In Jonathan Meades’s Pompey (1993), a fictional version of 486, Fratton Road is the final home of Bonny Vallender, one of the central characters of this disturbing and bleakly hilarious novel of post-war civilisation. Bonny’s catastrophic decline from spoilt prima donna child to heroin addict and moral bankrupt is one of many narratives of broken, chaotic lives in Pompey. The modern flats now occupying 486, Fratton Road bear no resemblance to the terraced house of the novel, ‘the gabled slum where Bonny went to live after the man from Chasnev Properties Ltd came round the sixth time, demanding the three months back rent, walking through it like it was his (which it was, strictly), mentioning the bailiffs, the dogs, the lengths that have been gone to by other landlords, the illegitimate methods which Chasnev Properties Ltd would never have recourse to […] The privet’s buntinged with polythene shreds. The garden’s carpeted with soggy carpet; there are lino fins, ashes, rusting dustbins, a prame axle, ripped tights, a television’s innards, dolls’ clothes. The garden’s a prologue to the house. And the house is an anthology of hardluck stories’ (1993 ed., p. 444)

Meades informed me that he hardly knew Portsmouth when he started the book, having visited on only two occasions – once, at the age of 12 to see HMS Victory and the forts on Portsdown Hill and once, aged 18, to witness the finished but yet unoccupied monument to Brutalist architecture, the Tricorn Centre. He recalled that the three research visits he made while writing the novel were disappointments because the actual city did not accord with his invention,. As a result, he stuck with his invention in a bleak and vivid portrayal of the city that owes much to Meades’s brilliance as a diagnoser of post-war ills and perhaps a little something to his status as a fan of Southampton FC. Despite Meades’s disappointment that the city did not match up to his vision, he was impressed by the number of street fights, drunks, and naval problem families he encountered.

Quoted with the kind permission of the author.

Jonathan Meades (b. 21 Jan 1947) is a polymathic writer, broadcaster, architectural critics, amateur chef, and one of the finest minds of his generation. He has authored three works of fiction, several collections, a cookbook, and an autobiography, and writes widely on food and architecture. He has produced and written many TV shows, predominately on architectural subjects but expressing Meades’s political and cultural views in his trademark scabrous style, combining caustic wit, erudition, and social commitment.

Meades was born in Salisbury, and educated at Salisbury Cathedral School. His parents John and Agnes were a sales rep and a primary school teacher. A teenage passion for architecture was prompted by accompanying his father on work trips and by a school visit to Edwin Lutyens Marsh Court. After a mixed experience of schools, Meades spent one year at the University of Bordeaux before enrolling at RADA. While ultimately deciding against an acting career, Meades experience of RADA probably informed his sophisticated broadcasting performances.

Building a journalistic career from the 1970s onwards, Meades has been an editor, TV critic, food writer, and restaurant critic. Meades took the latter role very seriously, and won Best Food Journalist at the Glenfiddich Awards four times between 1986 and 1999. Nonetheless, he ultimately gave up the role because of its repetitive nature and its effects on his health, but he remains passionate about food, and has been described by Marco Pierre White as ‘the best amateur chef in the world’. Over the years Meades has worked for Architect’s Journal, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, The Observer, The Spectator, Tatler Time Out, The Times, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Meades’s journalistic reputation spurred his wider writing career, leading to the publication of Filthy English (1984), short stories of dysfunctional English rural life, and the essay anthology, Peter Knows What Dick Likes (1989). His 1993 novel, Pompey has Portsmouth at the centre of a visceral and bleakly hilarious exploration of the ills of post-war civilisation that roams across the globe, taking in Salisbury, Belgium, France, and the Belgian Congo as especially important locations. Equally dark, Meades’s second novel, The Fowler Family Business (2002), centres on the funeral industry. His An Encyclopaedia of Myself (2014) won the Best Memoir category at the Spear Book Awards. A sequel to Peter Knows What Dick Likes, the collection of essays Pedro and Ricky Ride Again will appear in Autumn 2020.

Meades’s substantial and important television career has led to the creation of more than 60 innovative and thought-provoking TV shows. After a 1985 short on Barcelona’s art and architecture for BBC 2’s Saturday Review, he has produced countless major works, from 1987’s The Victorian House (1987) for Channel 4 through to his most-recent show, Mass Tourism: the Architecture of Franco’s Spain (2019). Like all of his other work, Meades TV shows are difficult to categorise but amply demonstrate his conviction that the comic and the serious are productive, if often uneasy bedfellows. Architecture, art, travel, cities, politics, totalitarianism, and food are regular features. Meades is also an artist and photographer. He is a leading exponent of atheism and a strong supporter of both the National Secular Society and Humanists UK. Since 2011, Meades has lived in Charles-Édouard Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation residential block in Marseille.

ENTRY: Dr Mark Frost, Department of English, University of Portsmouth.
If you have any queries, corrections, or suggestions please email: mark.frost@port.ac.uk