Jon Sopel

Jon Sopel on Strangeland

We are looking forward to welcoming former BBC editor Jon Sopel to St Andrews for an informative insight on the state of the country after returning to Britain after working in North America.

Returning to the UK in some ways has been disconcerting - or maybe discombobulating would be a better word. It is, after all, my home; it is where I grew up, a country I love and am proud of. But either it's changed, or I have. Maybe both.
It just feels like a strange land.

At the beginning of 2022, after eight years of political reporting in the US, Jon Sopel returned home to the UK - and having spent almost a third of his career abroad, he found a very different place to the one he left. In Strangeland, his first book since launching the global hit podcast The News Agents, he asks: What is the Britain he's come home to?
In the US, Jon was the outsider looking in, firm in the belief that the common language of English masked our fundamental differences; in terms of values and beliefs, it seemed the British had much more in common with our European neighbours.
Strangeland is Jon's account of how much that has changed. The US was a country he thought he knew well but didn't really; returning home has been in some ways even more disconcerting.

Jon Sopel was the BBC's North America Editor for 8 years, before launching The News Agents podcast with Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall in August 2022. During his time at the BBC, he covered the 2016 and 2020 elections and Trump's White House at first hand, reporting for the BBC across TV, radio and online, as well as presenting the highly successful Americast podcast with Emily Maitlis and Anthony Zurcher.