Dan Hancox
As seen in:
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The New York Times,
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MSN South Africa,
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Politics, music, cities, food, Spain, @ The Guardian, Observer, VICE, LRB, NYT. Co-host @CursedObjectsUK. New book: MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World
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Articles by Dan Hancox
Overmono review – irresistible dance duo swap club intimacy for well-earned spectacle
In the age of shortform video supremacy, there has been a great deal of angst about the authentic club music experience being rendered a vapid spectacle. Stop expecting DJs to be social media stars, put your phones away on the dancefloor, close your eyes and lose yourself in the beats, goes the revanchist wisdom. It’s understandable, but worries about superstar DJs stomping on the face of the pure rave experience are almost 30 years old now.
A big screen in every postcode? How World Cup fan zones could inspire Andy Burnham
England fans at a screening of the World Cup semi-final match between England and Argentina in Millennium Square, Leeds, 15 July. Photograph: Annabel Lee-Ellis/PA With the World Cup nearly over for another four years, it’s time to reflect on what a strange, sleepless reverie it’s been, and turn our attention to the next competition.
A big screen in every postcode? How World Cup fan zones could inspire Andy Burnham
With the World Cup nearly over for another four years, it's time to reflect on what a strange, sleepless reverie it's been, and turn our attention to the next competition.
‘Meet me at the dancing dogs tent!’ What’s behind Britain’s festival frenzy?
It’s 7pm on the first day of Gala festival in Peckham Rye park and dry ice drifts into the trees as grime MC Novelist, born just miles away, raps about a south London bus. “Four eight four! Going on raw on the 484,” he spits with a grin, bouncing like the sweaty moshpit in front of him. There are already hands in the air for this hyperlocal elegy when the DJ teases the next instrumental, Skream’s unmistakable Midnight Request Line – dubstep’s greatest ever anthem.
Wireless festival’s backing for Kanye West is all about money. Don’t pretend it’s about the art
Kanye West at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles in February 2025. Photograph: Javier Rojas/PI/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock In May 2025, Kanye West, also known as Ye, released his single Heil Hitler. It was the logical conclusion to several years of racist, sexist and homophobic outbursts, and the song ended with a lengthy sample from one of the Nazi dictator’s speeches.
The Wireless Festival’s backing for Kanye West is all about money. Don’t pretend it’s about the art
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Burial's last interview
In October 2007, after some gentle lobbying of Hyperdub boss Steve Goodman (Kode9), I had the incredible privilege of interviewing Burial. Back then, after his mesmerising first two EPs and self-titled debut album, his identity was known by just a handful of people. “Only five people know I make tunes,” was the quote the Guardian picked for the headline of the piece I subsequently wrote, published just before his second album was released in November.
how Glastonbury and others are dealing with big crowds
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‘Poor management leads to fatal crushes’: how Glastonbury and others are dealing with big crowds
In the last two decades the British festival season has ballooned in size to become not just a critical part of our cultural life, but the economy at large – worth billions of pounds, and numbering as many as 850 events last year. But as Glastonbury kicks off this weekend and the season enters its peak, there are a growing number of controversies around crowd safety and management.
‘Youths everywhere were spitting over tinny beats playing off a Nokia’: great grime photographer Simon Wheatley
It’s an overcast Thursday morning, and photographer Simon Wheatley is doing a soft-shoe shuffle through Roman Road in Bow, east London, as a market stall blares out exquisite 70s funk. “That’s more like it,” he says, with a grin on his face. “A bit of energy.” This was once grime’s artery, its chaotic central hub, even its muse – a street Wiley once told me was “the nurturer” of local talents like him and Dizzee Rascal.
Fancy some iconic celeriac? New Nordic cuisine, now a blockbuster exhibition
When is gastronomy about more than just recipes? When it is New Nordic cuisine: to its advocates, the most influential culinary movement of the 21st century; to its detractors, a school of foodie puritans who have spent the last two decades sucking the joy out of dining and injecting it with po-faced declarations.
In Defense of Rowdy Fans
“Football without fans is nothing.” It has become an often repeated truism in soccer’s age of hypercapitalist excess. Originating with Celtic’s Jock Stein decades ago, the slogan was recently misattributed to Manchester United’s 1960s manager Matt Busby, then reappropriated by Keir Starmer in a typically unconvincing lunge for popular appeal. How times have changed.
In the footsteps of Walter Benjamin
On a warm afternoon last September, I met on the beach in Banyuls-sur-Mer, to do something I’d been wanting to do for a while: hike the ‘Camino Walter Benjamin’ from Banyuls to Portbou in Catalunya — the path which follows the perilous, tragically fatal last steps he took through the Pyrenees, trying to escape from the Nazis in 1940.
The last days of Walter Benjamin
“Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins,” wrote Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher, deep in the winter of...
How to live on the edge of a disappearing coastline
On the promenade at Withernsea, on Britain’s East Yorkshire coast, next to the public toilets, there is a beautiful memorial engraved in stone, framed by waist-high sculptures of two churches. These are the Sister Kirkes, named for a local medieval myth that told of two sisters who could not agree on the style of the church they wished to build – so they each built their own: one with a steeple, the other with a tower. ‘The sea eventually claimed both,’ the plaque reports, matter-of-factly.
How to lose your home - Dan Hancox
On the promenade at Withernsea, on Britain’s East Yorkshire coast, next to the public toilets, there is a beautiful memorial engraved in stone, framed by waist-high sculptures of two churches. These are the Sister Kirkes, named for a local medieval myth that told of two sisters who could not agree on the style of the church they wished to build – so they each built their own: one with a steeple, the other with a tower. ‘The sea eventually claimed both,’ the plaque reports, matter-of-factly.
The NTS Breakfast Show, and a multitude of fun
Firstly: there are still £5 tickets available for two Multitudes talks in London this week: at Burley Fisher bookshop in Dalston on Weds 30 October, with Hettie O’Brien. And then at Whitechapel Gallery on Thurs 31 October, with Adam Moore. The launch event at Conway Hall was great fun, and we sold out all the tickets and all the books, pleasingly — thanks very much if you joined at Conway Hall, or via the stream.
Read an excerpt from
Re-thinking long-held beliefs about crowd behaviour, journalist, author and Crack contributor Dan Hancox’s new title analyses the role crowds play in our lives – from parties to politics to policing – and the potential they hold as a force for change. In this excerpt, he explores the roots and evolution of one of the UK’s most beloved music events – Notting Hill Carnival.
Why our ideas about protest and mob psychology are dangerously wrong
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The British Establishment Has Always Demonized Protesters
It is an experience as exhilarating as it is rare, but sometimes you can actually feel the electric crackle of history being made in the air around you. On June 7, 2020, amid the tumult of the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising, a long-hated statue of the seventeenth-century slave trader Edward Colston was lassoed with ropes and pulled off its pedestal in Bristol by a crowd of hundreds of mostly young protesters.
Partying with the Mediterranean multitudes
First, some quick housekeeping: my new book, MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World, is out very soon — on Tuesday 22 October 2024. You can pre-order it now. And if you’re in London this month, please do come and see me speaking about riots, protests, carnivals, fascists, revolutionaries, moshing, policing, crushes, and crowd joy, rage and psychology. Ticket links below. 🟡 The Multitudes launch is at Conway Hall on Sun 20 October at 3pm. Tickets.
Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people
There is a strangely committed contingent of Londoners who are just dying to believe that the capital’s nightlife is dead and buried. Ever since Sadiq Khan launched his ‘ for London as a 24-hour city’ in 2017, and particularly in the last two years, there has been a growing clamour to prove that it is no such thing. “London: the city that constantly sleeps,” wrote James Ball, the author of a book about fake news. “London is finished,” ran another typical comment.
Stop trying to move Notting Hill Carnival to Hyde Park
Above the desk of Matthew Phillip, CEO of the Notting Hill Carnival Trust, hangs a 19th century drawing, titled ‘Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad’ — drawn by visiting British newspaper artist Melton Prior in 1881. The gleeful Black dancers in the centre of the drawing are dressed as devils and harlequins, their legs and arms alive with motion, while a supercilious white Vicar looks on from the side of the road.
‘People of all ages get very emotional at our gigs’: how ‘trad punk’ folk band the Mary Wallopers became a live sensation
The Mary Wallopers photographed this month in Dundalk, Ireland by Bríd O’Donovan for the Observer New Review. L-r: Ken Mooney, Charles Hendy, Andrew Hendy, Róisín Barrett, Seán McKenna, Finnian O’Connor.
cocaine and football after 14 years of austerity
Dan Hancox's Honor Oak Riot I'm a writer from London, covering music, politics, society, food, Spain, urbanism and history. My next book is MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World (Oct 2024) Launched 3 months ago No thanks
Multitudes
In pursuit of the liberating powers of the crowd Despite what politicians, philosophers and the press have long told us, every peaceful crowd is not a violent mob in waiting. Dan Hancox argues it is time to rethink long-held assumptions about crowd behaviour and psychology, as well as the part crowds play in our lives. The story of the modern world is the story of multitudes in action. Crowds are the ultimate force for change: the bringer of conviviality, euphoria, mass culture and democracy.
Cursed Objects hits 100,000 downloads
Yup, that’s me — wearing a Van Gogh ‘sunflowers’ bucket hat to the general derision of those around me — you’re probably wondering how I got myself into this situation. Well. Three and a half years ago, my friend Kasia Tee became Dr Kasia Tee, and upon completion of her PhD, facing down the barrel of the university jobs market, asked me what she should do. You should start a history podcast! I said, thinking of a great BBC radio programme she had presented.
Critical Mass 30th anniversary ride
Dan Hancox's Honor Oak Riot I'm a writer from London, covering music, politics, society, food, Spain, urbanism and history. My next book is MULTITUDES: How Crowds Made the Modern World (Oct 2024) Launched 22 days ago No thanks
Monopoly: the Movie? Pop culture has become a series of lukewarm adverts – and it’s all so very dull | Dan Hancox - NewsBreak
Image: Guardian Design/Getty Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Alamy When it was announced last week that Margot Robbie will follow up the success of Barbie with a film based on Monopoly, my heart sank, did not pass go, and did not collect £200. Robbie’s production company will partner with Hasbro, just as the Barbie film was an initiative from rival toy company Mattel.
Welcome to the party, pal
Hello and welcome. Like every other journalist, I have started a Substack. I simply missed the golden age of blogging too much; plus I’ve just finished my next book (Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World, out October 2024), and I’m excited to start some new projects; plus that billionaire fraud with the burning cars has ruined Twitter as a means of disseminating basic information. So here we are.
Ghetts review – a founding father of grime commands the stage - NewsBreak
‘Lickety-split delivery and dextrous wordplay’: Ghetts performs at Outernet in central London. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer If there’s one thing that did not seem likely during grime’s ferocious eruption into life in the mid-00s, it’s that an MC such as Ghetts – back then, fresh out of jail as the volatile teenage MC Ghetto – might be stepping on stage two decades later to a sellout crowd in a glitzy venue in London’s West End, backed by live guitar licks worthy of Mark Knopfler.
From This Point Onwards
04.04.24 Words by: Dan Hancox Photography: Simon Wheatley Styling: Adémidé Udoma Grooming: Blessing Kambanga Art direction: Michelle Helena Janssen Flowdan is a giant in the U.K. underground. As part of Roll Deep, he steered the influential grime crew to murkier places. Alongside The Bug, he pushed dub and dancehall to its limits with his uncompromising flows.
Mogwai review - ferocious rockers show sublime range
“Music is bigger than words and wider than pictures” intoned a starry-eyed voice on Mogwai’s otherwise almost wordless 1997 debut, Mogwai Young Team. The Glasgow band’s mixture of sonic grandeur and spiky irreverence quickly established them as cult favourites, in opposition to the complacent tail-end of Britpop: goth in aesthetics and metal in spirit, but labelled “post-rock” because of their long, mostly instrumental tracks.
Multicultural Marseille is best sampled on a plate
There is a saying in Marseille: "First you have the sea, then the city, and beyond that is another country called France." Thousands of years of cultural exchange, trade and migration have given the country’s second city a truly unique identity.
Полиция, сканеры тела и социальная разруха в игрушечном городке
В изоляторе в неизвестном городе вооруженные до зубов полицейские допрашивают демонстранта-антифашиста, одетого в красное и черное. Они снимают отпечатки пальцев, записывают его признание на камеру и вносят его данные в базу. В пункте наблюдения новейшая техника наблюдения отслеживает и записывает на камеру все, что происходит у высоких стен, которыми обнесен периметр. Вооруженные автоматами офицеры наблюдают за происходящим.
Riot police, body scanners and social breakdown in toy town
At a high-security facility in an unidentified city, heavily armed police are interrogating what appears to be an anti-fascist protestor, dressed in red and black. They take fingerprints, record his confession on camera and add his details to a database. In the control tower, cutting-edge surveillance tech oversees and records a high-walled perimeter. Officers armed with assault rifles look out.
Riot police, body scanners and social breakdown in toy town
At a high-security facility in an unidentified city, heavily armed police are interrogating what appears to be an anti-fascist protestor, dressed in red and black. They take fingerprints, record his confession on camera and add his details to a database. In the control tower, cutting-edge surveillance tech oversees and records a high-walled perimeter. Officers armed with assault rifles look out.
Joy Orbison – 'still slipping vol. 1' review: An intimate record with collaboration at its core
18.08.21 The difference between an album and a mixtape is often opaque. Skepta used to insist his debut full-length Greatest Hits was, unlike the output of his grime peers, “an album, not a mixtape”. He said it so often it became a kind of marketing slogan. The MC’s implication was always clear: this isn’t just hastily tossed together freestyles over some borrowed beats, like most grime or rap mixtapes – this body of work should be taken seriously.
The longer Covid goes on for, the more I feel the call of the crowd
Photograph: Darren England/AP Wednesday was a historic night for Brisbane’s Suncorp stadium, and on the field, the Queensland Maroons beat the New South Wales Blues 20-14 in the State of Origin rugby league finale. But it was around the perimeter of the pitch that the real magic was happening. A sell-out crowd of 49,155 unmasked fans had gathered, a world record since the onset of Covid-19 – and, packed in side by side, they roared, arms aloft, with a volume and zeal appropriate to the spectacle.
The International Brigades by Giles Tremlett review - fighting fascism in Spain
“We shall not forget you,” promised the famous Spanish communist and opera singer known as La Pasionaria, addressing the surviving International Brigades as they departed Barcelona in October 1938, with Franco’s victory in the Spanish civil war nearly complete: “And when the olive tree of peace is in flower … return!” In mid-September 2020, the Spanish cabinet made a remarkable gesture in the same spirit: approving a draft of a new “democratic memory” law, which would offer citizenship to the...
Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime|Paperback
English 0008257167 A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, PITCHFORK, NPR, METRO AND HERALD SCOTLAND BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2018‘The definitive grime biography’ NME’A landmark genre history’ PitchforkThe year 2000. As Britain celebrates the new millennium, something is stirring in the crumbling council estates of inner-city London.
Hungary’s house of terror
Hungary's public arraignment of its 20th-century crimes marks it out from the rest of Europe. But remembering the past can be divisive by Dan Hancox / October 27, 2009 / Leave a comment ABOVE: outside the House of Terror, plaques on the wall commemorate those killed for taking part in the uprising against the Communist regime After communism came the vile capitalism,” Gabriel, my guide on a communist walking tour of Budapest, said. Vile?
From humble grocers to de-facto ministry: How supermarkets took over Britain’s food system
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Street Food - Aber die kleinen Portiönchen!
Street Food Alle lieben es – inzwischen auch in Deutschland. Ein Blick nach England offenbart die Schattenseiten eines globalen Trends Was wir essen und wie wir essen, hat schon immer viel über uns gesagt Foto: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Street Food-Märkte sind der ausgeklügelste Stunt, mit dem die Mittelschicht in jüngster Zeit auf Trapp gehalten werden soll. Und es ist auch wahrlich schwer, sich zu entscheiden, ob man sich darüber lustig machen – oder doch weinen soll.
Abundant markets and artisan producers: Plovdiv has much to offer food lovers
The food market smells and tastes impeccable, but also humble and normal – a world away from the fancy, overpriced farmers’ markets you find in many western cities Fresh produce in Plovdiv’s food market. Getty We are standing outside Plovdiv’s oldest food market, the Thursday market (although it is now open every day), and our tour guide Daniel can barely contain his enthusiasm – for the produce we are about to try and the powerful place such markets hold in Bulgarian culture.
Remunicipalización: el caso de las ciudades progresistas que dieron marcha atrás al dogma neoliberal
En 2015, la revista Global Water Intelligence publicó un llamativo editorial que llevaba por título 'Exorcismo a la palabra que empieza por R'. La revista, dedicada a las empresas de agua, denunciaba la "farsa" de permitir que "la propaganda mal documentada de un par de ONG" interfiriera en los intereses del sector privado en el negocio. ¿Y cuál era esa palabra impronunciable, capaz de provocar una reacción tan defensiva? 'Remunicipalización'.
The case for ... truly taking back control - by reversing the privatisation of our cities
In 2015, a strident editorial appeared in Global Water Intelligence, a trade magazine for the water industry, under the title: Exorcising the “R” word. “It would be a travesty,” the writer declared, to let “the ill-informed propaganda of a few NGOs” interfere with private sector involvement in the water business. The unspeakable “R” word that had provoked such a defensive stance? Remunicipalisation: the taking back of privatised assets and services into public ownership at a local level.
Generational Resentment, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore the Hardcore Continuum
“I’m not normally one to be so dismissive, but isn’t the hardcore continuum just a way for older guys to relate to these off-the-wall kids making totally new original stuff that, aesthetically at least, bears little resemblance to the genres that the ‘Nuum designates as their supposed predecessors? Imagine talking about the hardcore continuum with Oddz & Eastwood.
Like Piccadilly Circus, but spherical: is east London ready for the MSG Sphere?
Between the Olympic stadium, the London Aquatics Centre, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit squiggle – not to mention Westfield shopping centre – the east London neighbourhood of Stratford has acquired more than its fair share of high-profile buildings in the last decade. But even as the Olympics recedes into the past, a new debate is now raging over what might be the most controversial proposal yet: the Madison Square Garden (MSG) Sphere.
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