British · b. 1988
Nathalie Olah is a British writer and cultural critic born in Birmingham in December 1988. She grew up partly in social housing and attended state schools before studying English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and earning a master's degree in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Sussex. She has lived in London since 2015. Olah's journalism and criticism focus on class, culture, and the politics of taste in contemporary Britain. Her first book, Steal as Much as You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity (2019), argued that austerity-era Britain had hollowed out working-class culture in favor of media interests serving the middle class. She followed it with Look Again: Class (2021), written for Tate, and Bad Taste: Or the Politics of Ugliness (2023), which examines how ideas of taste and ugliness are used to police class boundaries. In 2024, Tate commissioned her to mark the 40th anniversary of the Turner Prize, and in 2025 she received the Society of Authors' Travelling Scholarship award.