Making fantasy reality: five minutes with . . . Michael Marmot

“A couple of years ago we [University College London’s Institute of Health Equity] reported that life expectancy in England had improved by about one year every four years since the end of the first world war. Then in 2011 it stopped, and there was a dramatic change in the curve.

“One of the questions we were asked was, ‘Maybe we have just reached peak life expectancy?’ Well, we looked across Europe, and indeed life expectancy increases had slowed down. That’s consistent with the global financial crisis and the policies of austerity that were put in place. But the UK had …