“We can all instinctively understand the idea of life insurance; most of us will feel an instinctive repugnance at the thought of the viatical industry, or 'dead peasants insurance.' As market thinking penetrated the life insurance industry, a moral line was crossed, and the application of market ideas was taken too far.”

British journalist and novelist

John Henry Lanchester is a British journalist and novelist. His reviews appear frequently in the London Review of Books. He is known for writing journalism and fiction, with book reviews as a regular part of his work. The available facts place him chiefly as a contemporary British writer whose name is closely associated with criticism and literary journalism.