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Jonathan Meades Biography

Jonathan Meades

Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is an English writer and film-maker, primarily on the subjects of place, culture, architecture and food. His work has spanned journalism, fiction, essays, memoir, photography, recipes and over 50 highly idiosyncratic television films and has been described as "brainy, scabrous, mischievous," "iconoclastic" and possessed of "a polymathic breadth of knowledge and truly caustic wit".

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Jonathan Meades Quotes

I think in space or music or art or literature of any kind there has to be some kind of void where the viewer or the spectator or the listener or the reader can insert themselves into it, and there is a certain kind of architectural space which is totalitarian, which does not allow you to do that.

Art, Kind, Literature, Reader, Space, Thinking

I think the French agonise more about being French, I don't think English think about being English that much. I think the Scottish think about being Scottish and the Welsh think about being Welsh, but the English don't really care. But the French think about it all the time, it's an absolute preoccupation.

Absolute, Care, Scottish, Thinking, Welsh

Conversion requires a subtler mind. Architects don't like it, architects want to create their own landmark buildings so that people a few years hence will say, 'Oh, that building there is being knocked down, who did that one?'

Create, Mind, People, Requires, Say, Years

In creating a building, architects do think they're making the world a better place. And then they hope to make the world an even better place by making another thing which will be even bigger than the last thing. . . and it is part of the pathology of being an architect to believe thus, and they do believe it, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Believe, Building, Creating, Evidence, Place, Thinking

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents' house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey.

Child, Children, Grandparent, Liked, Partly, Past

I think the only remotely interesting drug was acid. I had a slightly peculiar attitude towards it I think. Just about everything about hippydom I hated.

Attitude, Drug, Interesting, Slightly, Thinking

I'm a very, very unreckless person. I mean, I look left, I look right, I look left, I look right, then I repeat the process and then I decide not to cross the road at the last minute.

Lasts, Looks, Mean, Person, Process, Right

I like looking at the countryside as well as anyone. . . a little countryside goes a long way, but it's almost like the DNA of a civilisation is in its cities.

Cities, Civilisation, Dna, Long, Looking

For the most part, French cities are much better preserved and looked after than British cities, because the bourgeoisie, the people who run the cities, have always lived centrally, which has only recently begun to happen in big cities in England. Traditionally in England, people who had any money would live out in the suburbs. Now, increasingly, people with money live in the cities, but this has changed only in the last 20 or so years.

Changed, Money, Part, People, Running, Years

I don't believe in synergy. I believe that things have to be specific to the medium that they're in.

Believe, Medium, Mediums, Synergy, Things

You always have to find something to say about the subject and in seven cases out of ten there is nothing to say.

Cases, Seven, Subjects, Ten

If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it you are deemed fit to govern the country.

Believe, Bottom, Country, Existence, Garden, Parthenogenesis

If you have slightly pathological interest in all the components of places, it forces you to engage with them in a way that perhaps otherwise you wouldn't, and that's the only way I can put it.

Components, Force, Forces, Interest, Places, Way

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money.

Construction Industry, Industry, Likes, Make, Onto, Way

Brummies run themselves down, they're very self-deprecating. Whereas Yorkshire people certainly aren't.

Down, People, Running, Self, Yorkshire

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

Character, Characters, Fiction, Incidents, Realise, Writing

I genuinely find it difficult to think of places that I'd never want to see again. It might be because part of my career has been concerned with writing about topography.

Careers, Difficult, Thinking, Topography, Writing

I don't think things necessarily should have a meaning. If stuff has a meaning then why do [writing] about it? If you're trying to say, 'Tall buildings are great' why not just leave it at that: "Tall buildings are great. "

Leave, Meaning, Should Have, Thinking, Writing

I don't like the theatre. I like plays in which the audience is addressed by the actors. I don't like seeing people talking to each other on stage as if there isn't an audience.

Talking, Play, People, Theatre, Plays

I think that cheap music often does make you dream more than more serious music, whether that's serious music by Beethoven or Miles Davis or Pink Floyd. . . if the Floyd ever did serious music, which I seriously doubt.

Doubt, Dream, Miles, Pink, Think, Thinking

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