The Way We Live Now: Dilemmas in Contemporary Culture

Description

An uncompromising attack on the way English society has been damaged over the last 20 years by the denial of standards, the triumph of the market and cynical exploitation. 'This is his most powerful book since THE USES OF LITERACY and. . . deserves to be equally widely read. ' SUNDAY TIMES Richard Hoggart is one of Britain's most distinguished cultural critics. In this clear-eyed and controversial book he sets himself to take the temperature of the nation at the end of the 20th century - to test its blood for health and heartiness, sample its imagination for largeness amd magnanimity, conduct examinations of its intelligence, judgement and moral sense. As always, he makes us see how responsible we all are for the way we live now. 'Compelling, very important' NEW STATESMAN and SOCIETY

Richard Hoggart was born in Leeds and educated at Leeds University. As Professor of Modern English Literature at Birmingham University, he founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. For five years he was assistant Director of Unesco at its headquarters in Paris, where he and his wife still live. Until 1984 he was Warden of Goldsmith's College, University of London. His many works range from The Uses of Literacy, Speaking to Each Other, An English Temper, to An Idea of Europe (with Douglas Johnson). His recent work includes the highly acclaimed autobiographical trilogy A Local Habitation, A Sort of Clowning, and An Imagined Life, and the inimitable study of modern provincial life, Townscape with Figures- Farnham - Portrait of an English Town.

Tough and principled, it is a testimony to his astonishing energy and stamina... It displays a calmness, a perfectly justified habit of intellectual (but always egalitarian) authority, and a considerable courage... * T.H.E.S * Hoggart has been a pawky, powerful and articulate critic of the way we live now for more than forty years... His arguments are detailed and thoughtful... He demonstrates that not everyone, even now, has lost the passion, the decency and the critical rage that he mourns. * Financial Times *