly restaurant magazine À la Carte around this time.[7] In 1986 he was offered the job of restaurant critic at The Times, replacing comedy writer Stan Hey. Meades was a great success in this position, taking the job more seriously than his predecessor. He won Best Food Journalist at the 1986, 1990, 1996 and 1999 Glenfiddich Awards.[7][32][33]

Despite his success, he often tired of the repetitive nature of the job and threatened to leave several times. The paper responded by increasing his salary.[7] He finally quit around 2000, having been pronounced morbidly obese by his doctor: he had put on around five pounds per year, or one ounce per meal, during his tenure. He then managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of the following twelve months, using a strict diet of protein and citrus.[24] He remained with The Times as a columnist until 2005.[1]

In the years since, he has done less journalism but has contributed essays and reviews to numerous publications including the New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement.[24][34][35][36][37][38][39]

Books and other writing

[edit]

In 1982, Harpers & Queen published three short stories which Meades had written about "rural lowlife". These, along with four more, were collected in 1984 as Filthy English, his first volume of fiction.[9] Andrew Billen of the London Evening Standard later described them as "bucolic horror stories".[40] A few more stories appeared in his first anthology of journalism and essays, 1989's Peter Knows What Dick Likes, the title of which is a reference to the supposed superiority of male-on-male fellatio.[41][42]

He contributed to the screenplay of the 1992 French-Italian adventure film L'Atlantide, directed by Bob Swaim and also wrote three unproduced screenplays in the 1980s and the 1990s: Millie's Problem (1985), The Side I Dressed On (1987) and The Brute's Price (1996).[43][28]

His first novel, Pompey, was published in 1993. A dark, epic family saga set in the titular city of Portsmouth, it was widely praised and favourably compared to Sterne, Scarfe, Steadman, Nabokov and Joyce, amongst other "great stylists".[44][45][46] On its 2013 reissue, Matthew Adams wrote in The Independent, "Where his first collection of stories, Filthy English, achieved the distinction of covering in aggressively vivid prose the disciplines of murder, addiction, incest and bestial pornography, Pompey exhibits an even greater concentration of his aptitude for squalor ... by the end of the opening two pages, which must rank among the most startling affirmations of omniscience in 20th-century literature, the reader has met with an arresting injunction: 'After using this book please wash your hands.'"[45][41]

A second novel, The Fowler Family Business, followed in 2002. A tale of suburban sexual deceit in the funeral trade, it was described by the London Evening Standard as "hilarious and very black".[9][40] An anthology of his food journalism, Incest and Morris Dancing: A Gastronomic Revolution, was published in the same year.[9][41] In a 2010 interview with The Arts Desk, he discussed his work on a third novel.[26]

An anthology of journalism, essays and TV scripts on the built environment, Museum Without Walls, was published by the crowdfunded imprint Unbound in 2012.[47][41]

Meades' memoir of his childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s, An Encyclopaedia of Myself, was published in May 2014. It was long-listed for that year's Samuel Johnson Prize and won Best Memoir in the Spear's Book Awards 2014. Roger Lewis of the Financial Times said of the work that "If this book is thought of less as a memoir than as a symphonic poem about post-war England and Englishness – well, then it is a masterpiece.".[48][41][2][46][3]

In 2015, the publisher and record label Test Centre released a spoken word vinyl album by Meades entitled Pedigree Mongrel, consisting of readings from Pompey, Museum Without Walls, An Encyclopaedia of Myself and unpublished fiction, combined with soundscapes created by Mordant Music. The sleeve of the album featured photography by Meades, including an abstract self-portrait on the front cover.[49][50] Also in 2015, Meades, along with Laura Noble, contributed essays to Robert Clayton's photographic collection Estate, which documented life on the soon-to-be-demolished Lion Farm housing estate in Oldbury, West Midlands in 1990.[51]

A book of "borrowed" recipes, The Plagiarist in the Kitchen: A Lifetime's Culinary Thefts, was published by Unbound in 2017.[52][41][4][53] According to Meades, it is "devoted to the idea that you shouldn't try and invent anything in the kitchen, just rely on what has already been done ... I hate the idea of experimental cookery, but I like the idea of experimental literature.".[54]

Isle of Rust, a collaboration with the photographer Alex Boyd featuring text based on Meades' script for his 2009 film about Lewis and Harris, was published by Luath Press in 2019.[5]

An anthology of uncollected writing from 1988 to 2020 entitled Pedro and Ricky Come Again, described as "the best of three decades of Jonathan Meades" and the sequel to Peter Knows What Dick Likes, was published by Unbound in March 2021.[42][5]

Meades' long-awaited third novel, Empty Wigs, was published by Unbound in February 2025 and received critical acclaim.[5][55][56][57]

(See full bibliography)

Television

[edit]

Meades' first foray into television was in 1985: a short film on the art and architecture of Barcelona for the BBC Two arts magazine programme Saturday Review.[24][58][28] His first big project was the 1987 six-part Channel 4 architectural documentary series The Victorian House. This contained many stylistic similarities to his other work, but the producer of the series, John Marshall, received the sole writing credit and it was not a happy experience for Meades.[24][59] He would be credited as the sole author of all his subsequent work.[60]

His next series was Abroad in Britain, broadcast on BBC Two in 1990.[60] It featured five irreverent, "slightly bonkers" films which explored unusual and neglected aspects of the built environment: informal plotland dwellings along the Severn Valley, nautical culture around the Solent and architectural forms associated with utopianism, bohemians and the military.[61][62] Each episode was introduced by Meades as being "devoted to the proposition that the exotic begins at home". The series was influenced by the work of architectural critic Ian Nairn and French New Wave film director Alain Robbe-Grillet and it cemented Meades' uniquely incongruous on-screen persona: dark glasses, dark suits, inscrutable, didactic delivery and dense, mordant language peppered with gags and surreal interludes.[63][26][64][65][3][29][20][24] Rachel Cooke of The Guardian later described his TV persona as "pugnacious, sardonic and seemingly super-confident", while noting the RADA training and that it was "not the real Jonathan Meades, who is an altogether more diffident and shy character ... except when drunk".[20] The series spawned four sequels: Further Abroad (1994), Even Further Abroad (1997), Abroad Again in Britain (2005) and Abroad Again (2007), along with several other series and films, the majority of which have been archived on the website MeadesShrine.[62][60][66]

Preferring to be thought of as a performer rather than as a presenter, Meades has described his style as "heavy entertainment"; "staged essays" which seek to combine "lecture hall" and "music hall", Geoffrey Hill and Benny Hill.[64][24][67]

The 1998 film Heart By-Pass looked affectionately at Birmingham; particularly at how its architecture, transport system and ethnic mix have changed since the 1960s. It featured the music of many of the city's best-known 1960s and 1970s rock bands such as The Moody Blues, The Move, Traffic, Black Sabbath and ELO.[68][62]

He made two films on the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. The first, in 1998, was the Worcestershire episode of the series Travels with Pevsner, in which noted writers followed his guide books on particular counties. The second, in 2001, was a biography entitled Pevsner Revisited.[62]

Meades made two films which aired earlier in 2001, Victoria Died in 1901 and is Still Alive Today examined the other-worldly legacy of Victorian architecture and culture a hundred years on, set to a soundtrack of late 1960s psychedelic rock by artists such as The Velvet Underground, The Kinks and Pink Floyd, while suRREAL FILM (or tvSSFBM EHKL, the letters of the title moved forwards then backwards) sought to expound on surrealism in a manner befitting the subject, and reflected on, inter alia, the fact that Meades had recently lost a considerable amount of weight. Both films featured the comic actor Christopher Biggins, notably as Queen Victoria and were the first of Meades' films to be directed by Francis Hanly, who would go on to be his main collaborator, directing and shooting virtually all of his films from 2008.[62][69][60]

A three-part series on food, Meades Eats, aired on BBC Four in 2003, again featuring Biggins and Hanly. The episodes dealt with fast food, the notion of a gastronomic revolution in the UK and with the ever-increasing influence of immigrant cuisines.[62]

The 2008 two-part BBC Four film Jonathan Meades: Magnetic North celebrated the culture of Northern Europe, examining why the North suffers in the British popular imagination in comparison with the South. Meades travelled from the slag heaps of northern France to Belgian cities, the red-light district of Hamburg, Gdańsk, the Baltic States and finally Helsinki, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places he visited. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, James Walton praised the programme as "Sparkling, thought-provoking, constantly challenging the accepted view, Meades seemed at times inspired, at others deranged. The only thing he never was, thank heaven, was obvious.".[70][6][62]

A 9-DVD box set collecting all of his BBC work to date was planned for release in April 2008, but was reduced to a 3-disc anthology due to the expense of licensing the music used in the programmes. Much of the carefully chosen popular music used in the original edits was replaced by library music, and the more music-dependent films such as Surreal Film, Victoria Died in 1901 and Heart By-Pass were not included.[71]

In 2009, Meades toured Scotland in a three-part BBC Four series entitled Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter. He visited Aberdeen, Lewis and Harris (the 'Isle of Rust') and the less-renowned footballing towns of south-west Fife, Clackmannanshire and Falkirk, guided by his foul-mouthed 'ScotNav'.[61][62]

In 2012, BBC Four screened Jonathan Meades on France, a series in which he explored his "second country". The first episode, Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia, focused on the Lorraine region, using a miscellany of words beginning with the letter V. The second episode, A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries, focused on Frenchness and its major traits. The series concluded with Just a Few Debts France Owes to America.[72][62]

The 2013 film The Joy of Essex examined that county's little-known history of utopian communities.[73][62]

A two-part series on Brutalist architecture, Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry, aired in 2014.[62][74][3][2]

In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Meades quoted his director, Francis Hanly, on how their production budgets had declined over the years: "We used to be a convoy, now we are a Smart car".[53] In a 2008 interview with The Independent, he indicated that the blame for this lay mostly with former BBC Two controller Jane Root.[75]

Jonathan Meades on Jargon aired on BBC Four in May 2018.[76][77] The BBC Four website described it as a "provocative television essay" which "dissects politics, the law, football commentary, business, the arts, tabloid-speak and management consultancy to show how jargon is used to cover up, confuse and generally keep us in the dark".[78] The Guardian described it as "blisteringly brutal, clever and hilarious", while The Times also declared Meades to be "on blistering form".[79][80]

Over a period of 25 years, Meades has written and presented four films on the architectural legacy of 20th-century European dictators, the latest of which, Franco Building with Jonathan Meades, looking at Franco's Spain, aired in August 2019.[81][5] The previous instalments were Jerry Building (Nazi Germany, 1994), Joe Building (Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, 2006) and Ben Building (Benito Mussolini's Italy, 2016).[62]

(See full filmography)

Photography

[edit]

Meades entered the world of photography with the 2013 collection Pidgin Snaps. Published by Unbound as a "boxette" of 100 postcards, it featured mostly abstract digital work.[82] It was followed in April 2016 by an exhibition entitled "Ape Forgets Medication: Treyfs and Artknacks" at the Londonewcastle Project in Shoreditch, London.[83][54] A second exhibition, "After Medication: Random Treyfs and Artknacks", was held in October 2017 at 108 Fine Art, Harrogate.[84]

Personal life

[edit]

Meades has been married three times and has four daughters from his first two marriages. In 1980 he married Sally Brown, director of the British Theatre Association, and the couple had twins. His second wife was Frances Bentley, managing editor of Vogue, whom he married in 1988. They had two daughters and divorced in 1997. In 2003 he married his girlfriend Colette Forder, a colleague from The Times.[40][1] In around 2007, the couple sold their penthouse flat on Tyers Gate, off Bermondsey Street, Southwark, where they had lived for 10 years, and moved to a converted mill near Bordeaux.[85][86] Discovering that they found country life boring, they then moved to Marseille in around 2011, where they live in Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation apartment block.[53][21][2]

During his time at RADA, he became friends with the painter Duggie Fields, whose flatmate was the former Pink Floyd singer, songwriter and guitarist Syd Barrett. He was also friendly with Aubrey "Po" Powell, co-founder of the graphic design company Hipgnosis, most famous for their Pink Floyd album covers. He has described himself as "a hanger-on to the hangers-on" around the band and has admitted to taking LSD three times, describing it as "the only remotely interesting drug".[29]

Meades was called "the best amateur chef in the world" by Marco Pierre White.[52][7] He taught himself to cook as a young man using Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961, 1970), by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child.[7]

He is a football fan and supports Southampton F.C.[54]

He has been a member of Soho's Groucho and Academy clubs.[1]

He won the first ever episode of the BBC's Celebrity Mastermind, broadcast in December 2002. His specialist subject was English Architecture, 1850–2002.[87]

In the autumn of 2016, he was rushed to hospital and underwent five hours of cardiac surgery. Earlier in the year he had suffered from pleurisy and an embolism.[53]

Bibliography

[edit]

Filmography

[edit]

All films written and presented by Jonathan Meades, except The Victorian House, credited to John Marshall.[60]

  • Saturday Review (1985–1987, BBC Two; contributor)
  • The Victorian House (1987, Channel 4; 6-part series)
  • Building Sights: Marsh Court (1988, BBC Two)
  • Abroad in Britain (1990, BBC Two; 6-part series)
  • Further Abroad (1994, BBC Two; 6-part series)
  • Jerry Building: Unholy Relics of the Third Reich (1994, BBC Two)
  • One Foot in the Past: Vanbrugh in Dorset (1995, BBC Two)
  • Without Walls: J'Accuse – Vegetarians (1995, Channel 4)
  • Even Further Abroad (1997, BBC Two; 6-part series)
  • Birmingham: Heart By-Pass (1998, BBC Two)
  • Travels with Pevsner: Worcestershire (1998, BBC Two)
  • Victoria Died in 1901 and is Still Alive Today (2001, BBC Two)
  • tvSSFBM EHKL: suRREAL FILM (2001, BBC Knowledge)
  • Pevsner Revisited (2001, BBC Knowledge)
  • Meades Eats (2003, BBC Four; 3-part series)
  • Abroad Again in Britain (2005, BBC Two; 6-part series)
  • Joe Building: The Stalin Memorial Lecture (2006, BBC Four)
  • Abroad Again (2007, BBC Two; 6-part series)
  • Jonathan Meades: Magnetic North (2008, BBC Four)
  • Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter (2009, BBC Four; 3-part series)
  • Jonathan Meades on France (2012, BBC Four; 3-part series)
  • Jonathan Meades: The Joy of Essex (2013, BBC Four)
  • Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry (2014, BBC Four)
  • Ben Building: Mussolini, Monuments, Modernism and Marble (2016, BBC Four)
  • Jonathan Meades on Jargon (2018, BBC Four)
  • Franco Building with Jonathan Meades (2019, BBC Four)

Discography

[edit]

DVD

[edit]

Vinyl

[edit]
  • Pedigree Mongrel (2015, Test Centre, vinyl LP with digital download; spoken word & soundscapes)[49][88]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Jonathan Meades

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is an English writer, essayist, journalist, broadcaster, and filmmaker distinguished for his acerbic analyses of , , and European cultural topography. Meades has authored novels such as Filthy English, Pompey, and The Fowler Family Business, alongside non-fiction collections including Museum Without Walls and the memoir An Encyclopaedia of Myself, which earned the Best Memoir award at the 2014 Spear's Book Awards and a shortlisting for the 2015 PEN/Ackerley Prize. He has contributed journalism to outlets like and , often deploying a contrarian wit to dissect prevailing orthodoxies in and . In television, Meades has written and presented over sixty documentaries for the and other networks, exploring themes from brutalist estates in Jerry Building: Unholy Relics to vernacular landscapes in Abroad in Britain and The Joy of Essex, establishing him as a preeminent commentator on overlooked built environments. His polemical style, marked by erudition and disdain for architectural pieties, has garnered acclaim for reviving interest in maligned modernisms while provoking debate over cultural preservation and innovation. Meades has received multiple Glenfiddich Food and Drink Awards for , underscoring his influence in culinary . His forthright defenses of culinary adaptation against charges of appropriation and critiques of institutional inertia, such as at the , reflect a commitment to empirical observation over ideological conformity.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Jonathan Turner Meades was born on 21 January 1947 in , , , as the only child of John William Meades and Margery Agnes Meades (née Hogg). His father, who had served in the wartime army before demobilization, worked as a sales representative for the biscuit company , a role that involved regular travel across and adjacent counties, exposing the young Meades to varied provincial landscapes. Meades' mother was a , contributing to a lower-middle-class household characterized by modest stability in the sedate postwar environs of . The family's roots lay in England's , with Meades' father originating from in and his paternal grandfather from Oldbury, an industrial town in the Black Country known for its heavy manufacturing heritage, which Meades later evoked in reflections on regional identity. This background provided indirect links to the disciplined routines of industrial labor and rural traditions, contrasting with the suburban domesticity of . His father's passion for chalkstream fly-fishing further shaped family outings, instilling an attentiveness to natural details amid everyday routines. Meades' pre-teen years unfolded in this unremarkable setting, marked by acute observation of domestic minutiae—such as stains on his mother's or in fishing streams—rather than overt , fostering an early sensibility for the absurdities embedded in ordinary life and . The household dynamics emphasized self-reliance, with his parents' professions promoting structure and verbal precision, though Meades later characterized his upbringing as devoid of dramatic conflict, prioritizing empirical engagement over emotional turmoil.

Formal Education and Early Influences

Meades received his early education at , a co-educational independent school in , where he studied until the age of 13. He then attended , a in , which he later characterized as a "dim, backward, muscular Christian boot camp" emphasizing physical rigor over intellectual stimulation, leaving him deeply unhappy during his time there. Following secondary school, Meades spent one year studying at the in from 1965 to 1966, an experience that exposed him to continental perspectives but did not lead to a degree. He subsequently enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in , training as an in the mid-to-late 1960s. However, upon completion, RADA principal advised him that his talents suited character roles better suited to middle age, effectively discouraging a professional career and prompting Meades to abandon formal drama pursuits. Throughout these institutional experiences, Meades developed a preference for autodidactic exploration over structured curricula, cultivating interests in , , and through independent reading and observation. He has attributed his worldview and fascination with urban environments—including their decay and unconventional —to this self-directed approach, which bypassed the limitations he perceived in traditional education. This early emphasis on personal inquiry, rather than rote institutional learning, foreshadowed his later critical independence, unburdened by deference to established norms.

Writing Career

Journalism and Criticism

Meades held the position of restaurant critic at from 1986 to 2001, producing weekly columns that emphasized direct sensory appraisal of ingredients, preparation, and execution over prevailing gastronomic ideologies or marketing hype. His reviews, characterized by acerbic wit and polymathic allusions, dissected dishes through empirical standards of flavor coherence and technical proficiency, often scorning faddish presentations that prioritized aesthetics or novelty at the expense of substantive quality. This approach, which influenced subsequent critics, rejected deference to chef reputations or cultural trends in favor of verifiable palatability and causal links between method and outcome. In architectural journalism for outlets including The Guardian and The Times, Meades championed heterogeneous styles like brutalism, arguing against the reductive uniformity of post-war modernism that he saw as eroding contextual specificity and material authenticity. A 2014 Guardian essay presented an A-Z catalog of brutalist exemplars, underscoring their capacity for sublime monumentality derived from concrete's inherent properties and structural necessity, rather than superficial ornamentation often dismissed by detractors. His pieces consistently applied first-principles scrutiny to built environments, tracing how design decisions—such as scale, texture, and site integration—affect perceptual and functional realities, while critiquing sanitized that severs ties to industrial precedents. Meades's essays in periodicals like the London Review of Books, , and extend this analytical rigor to broader cultural critiques, focusing on architecture's interplay with societal priorities. In a May 2024 LRB piece, "Higher Ordinariness: Poor ," he dissects the county's post-war housing and commercial builds, faulting their formulaic banality for alienating inhabitants from tangible historical continuities in and industrial forms. A June 2025 LRB essay, "Ranting Cassandras: Artists," examines displaced creators' adaptations, highlighting how institutional biases—such as mid-20th-century disdain for representational tied to authoritarian associations—distorted empirical assessments of . These deadline-driven contributions, distinct from compiled volumes, prioritize unvarnished causal analysis of cultural artifacts over narrative embellishment.

Non-Fiction Books and Essays

Meades has produced several collections of essays that dissect , urban environments, and cultural phenomena with a contrarian lens, often challenging orthodoxies in and societal norms. These works compile his journalistic output into thematic volumes, emphasizing empirical observation of built landscapes and their socio-economic underpinnings over abstract theory. His essays frequently employ case studies of specific locales to argue against sanitized and in favor of or industrial forms that reflect historical contingencies. A pivotal collection is Museum Without Walls (2012), comprising 54 essays and six television scripts that explore architecture's intersections with taste, politics, and absurdity. The volume critiques the erosion of distinctive urban fabrics through post-war redevelopment, using examples from Britain and to illustrate how functionalist dogmas led to homogenized spaces devoid of contextual adaptation. Meades defends overlooked structures, such as utilitarian industrial relics, positing their aesthetic value derives from material authenticity rather than imposed , a stance evidenced in his analyses of sites where preserved economic viability. In Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988–2020 (2021), a 992-page spanning three decades, Meades aggregates critiques of linguistic imprecision, provincial stagnation, and institutional pretensions in British . Essays target elite hypocrisies in and , attributing provincial decline to policy failures like over-reliance on that ignores infrastructural decay. He dissects causal chains in regional disparities, such as how without compensatory investment amplified social fragmentation, drawing on granular observations of locales to substantiate claims of systemic neglect. Earlier volumes like Architectural Expressions (2001) extend this scrutiny to expressive forms in , arguing that exaggerated symbolism often masks structural inadequacies, with historical precedents from interwar underscoring the pitfalls of stylistic excess amid economic strain. Across these works, Meades prioritizes verifiable material outcomes—such as longevity of buildings under real-world stresses—over subjective , revealing patterns of urban failure rooted in mismatched scales of ambition and execution.

Fiction and Experimental Works

Jonathan Meades debuted in fiction with Filthy English (1984), a collection of seven short stories depicting extreme human depravities including , , and bestiality, often set in seedy environments to underscore societal undercurrents of and . The work employs graphic, tasteless humor laced with poignancy, avoiding moralistic resolutions in favor of unflinching portrayals of folly. Meades' novels extend this bleak realism into longer forms. Pompey (1993) chronicles life in through scatological and bestial episodes, satirizing provincial decay and human animality without redemptive arcs. The Fowler Family Business (2002) follows a of undertakers entangled in criminality and eccentricity, blending with critiques of familial and institutional corruption. These narratives prioritize causal chains of self-inflicted ruin over plot contrivances, reflecting Meades' interest in unvarnished behavioral consequences. In Empty Wigs (February 2025), Meades delivers a sprawling, 1,008-page novel tracing twentieth-century atrocities via interconnected lineages involving , , and , centered on a neogothic estate of transgenic experiments. Published through by Unbound after two decades without new , the book maintains his contrarian lens on credulity and , using hallucinatory sequences to dissect persistent human savagery amid historical upheavals. Critics note its encyclopedic scope and linguistic innovation, positioning it as a culmination of Meades' experimental approach to narrative form for probing cultural pathologies.

Broadcasting and Film

Television Documentaries on Architecture

Jonathan Meades has produced numerous television documentaries on architecture since the 1980s, primarily for the and , totaling over 40 films exploring built environments, urban policy failures, and stylistic defenses. These works often employ on-location filming to provide visual evidence of causal relationships between architectural decisions, governmental policies, and resulting societal conditions, such as from misguided post-war . His approach integrates empirical observation—capturing derelict structures and everyday buildings—with pointed narration critiquing sanitized heritage preservation that erodes authentic regional character. Key series include Abroad in Britain (BBC, early 1990s), which examined provincial English architecture through thematic episodes like "In Search of Bohemia: Artists' Architecture" (1991), highlighting overlooked vernacular forms against homogenized tourist narratives. Meades' films frequently target post-war urbanism's shortcomings, as in Heart Bypass: Birmingham (BBC, 1998), where footage of concrete overpasses and failed ring roads illustrates how 1960s planning policies exacerbated social fragmentation and economic stagnation in industrial cities. Similarly, Abroad Again (BBC, 2007) critiqued contemporary regeneration schemes in the episode "On the Brandwagon: The Regeneration Racket," using site-specific visuals to demonstrate how corporate-driven urban renewal displaces functional communities without addressing underlying infrastructural decay. A notable subset addresses dictators' architectural legacies, forming a quartet spanning 25 years: Jerry-Building: Unholy Relics of (Channel 4, 1994), which tours surviving Nazi-era structures like holiday camps to reveal their enduring, un-erased influence on ; Joe-Building: The Stalin Heritage Trail (Channel 4, 2006), tracing Soviet monumentalism's oppressive scale; and Mass Tourism: The Architecture of Franco’s (Channel 4, 2019), analyzing Francoist tourism infrastructure's blend of authoritarian control and mass appeal. These documentaries prioritize architectural remnants as evidence of policy-driven , filmed to underscore their material persistence amid political shifts. Meades' defense of Brutalist architecture culminated in Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry (BBC Four, 2014), a two-part series arguing for the style's bold materiality as a counter to timid heritage revivalism, with episodes drawing on global examples like Le Corbusier's works to link concrete's "bloodymindedness" to honest expression of post-war necessities. Through such films, visual rhetoric—elevated over scripted monologue—exposes how design choices causally perpetuate or mitigate societal ills, from brutalist resilience against decay to the folly of iconoclastic demolitions.

Other Television and Media Appearances

Meades presented the series Meades Eats in 2003, comprising three episodes that explored British food culture through a contrarian lens. The opening installment, "," aired on 24 February and critiqued junk and convenience foods alongside associated health risks. Subsequent episodes, "An A-Z of the Gastronomic " on 3 March and "Whose Food?," examined the evolution of via immigrant influences and cultural borrowings. These broadcasts extended his print-based gastronomic expertise into visual media, emphasizing empirical observations of dietary shifts over ideological endorsements. In 1995, Meades delivered J'Accuse: Vegetarians, a pointed challenging vegetarianism's premises, aligning with his broader skepticism toward dietary dogmas. Travel-oriented programs included Off Kilter (2009, ), a three-part series offering an outsider's perspective on , covering Aberdeen's heritage, industrial decay on islands like , and obscure towns linked to betting. Similarly, Magnetic North (2008) traced a route from to Germany's Baltic coast, blending cultural and historical commentary. These works prioritized anecdotal and observational over prescriptive narratives. Meades' 2018 BBC Four essay Jonathan Meades on Jargon dissected obfuscatory language across , , , and , portraying it as a tool for evasion rather than clarity. He contrasted with slang's vitality, arguing the former serves institutional deception. Post-2010 television output remained sparse, with Meades increasingly favoring print amid his expressed disdain for broadcasting's superficial trends and presenter-driven formats. Ancillary media extended his style: the Jonathan Meades Collection DVD (2008) compiled select films from 1990 onward, preserving his performative persona for home viewing. Additionally, the 2015 vinyl LP Pedigree Mongrel, issued by Test Centre, featured Meades reading excerpts from his novels , essays in Museum Without Walls, and memoir An Encyclopaedia of Myself, functioning as an audio niche product. These releases catered to dedicated audiences, bypassing television's constraints.

Broadcasting Style and Critical Reception

Meades' broadcasting style is characterized by a delivery, wit, and verbose narration that eschews simplification in favor of dense, allusive commentary. His presentations often feature provocative assertions and a rejection of orthodox cultural narratives, prioritizing intellectual provocation over audience accessibility. This approach, marked by opinionated revisionism, contrasts sharply with conventional BBC-style , emphasizing instead a pursuit of unvarnished observation. Critical reception has lauded Meades for his intellectual rigor and linguistic flair, with commentators drawing parallels to the architectural critic , whose television work Meades has introduced and championed for its unflinching visual and verbal acuity. Peers and reviewers praise his programs as intelligently crafted essays that enrich public engagement with and , positioning him as a rare antithesis to sanitized media output. However, detractors have faulted the style as elitist and condescending, with some viewing his hectoring tone as oppressive and his wordiness as alienating to broader audiences beyond specialist circles. This perceived inaccessibility underscores a divide, where his refusal to pander elevates discourse but limits mass appeal. Meades' work has influenced architectural and cultural debates, frequently cited in discussions of brutalism, , and critical , thereby sustaining Nairn-esque scrutiny of built environments amid postwar developments. His broadcasts contribute to a of contrarian analysis that challenges prevailing narratives, evidenced by their role in prompting reevaluations of overlooked or reviled structures, though quantifiable viewer metrics remain niche-oriented rather than mainstream.

Other Contributions

Photography and Visual Arts

Meades has engaged in primarily as a means of documenting vernacular and industrial landscapes that inform his architectural critiques, rather than as a pursuit of . His publication Pidgin Snaps, issued as a "boxette" of 100 postcards by Unbound, compiles photographs of banal built environments—including motorways, caravan parks, new towns, and hyperbolic paraboloid roofs—often captured by an obsessive eye for overlooked details, such as those encountered in car washes. These images, paired with sardonic captions, echo the work of anonymous mid-20th-century photographers who recorded suburban sprawl and infrastructural expansion, serving as empirical adjuncts to Meades's essays and explorations of and brutalist relics. This photographic output, though limited in volume compared to his prose and broadcasting, prioritizes factual recording over interpretive stylization, providing static visual evidence that complements the dynamic footage in his documentaries on postwar architecture. Meades's approach underscores a commitment to capturing the unvarnished materiality of structures dismissed as eyesores, thereby challenging prevailing tastes through unadorned documentation rather than composition for effect. In beyond , Meades has produced paintings and works on paper, exhibited in solo shows such as Ape Forgets Medication at Londonewcastle Project Space in in 2016, featuring abstract expressionist-style canvases executed with a deliberate avoidance of messiness. Subsequent exhibitions, including After Medication: Random Treyfs and Artknacks at 108 , display pieces ranging from restraint to garish excess, available for sale via his official channels. These endeavors, like his , function as extensions of critical into form and cultural detritus, though they remain secondary to his textual and televisual output.

Gastronomic and Travel Writing

Meades served as restaurant critic for from 1985 to 2001, producing weekly columns that emphasized empirical sensory evaluation over hype, often dissecting the causal links between ingredients, preparation techniques, and resulting flavors while dismissing pretentious innovations. His reviews filleted establishments for inconsistencies in execution, such as over-reliance on fashionable imports that failed to integrate with local traditions, prioritizing verifiable taste profiles derived from historical culinary practices rather than marketing narratives. In Incest and Morris Dancing (2002), a compilation of these columns alongside critiques, Meades applied similar scrutiny to provincial British dining, highlighting regional specialties like dishes—rooted in industrial-era necessities such as offal-based stews and baked goods adapted from scarce resources—while lambasting metropolitan snobbery that dismissed them as unrefined. He argued that such fare exemplified adaptive innovation, where flavor authenticity stemmed from material constraints and empirical , not ideological purity, countering trends that elevated "fusion" experiments lacking substantive grounding. Meades's 2017 book The Plagiarist in the Kitchen extended this approach to home cooking, compiling "stolen" recipes from French, Italian, and North African sources without originality claims, underscoring that culinary excellence arises from pragmatic borrowing and refinement of proven methods rather than ethical constraints or novelty for its own sake. The work critiqued fads like herb-heavy "twists" on classics and home baking obsessions, favoring dishes where causal chains—from raw material to final texture—yielded reliable sensory outcomes, as seen in his endorsements of straightforward techniques like slow-cooked meats that preserve intrinsic qualities. In travel-oriented gastronomic writing, Meades focused on , his adopted home since 2006, through essays and the 2012 BBC series Jonathan Meades on , which examined overlooked regions like for their un-touristed , debunking romanticized myths in favor of empirical observations of local and wine production tied to geographic and historical realities. He contrasted this with British provincialism, critiquing tourism's distortion of places like the by highlighting their substantive culinary heritage—forged in soot-blackened forges and furnaces—against sanitized narratives that ignored flavor evolution from labor-intensive origins. In April 2021, Meades defended culinary "cultural appropriation" in commentary for , asserting that chefs should freely adapt foreign dishes without ideological backlash, as innovation historically depends on cross-pollination unhindered by origin-policing, which stifles empirical progress in flavor development. He dismissed such criticisms as frivolous barriers to causal realism in , where effective results trace to practical synthesis rather than provenance ethics, citing examples like British adaptations of Indian techniques as evidence of adaptive strength.

Intellectual Positions

Views on Architecture and Urban Planning

Meades has consistently advocated for Brutalism as an architecture of uncompromised honesty and functionality, designed to meet societal needs such as housing with integrated amenities and , which were empirically welcomed by occupants upon completion. He rejects characterizations of Brutalist structures as mere "concrete monstrosities," attributing such dismissals to critics lacking perceptual acuity, and instead emphasizes their capacity for sublimity and awe-inspiring form, akin to geological masses rather than superficial representations thereof. In his view, Brutalism's bloodyminded pursuit of purpose over aesthetic pandering distinguishes it from insipid alternatives, embodying a causal realism where form derives directly from material exigencies and programmatic demands rather than ideological ornamentation. Central to Meades' is the of "higher ordinariness," which he posits as a in that prioritizes unpretentious, workmanlike construction over contrived exceptionalism, as exemplified by the massed neo-Tudor semis and diluted neo-Georgian forms that have defined much of Surrey's since the . Yet he critiques the unchecked sprawl of such development post-1918, which transformed Surrey into a homogenized suburbia through prolific, low-effort replication—"visited on the county by the thousand"—resulting in a "gruesome" proliferation that erodes contextual variety without advancing functional innovation. This preference for empirical ordinariness stems from a first-principles assessment: buildings succeed when they serve prosaic human needs without the delusion of utopian grandeur, fostering environments of tolerable familiarity rather than enforced novelty. Meades rejects the sanitization of heritage, which he sees as a impulse that stifles architectural evolution by privileging stylistic over adaptive utility, as evidenced by England's historically tardy protections for post-1714 structures compared to . He illustrates this with interwar English "thefts" from Viennese social housing models in cities like and , where unadapted imports failed to engender authentic urban vitality, yielding instead derivative forms disconnected from local material and social realities. Such critiques underscore his broader empirical stance against heritage-driven , like "holyhocked cottages and winking dormers," which he derides as timid evasions of modernity's imperatives. Empirically, Meades favors buildings that evoke a nation's inherent character—its traditions, climatic demands, and cultural tolerances—over the globalized blandness of interchangeable, context-agnostic designs that homogenize urban landscapes. He argues that must integrate with the "totality" of environmental and social forces, warning that isolating it from these causal determinants leads to irresponsible outcomes, such as the sterile of interventions that ignore precedents. This position aligns with his defense of Brutalist and ordinary forms as grounded responses to specific locales, contrasting them with the vapid that dilutes distinctiveness in favor of superficial appeal.

Political and Social Commentary

Meades' political commentary often adopts a stance, prioritizing empirical threats over ideologically amplified narratives. In a February 2025 Telegraph interview, he downplayed the risks posed by the far right in Britain, describing them as "very minor compared with that of ," while noting the country's heightened sensitivity to relative to other nations. He attributed this disparity to persistent media and institutional focus, arguing that actual dangers warrant a more balanced assessment grounded in observable patterns rather than precautionary exaggeration. Meades has critiqued contemporary governance figures and policies for their detachment from practical realities. During the same interview, he characterized as exhibiting a peculiar "strangeness," linking it to broader failures in areas like policing, which he deemed inadequately responsive to urban disorder and enforcement needs. His essays further challenge elite condescension toward Britain's industrial heartlands, such as Birmingham, which he portrays as repositories of functional ingenuity and economic vitality, rejecting class-inflected narratives that frame them as relics of exploitation in favor of their tangible contributions to national productivity and innovation. In explorations of authoritarian regimes, Meades counters simplistic leftist depictions by emphasizing fiscal restraint and personal austerity among certain dictators. Reviewing Tom Gallagher's biography of Portugal's , he highlighted the leader's "frugal oddball" character, who maintained power through parsimony rather than ostentatious excess, underscoring how such traits enabled prolonged stability amid resource scarcity. This perspective extends to his satirical post-Brexit envisioning in a 2019 Guardian piece, where he depicted a fractured Britain marked by militias and , implicitly critiquing sovereignty absolutism while exposing vulnerabilities in both Euroskeptic and integrationist assumptions.

Atheism, Humanism, and Cultural Critique

Meades has described himself as a "cardinal of ," reflecting his staunch rejection of religious in favor of rational . He serves as a patron of , an organization promoting grounded in evidence and human reason rather than beliefs. Additionally, he holds honorary associate status with the , which advocates for the separation of from state affairs and the prioritization of empirical standards over faith-based claims. These affiliations underscore his commitment to as a framework that derives moral and cultural values from observable human experience, eschewing what he terms "credulous irrationality." In his essays, Meades directs pointed criticism toward Catholicism, portraying the Vatican as an institution emblematic of "irreason"—a deliberate of unreason perpetuated through doctrinal . He argues that such belief systems foster intellectual submission, contrasting sharply with 's insistence on verifiable evidence and over mystical assertions. This disdain extends to broader religious architectures of thought, where he privileges first-hand empirical scrutiny, as seen in his dismissal of faith-driven narratives that evade rational dissection. Meades' thus positions human agency and sensory data as sufficient for cultural and ethical navigation, without recourse to transcendent justifications. Meades' cultural critiques further illustrate this empirical bent, targeting sentimental myths that obscure factual assessment. In a 2025 London Review of Books essay, he dismantles idealized portrayals of artists, likening historical public skepticism toward them to viewing interwar émigrés as "ranting Cassandras" prophesying unsubstantiated doom, and urges a evidence-based reevaluation over emotive . Such interventions reject in cultural , favoring causal realism—wherein outcomes trace to tangible antecedents—over narratives propped by unexamined piety or collective guilt. By excoriating these credulities, Meades advocates a humanist lens that demands proof over , ensuring cultural judgments align with demonstrable realities rather than ideological vapors.

Controversies and Criticisms

Accusations of Cultural Insensitivity and

In a 2024 Medium article, writer Leigh Jones accused Jonathan Meades of embodying "the voice of the oppressor" in his commentary on Welsh culture, particularly citing his 2022 piece in where he described the as "moribund" and criticized the Welsh government's target of one million speakers by 2050 as "authoritarian." Jones argued that Meades' use of the anglicized spelling "" for the Welsh town demonstrated cultural dismissiveness, and extended an analogy from Meades' reference to as ""—a —to imply a colonial imposition threatening minority identities akin to Flemish or Welsh ones. Jones further claimed Meades exhibited insensitivity by characterizing BAME individuals learning Welsh as "burdened with a double handicap," interpreting this as a sinister undervaluation of multicultural efforts within Welsh identity, positioning Meades—an outsider without personal stake in Wales—as perpetuating oppressive external judgments. Critics have also labeled Meades' contrarian stances on and as elitist, presuming his rejection of popular trends dismisses voices from working-class or less affluent perspectives; for instance, a 2012 review presumed him an "elitist" for his analytical style in television series like Jonathan Meades on , viewing it as detached from broader . In architecture, son of architect Terry Farrell, Max Farrell, critiqued Meades' 2025 Telegraph obituary of as delivering "barbs without balance," framing it within ongoing " in architecture" that prioritizes critical disdain over inclusive appreciation. Meades' 2021 defense of cultural appropriation in —arguing that "without cultural appropriation there is only stagnation" and chefs like need not fear accusations from "guardians of authenticity"—drew ire for allegedly enabling exploitation of marginalized culinary traditions by ignoring authenticity concerns tied to cultural origins. Critics contended this stance overlooked power imbalances, potentially silencing voices from source cultures in globalized .

Debates on Political Narratives and Threats

In a February 2025 interview, Jonathan Meades described the threat posed by the far right in Britain as "very minor compared with that of Islam," arguing that media and political emphasis on far-right extremism overlooks more pressing risks such as Islamism and failures in addressing grooming gangs due to institutional reluctance to appear biased. He contrasted this with France's firmer stance on such issues, critiquing Britain's "fair play" ethos for impeding decisive action against extreme Islamic views, which he noted lack the social stigma attached to figures like Tommy Robinson. Meades supported his position with empirical observations of policing disparities, such as hesitation over northern grooming scandals, positioning his view as a corrective to narratives prioritizing far-right reactions over underlying causal factors like unchecked ideological extremism. Meades extended similar skepticism to French political dynamics, lambasting the "farcically corrupt and properly despised classe politico-médiatique" for perpetuating belief-driven governance over pragmatic policy, particularly under . In essays on Macron-era France, he highlighted the president's insider status as an énarque and former banker, despite outward posturing as an outsider via En Marche!, and accused the elite of systemic peculation exemplified by François Fillon's long-term embezzlement of public funds, as exposed by . Meades contended that such corruption fosters narratives detached from everyday realities, like Macron's "grandiloquent shows of duty" and mysticism-lite appeals, which alienate working-class groups while prioritizing elite self-preservation. These positions have drawn criticism from progressive commentators for embodying contrarianism that sidelines orthodox concerns, with outlets like labeling Meades' as a disregard for prevailing left-leaning consensus on threats like rising . Meades has acknowledged frequent for perceived offensiveness, including in his Empty Wigs (2025), where satirical depictions of Islam-inspired elements amplified debates over his prioritization of underrepresented risks over media-amplified far-right perils. Such backlash underscores tensions between his empirical comparisons—favoring data on tangible harms like ideological —and narratives emphasizing symbolic or ideological threats aligned with progressive priorities.

Responses and Self-Defense

Meades has rebutted accusations of embodying an oppressor's voice by upholding his contrarian approach as a form of deliberate provocation designed to cut through ideological fog and foster clearer debate, rather than endorsing simplistic binaries of power dynamics. This aligns with his broader rejection of performative moralism, as seen in his defense of culinary cultural appropriation against charges of insensitivity, arguing that such adaptations enrich rather than exploit traditions. In addressing professional disillusionment within architectural criticism, Meades, in a July 2022 essay for , reflected on predecessor 's downfall as stemming from caring "too much" about the betrayal of architectural promises—expectations of renewal dashed by shoddy execution and sprawl—yet positioned his own persistence as a counter to such burnout, emphasizing detachment without abandoning . This assertion underscores Meades' self-reliant commitment to critiquing systemic failures in the field, refusing the retreat into apathy that afflicted Nairn amid unfulfilled visions of an "Elizabethan age" in rebuilding. Meades reinforces these positions without concession in recent writings, such as his May 2025 Spectator essay, which dismantles as a veneer of frivolity masking interwar delusions and prelude to catastrophe, challenging nostalgic revivals and conventional acclaim for the style's supposed totality. Through such unyielding output, he exemplifies consistency, prioritizing empirical of aesthetic and historical claims over of detractors.

Personal Life and Later Years

Family, Residences, and Health

Meades has been married three times. His first marriage produced twin daughters, and . He wed his second wife, Frances Anne Bentley, on , 1988, with whom he had two daughters, including Lily. His third marriage is to Colette Forder, a former . Meades maintains a low profile regarding family matters, consistent with his broader aversion to personal disclosures that might eclipse his professional output. In the early 2000s, Meades relocated from to rural southwest , initially to a mill house in the region near , drawn by the area's cultural depth and divergence from British norms. By the early , he shifted to an apartment in Le Corbusier's (Cité Radieuse) in , citing affinity for the structure's uncompromising and the city's unpolished vitality over more conventional locales. This move underscored his preference for environments fostering intellectual detachment from celebrity culture, with family ties remaining anchored in the UK. In autumn 2016, Meades underwent five hours of following hospitalization for and related complications, crediting France's healthcare system for his survival and contrasting it with perceived deficiencies in the UK's NHS. A minor heart attack followed in late November 2017. These events prompted a pragmatic reassessment of mortality, subtly shaping his subsequent writings on resilience without overt , while reinforcing his commitment to over public introspection.

Recent Publications and Activities

In 2025, Meades published his Empty Wigs, a sprawling, hallucinatory spanning the twentieth century, characterized by its savage, labyrinthine exploration of human brutality and cosmic forces, published by Unbound. The book, comprising over 1,000 pages, drew reviews highlighting its linguistic innovation and unflinching depiction of animalistic impulses, with critics noting its departure from conventional plotting toward a "foul rag-and-bone shop" of visceral vignettes. Meades promoted the work through interviews and a appearance in May 2025, discussing its thematic emphasis on purpose-driven tragedy amid historical chaos. Meades continued his essay contributions to the London Review of Books, including "Higher Ordinariness: Poor " on 23 May 2024, critiquing the county's architectural banalities and suburban sprawl, and "Ranting Cassandras: Artists" on 26 June 2025, examining painters' strident and avoidance of . These pieces reflect his ongoing scrutiny of cultural and built environments from his base in , , where he has resided since the early 2000s. In periodicals such as , Meades penned articles in 2025, including a 10 May piece on ’s misapplied frivolity and veneer, maintaining his acerbic commentary on and . He also contributed to , with a of his own Empty Wigs appearing on 24 February 2025, underscoring themes of brutality and human animality. Additional writings included a 18 February 2025 essay on spending in and an 12 August 2025 piece on ’s trickster persona. This print-focused output aligns with Meades's pivot from , citing the medium's creative decline, toward sustained literary critique of contemporary Britain.

Legacy and Influence

Meades' critiques of and architectural blandness extended the tradition established by , whose concept of "subtopia"—the homogenization of landscapes through unchecked development—resonated in Meades' advocacy for and eclectic built environments over sanitized . This continuity has influenced subsequent critics, including Owen Hatherley, who credits Meades with contributing to the reevaluation of and its separation from flawed , as seen in Meades' television work like Remember the Future (1995). Hatherley, a younger commentator on cities and , has engaged Meades in dialogue, highlighting his role in bridging journalism with polemical urban analysis, thereby sustaining discourse on empirical observation of place against abstract ideological impositions. His unyielding style—marked by erudite lists, irony, and rejection of fashionable consensus—earned recognition for prioritizing substantive critique over accessibility, fostering a niche but dedicated following among under-40 critics who value its muscular prose against prevailing "coolness" in media. Yet this approach drew charges of , with detractors viewing his disdain for trend-driven narratives as alienating to broader audiences, limiting dissemination beyond literary outlets like the London Review of Books. Proponents counter that such contrarianism exemplifies integrity, challenging dogmatic views on authenticity and progress—such as equating "real" with superior quality—thus defending causal realism in cultural assessment over sanitized, consensus-bound interpretations. Overall, Meades' legacy lies in bolstering a lineage of architectural advocacy that privileges direct engagement with the built environment's empirical realities, influencing polemical writing that contests normalized urban orthodoxies without concession to mass appeal. While his polarizing tone may constrain wider emulation, it underscores a commitment to undiluted observation, evident in sustained contributions to journals and broadcasts that prioritize evidence over ideological conformity.

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  70. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/06/jonathan-meades-postcards-snaps-book
  71. https://medium.com/the-signifier/treyfs-and-artknacks-f2e96026de24?sk=ec307330f2c61334602269e65074bc90
  72. https://www.jonathanmeades.co.uk/artwork
  73. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/10/jonathan-meades-on-my-radar-vladimir-nabokov-marty-feldman-thomas-hardy
  74. https://108fineart.com/artists/jonathan-meades/
  75. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1303691.Incest_and_Morris_Dancing
  76. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jun/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview13
  77. https://forums.egullet.org/topic/63587-jonathan-meades-on-british-food/
  78. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/the-plagiarist-in-the-kitchen-by-jonathan-meades-review
  79. https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/the-plagiarist-in-the-kitchen-a-lifetimes-culinary-thefts-by-jonathan-meades/
  80. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019m5yy
  81. https://www.theoldie.co.uk/article/jonathan-meades-the-joys-of-birmingham
  82. https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/food-critic-jonathan-meades-launches-defence-of-cultural-appropriation-000vdzxbj
  83. https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/indian-dish-curry-complicated-diversity-cultural-appropriation-vf86mh9bd
  84. https://muckrack.com/jonathan-meades/articles
  85. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/j/jk-jo/jonathan-meades/
  86. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/apr/10/militias-chaos-starvation-britain-10-years-after-brexit-jonathan-meades
  87. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/spectacular-invective-jonathan-meades-lets-rip-about-boris-and-brexit/
  88. https://humanists.uk/about/our-people/patrons/
  89. https://thelondonmagazine.org/review-an-a-z-of-jonathan-meades-by-daniel-janes/
  90. https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/february-2022/tacsi-for-a-moribund-language/
  91. https://spikemagazine.com/30-rock-and-jonathan-meades-on-france/
  92. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/elitism-architecture-alive-well-max-farrell-pahfe
  93. https://mallikabasu.substack.com/p/whatisculturalappropriation
  94. https://literaryreview.co.uk/man-of-les-people
  95. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/nazis-killer-dogs-and-weird-sex-empty-wigs-by-jonathan-meades-reviewed/
  96. https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/the-critic-who-cared-too-much-jonathan-meades
  97. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/art-deco-gave-veneer-and-frivolity-a-bad-name/
  98. https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/changing-times-for-jonathan-meades-6319084.html
  99. https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/art-de-vivre-that-freed-meades/477049
  100. https://www.completefrance.com/travel/holidays/an-interview-with-jonathan-meades-6253406/
  101. https://thequietus.com/interviews/bakers-dozen/jonathan-meades-favourite-classical-music/
  102. https://www.amazon.com/Empty-Wigs-Jonathan-Meades/dp/1800183240
  103. https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/very-grand-guignol-book-review-of-empty-wigs-by-jonathan-meades-roger-lewis
  104. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/beyondzero/episodes/Jonathan-Meades---EMPTY-WIGS-e32ne88
  105. https://www.ft.com/stream/c14926f9-e50c-4a34-8c63-99c3fbb369ea
  106. https://unherd.com/2025/08/vladimir-nabokov-teasing-trickster/
  107. https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/jonathan-meades
  108. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/03/ian-nairn-architecture-critic-against-sprawl-biography
  109. https://thequietus.com/culture/books/jonathan-meades-pedro-and-ricky-come-again-owen-hatherley-interview/
  110. https://capx.co/the-magnificent-elitism-of-jonathan-meades
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