The Absence of War, with John Cotton (#15)

Our normal programme is interrupted with an emergency episode!

David Hare's play about a fictionalised version of the 1992 general election, The Absence of War, is on BBC iPlayer for a limited period. So before it goes, Mark and Cory talk about it with the former leader of Birmingham City Council, John Cotton.

They discuss the reasons Labour lost the 1992 election, whether the play has the right lessons about how to be successful in politics, the dilemmas facing leaders and why political dramas never seem to get the fonts quite right.

Watch The Absence of War before Wednesday September 16 on BBC iPlayer here.

Next week, we're discussing The Death of Stalin.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).