Darren McGarvey

Writer & rapper

“If all the best people are in all the top jobs, then why is Britain such a fucking bin fire?” Author Darren McGarvey is a former rapper-in-residence at the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, where he performed under the stage name Loki. He grew up in poverty in Glasgow and his mother suffered from alcoholism. He won the Orwell Prize in 2018 for his debut book Poverty Safari and his second book, The Social Distance Between Us, was published this June. McGarvey argues that the vast distance— geographic, economic and cultural—between the people making decisions and the people affected by them is destroying British politics.