Suite (212) returns after five years – and true to form, it’s with an episode analysing the current political and cultural climate in the UK and beyond, and why we brought the show back into it. There’s a twist, however, as frequent guest Owen Hatherley asks regular host Juliet Jacques the questions, about why Suite (212) ended in December 2021, what’s changed since, and what the programme might do differently this time around. Along the way, we talked about the differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski as leaders of political projects and their respective tastes shape them; how the left reacted to the defeats of 2019-24 and the cultural effects of their withdrawal; the decline of the US as a cultural hegemon, and the rise of Chinese and Korean culture in the west; the international far-right attacks on the arts and the parts of society that uphold them; the concept of ‘counter-counterculture’; the impact of developments from the genocide in Gaza to the coming of AI on the arts; the crushing disappointment of Starmer’s Labour and their lack of interest in culture; how ‘stanning’ sells artists short; and some ideas for future episodes, ending with an appeal for our listeners to get involved in shaping its new direction. To subscribe to Suite (212) for as little as £3.50 per month, please visit https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212.

Following from December 2021’s Resonance 104.4fm show on the cultural impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with James Butler and Sarah Schulman, Juliet talks to writer Huw Lemmey about Channel 4’s landmark miniseries 'It’s a Sin'. Written by Russell T. Davies and broadcast across January and February 2021, 'It’s a Sin' follows a group of friends who meet on London’s gay scene in September 1981, just as the first British cases are being diagnosed, and charts the impact of HIV/AIDS on their sex lives, relationships, families, friendships and careers over the following decade. In this subscriber-only episode on the miniseries, Juliet and Huw talk about the conservatism of British television and their reluctance to commission it; critical reactions to the show, and call-backs to the 1980s ‘moral panic’ about homosexuality; Davies’ skill in writing for television; how the programme looks at the personal impact of HIV/AIDS, and its portrayal of LGBT activism and its relationship with wider British politics; and how 'It’s a Sin' is ultimately a show about care, and how it represents models of queer (and straight) kinship.

For Suite (212)'s final edition, host Juliet Jacques talks to writer/editor Owen Hatherley (Tribune and elsewhere) and Fatema Ahmed, acting editor of Apollo, about the current state of British cultural criticism and what the next few years might have in store. They discuss the reasons for stopping Suite (212) and the changing cultural climate between and after the General Elections of 2017 and 2019, and what's happened to the Labour Party; the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic; state funding, the media and the BBC; and what the left might focus on when thinking about the arts and culture.

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm, Juliet spoke to London-based artists, writers, musicians, curators and teachers Pil and Galia Kollectiv about their practice, the art world's reaction to Covid-19 and the state of British higher education, especially in arts universities. They talked about Pil & Galia's Immigrants exhibition (2018), their short films, their bands WE and UrBororo, their background in Israel and their writing for the music press, and more. A full list of references from this episode is available to Patreon subscribers. To sign up for as little as £1 per month, visit patreon.com/suite-212.

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to playwright and screenwriter Trevor Griffiths, born in Manchester in 1935, about his life in writing for stage and screen since the late 1960s. Although Griffiths wrote the scripts for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) and Ken Loach's Fatherland (1986), this interview focused on his plays Occupations (1970) and Comedians (1975), his TV series Bill Brand (ITV, 1976), his BBC TV film Food for Ravens (1997) and his play A New World, staged at Shakespeare's Globe in 2009. A full list of references for this episode is available to Patreon subscribers for as little as £1 per month. You can subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poets Ed Luker (based in London) and Nat Raha (based in Edinburgh) about the state of poetry, publishing and funding in 21st century Britain. She asks Ed and Nat to share their poetry and their influences, discussing the Cambridge school of poets around J. H. Prynne and their studies at Sussex with Keston Sutherland. They discuss the divides between 'big' and 'small' presses and what sort of work(s) they publish, and the flaws of the 'underground' vs. 'mainstream' binary; the relationship between contemporary poetry and new currents in feminist and socialist politics; funding models for poets and publishers; and how new left-wing media might work with sympathetic poets. For a full list of references from the show, please subscribe to our Patreon for as little as £1 per month, via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Now unlocked, this subscriber-only bonus episode came about because Juliet enjoyed talking so much to Sam Byers and Carl Neville about the 'state of the nation' novel for our monthly Resonance 104.4m show that they decided to keep going. They expanded on the question of what literature about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party might look like, and how both the defeat and the intensification of neoliberalism might shape the form and content of British literature throughout the 2020s. For a full list of references with links, please subscribe for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poetry, editor and academic Golnoosh Nour about the life and work of Iranian poet, writer and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad (1935-67). Featuring plenty of readings from Farrokhzad's work (in the original Farsi and English translation by Sholeh Wolpé), Juliet and Golnoosh talk about Farrokhzad's early life and emergence on the post-war Iranian poetry scene, how her erotic feminist poetry scandalised the literary establishment, and her interest in traditional Persian literature. They discuss her only film, the short documentary The House is Black (1962) about a leper colony in Tabriz, northwest Iran; her relationship with filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan; and her influence on later Iranian filmmakers. Finally, they talk about Farrokhzad's enduring legacy in Iran despite her work being banned after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and her influence on Golnoosh's poetry.

In this month’s Resonance 104.4fm show, former co-host Tom Overton returns to interview Suite (212)’s founder, Juliet Jacques, about Variations, her new collection of stories that tells a potted history of trans and non-binary people in the United Kingdom from the Victorian era to the present, published by Influx Press on 17 June 2021. They talk about how Juliet moved on from her ‘Transgender Journey’ series for the Guardian and her memoir, Trans, that came out of it in 2015; why she chose to write Variations as short stories rather than as a novel, or a more straightforward British trans history, or make it as a film; the different forms she uses in each story, and her research processes; how postmodern approaches have intersected with prejudice to make the compilation of trans histories more difficult; how Variations looks at trans people’s complex relationships with industrialisation, law, sexology and media, as well as literature, music and film; the context of a British – and global – backlash against trans visibility and rights as she wrote the book; the absence of trans authors and authentic trans characters from literary history, the influences on her work and the uses of trans writers telling trans stories; and what Juliet might write next. Pre-order Variations for £9.99 from the Influx Press website at https://www.influxpress.com/variations. For a full list of references, subscribe to Suite (212) on Patreon for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to academics Owen Holland (University College London) and Bertrand Taithe (University of Manchester) about how writers responded to the Commune of Paris of 1871, both during its two-month existence from March to May 1871, and over the following decades. They talk about the print culture and intellectual circles that existed in Paris and France at the time; how writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud, George Sand and Émile Zola reacted to the Commune at the time, and throughout the rest of the 19th century; how British authors responded in the 1880s, and how this shaped the mythology of the Commune; and how this interest in the Commune's memory became less the concern of literary writers and more of political theorists in the early 20th century. For a full list of references in this month's show, please subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.