John Lanchester on Enough

Sunday 12 December 2010, Conway Hall, London

Enough is enough. Like the morning after the Christmas-do the night before, it’s all too clear that free market capitalism’s victory party is over; we’re seriously in debt and it's time to pay the bill.

It doesn’t bode well for a season typically associated with the joys of excess.

But novelist-turned-economist, John Lanchester,  takes to our pulpit to tell us to slow down, calm down and realise when we’ve had enough.

We’ve lived through a golden economic age. We’ll never have it so good again. But since the ‘hedonistic treadmill’ only ever delivered a receding vision of contentment, is it really such a bad thing?

As one year comes to and end and another begins, we need to start thinking about when we do have sufficient – sufficient money, sufficient stuff – and whether we really need the things we think we do.

John Lanchester is a novelist, journalist and winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the E.M Forster Award, among other prizes.  His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.  He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker and has a monthly column in Esquire.