David Quantick

Any sign of rebellion can be crushed simply by blocking the kingdom's sun or rainfall, a clear metaphor for Britain's subjugation of Swift's beloved island.

David Quantick is a novelist and satirist, having written for many TV and radio shows, including Veep and The Thick of It.

The most famous part of this section is when he goes to the Academy of Legado in Balnebarby, where the world's top scientists are employed in extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble to make pillows, and best of all, uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of people they suspect.

And pretty much that prefigures the internet, that last one.

I said in the first episode that I was going to argue Gulliver's Travels is our greatest novel.

Whether such a judgment is possible is moot, but it is impossible not to love a book that, at the very birth of a new way of writing, found a subject, imagery, technique and voice that has allowed it to live on for 300 years.

David Quantick.

I think the reason Gulliver's Travels is so popular is A, because it has that fairy tale element and it is possible to consume large chunks of it as a fairy tale in a Disneyfied world.

When Swift describes how suitability for high office is determined by the candidate's ability to dance on a rope or to crawl under or jump over a stick held by the king, to us, 300 years on, even if we're unaware of the contemporary references, we can recognise completely the absurdity.

David Quantick has written for many satirical shows, including Veep and The Thick of It.

The kind of satire that I like and that I've written on on various shows has anger in it.

It's very easy to be distant and make jokes about saying, ooh, Andy Burnham wears glasses and lives in the north of England.

Greatness is just what smallness looks like from underneath, and pettiness is just what greatness looks like from above.

Where the Lilliputians were largely unprincipled, degenerate and corrupt, and Gallifer could feel superior, albeit not noticing they were a mirror of his own world, here in Brobding Mag the roles are reversed, and it is at the end of this second book that the satire comes into full effect.

Gulliver is interrogated by the King of Brobdingnag, an intelligent, curious and fundamentally decent character, perhaps the only one in the whole book, David Quantick.

He meets the King of Brobdingnag and attempts to explain to him what Europe is like, what European politics and culture are like.

His new book, Hyena, will be released in November.

Here tonight to discuss what TV and film means to him, please welcome to the show, David Quantick.

Good evening, sir.

How are you?

David, a question that I ask every single one of my guests, and you, sir, are no exception.

So I'm hoping you're not going to let me down.

Mr. David Quantick, do you have a ghost story?

Yes, I do.