Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide

Description

From the author of Estates- An Intimate History, a powerful, highly personal take on social mobility in Britain Society is often talked about as a ladder, from which you can climb from bottom to top. The walls are less talked about. This book is about how people try to get over them, whether they manage to or not. In autumn 1992, growing up on a vast Birmingham estate, the sixteen-year-old Lynsey Hanley went to sixth-form college. She knew that it would change her life, but was entirely unprepared for the price she would have to pay- to leave behind her working-class world and become middle class. In this empathic, wry and passionate exploration of class in Britain today, Lynsey Hanley looks at how people are kept apart, and keep themselves apart - and the costs involved in the journey from 'there' to 'here'.

Lynsey Hanley was born in Birmingham and lives in Liverpool. She is the author of Estates- An Intimate History, and she is a regular contributor to the Guardian and the New Statesman.

Ambitious, impressive... There is fury contained within the pages and between the lines of Respectable... an intelligent and important book that deserves to be widely read -- Colin Grant * Guardian * Hanley vividly describes the "risky, lonely journey" she undertook from one class to another... She is tremendous at detailing her personal transition -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * Why is class still so central to the experience of living in Britain? It is an urgent question, evaded through a kind of collective shame, but Lynsey Hanley approaches it with wit and passion. Respectable is pithy and provoking, spiced with the personal but solidly grounded in a lifetime's experience of analysing the world around her. It is one of those valuable books that enables the reader to re-think her past and re-experience her own life. -- Hilary Mantel Honest, brave and moving, Respectable opens up the emotional experience of navigating across class boundaries in an unequal world. -- Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level