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Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide
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'.
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'.
240 pages, Paperback
Published February 23, 2017
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April 9, 2020
I was predisposed to regard Lynsey Hanley’s book favourably, having very much enjoyed her previous work, Estates, and finding that we had a similar background, albeit separated by a decade or so. While Hanley was raised on the Chelmsley Wood council estate in Solihull, I was fortunate enough to grow up in the slightly more salubrious Shirley: my parents were both born into poverty but benefited from postwar employment levels, so that by the time I was born my father had been promoted to foreman in the factory where he worked, enabling my mother to work only part time and the pair of them to take out a mortgage on a house beyond the boundary of Birmingham itself, albeit only barely. The similar backgrounds and biographies are germane to my enjoyment of Hanley’s book, not because they generate a sense of solidarity or recognition, or not only because of that, but also because they go some way to explaining our mutual interest in sociology and our fascination with the issue of class.
Whereas Hanley recounts discovering the middle class for the first time at Solihull Sixth Form College, my first encounter took place at a younger age, 14, when I joined the local tennis club. It was there that I first met not just the middle class but also snobbery, as well as contempt, and disdain, both for me and for ‘my people’. Having been fortuitous and privileged up to that point, it was not until my teenage years that I became conscious of not being good enough, of being observed from the outside and judged negatively, as wanting. It was at this point that class became for me a reality, a lived experience. When I subsequently moved to Manchester and found sociology was an A level subject on the local college curriculum, I took to it like a duck to water.
It was sociology that allowed me – and Hanley – to make sense not just of our place in the world but also of the world itself. And this brings me to the most striking revelation I experienced while reading Respectable: That those who find themselves growing up in the heart of their class rarely have to give their social location a second thought because everyone surrounding them reaffirms the same set of values; they never have cause to doubt nor need to reflect upon the intrinsic merit of their own class habitus (they are “working class and proud of it” or else they are “born to rule,” the “creme de la creme” as one of my schoolfriends – the son of two teachers – put it before going off to work for Lehman’s and DeutscheBank). For other specific class fractions, however – those on the boundaries between two classes, those who have moved between classes (up or down) – class becomes an obsession. Indeed, it is fair to say that this obsession with class and the concern with self-worth are in themselves part of the habitus of these particular class fractions; these are the benighted folk who comprise what may be called the “anxious classes,” that part of the middle class worried about falling into poverty, those upwardly mobile from the working class concerned about keeping up appearances, and those who engage in conspicuous consumption, the nouveaux riches, keen to demonstrate their social mobility. And, of course, Sociologists! It is class as these groups experience it, which is to say, self-consciously, that is really at the heart of Hanley’s book. Not that the book is any the worse for that. The arguments and observations are well supported, making good use of the canonical texts in the Sociology of Class (Paul Willis, Wilmott & Young, Pierre Bourdieu, etc.). But because it uses Hanley’s own experiences anecdotally as a way of introducing topics, it really only provides a phenomenology of the class migrant’s experience of class. Those who have spent their entire lives within their own class may have an entirely different view of class than that described here.
Hanley expresses her admiration for Richard Hoggart’s mid-20th-century classic The Uses of Literacy and to some extent has succeeded in producing a 21st-century version. While this is admirable, it means the book is accompanied by all the attendant vices of Hoggart’s book, particularly the tendency to wander off-topic for the sake of enumerating or recording particular events. Nonetheless, I found very little to disagree with and much to like, within the confines of the account she provides. It would have been interesting to have heard the voices of the people Hanley left behind in her movement between classes. Did they all fail to make it into the middle class? Are any of them better off financially than she is, and if so, how come? What is their view of class? We don’t know. What Hanley has really given us are the pathologies of a particular way of thinking about class, and the reader may conclude that the importance she ascribes to the issue is nothing more than the result of her own upbringing. I’m inclined to agree. For a more comprehensive measure of the role and importance of class, I would suggest the need to add a macroscopic perspective, such as that provided by Pickett and Wilkinson’s The Spirit Level, as well as a historical dimension, such as that given in Conor McCabe’s The Sins of the Fathers. Which is not to say that Hanley’s book is not illuminating and a joy to read, only that vignettes, however beautifully and intelligently drawn, are only windows into a life, not maps of an entire world.
Whereas Hanley recounts discovering the middle class for the first time at Solihull Sixth Form College, my first encounter took place at a younger age, 14, when I joined the local tennis club. It was there that I first met not just the middle class but also snobbery, as well as contempt, and disdain, both for me and for ‘my people’. Having been fortuitous and privileged up to that point, it was not until my teenage years that I became conscious of not being good enough, of being observed from the outside and judged negatively, as wanting. It was at this point that class became for me a reality, a lived experience. When I subsequently moved to Manchester and found sociology was an A level subject on the local college curriculum, I took to it like a duck to water.
It was sociology that allowed me – and Hanley – to make sense not just of our place in the world but also of the world itself. And this brings me to the most striking revelation I experienced while reading Respectable: That those who find themselves growing up in the heart of their class rarely have to give their social location a second thought because everyone surrounding them reaffirms the same set of values; they never have cause to doubt nor need to reflect upon the intrinsic merit of their own class habitus (they are “working class and proud of it” or else they are “born to rule,” the “creme de la creme” as one of my schoolfriends – the son of two teachers – put it before going off to work for Lehman’s and DeutscheBank). For other specific class fractions, however – those on the boundaries between two classes, those who have moved between classes (up or down) – class becomes an obsession. Indeed, it is fair to say that this obsession with class and the concern with self-worth are in themselves part of the habitus of these particular class fractions; these are the benighted folk who comprise what may be called the “anxious classes,” that part of the middle class worried about falling into poverty, those upwardly mobile from the working class concerned about keeping up appearances, and those who engage in conspicuous consumption, the nouveaux riches, keen to demonstrate their social mobility. And, of course, Sociologists! It is class as these groups experience it, which is to say, self-consciously, that is really at the heart of Hanley’s book. Not that the book is any the worse for that. The arguments and observations are well supported, making good use of the canonical texts in the Sociology of Class (Paul Willis, Wilmott & Young, Pierre Bourdieu, etc.). But because it uses Hanley’s own experiences anecdotally as a way of introducing topics, it really only provides a phenomenology of the class migrant’s experience of class. Those who have spent their entire lives within their own class may have an entirely different view of class than that described here.
Hanley expresses her admiration for Richard Hoggart’s mid-20th-century classic The Uses of Literacy and to some extent has succeeded in producing a 21st-century version. While this is admirable, it means the book is accompanied by all the attendant vices of Hoggart’s book, particularly the tendency to wander off-topic for the sake of enumerating or recording particular events. Nonetheless, I found very little to disagree with and much to like, within the confines of the account she provides. It would have been interesting to have heard the voices of the people Hanley left behind in her movement between classes. Did they all fail to make it into the middle class? Are any of them better off financially than she is, and if so, how come? What is their view of class? We don’t know. What Hanley has really given us are the pathologies of a particular way of thinking about class, and the reader may conclude that the importance she ascribes to the issue is nothing more than the result of her own upbringing. I’m inclined to agree. For a more comprehensive measure of the role and importance of class, I would suggest the need to add a macroscopic perspective, such as that provided by Pickett and Wilkinson’s The Spirit Level, as well as a historical dimension, such as that given in Conor McCabe’s The Sins of the Fathers. Which is not to say that Hanley’s book is not illuminating and a joy to read, only that vignettes, however beautifully and intelligently drawn, are only windows into a life, not maps of an entire world.
April 7, 2018
While reading ‘Respectable’, I couldn’t help contemplating how I would write my own version, as I’ve sometimes considered doing. Like Hanley, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about the British class system and its influence on my childhood and education. My background is markedly different to Hanley’s, but I have a similar sense of having experienced life in multiple parts of the class hierarchy while feeling slightly set apart from them. Unsurprisingly, I found her insights fascinating. She writes in a thoughtful, careful style that draws out subtle points about class that I hadn’t considered before. She is wary of simplistic solutions to entrenched inequalities and delicate in her analysis of politics. Perhaps the only flaw in the book is that it felt quite short - I wanted to hear more from her. Particularly acute insights included:
That’s as neat a description of how privilege plays out in 21st century Britain as I’ve ever come across. I also liked this concise explanation of class differences in speech:
In my experience, at the top of middle class and above speech becomes either very self-deprecating (with tacit subtext of superiority) or even more grandiose. Often both, varying by context and topic.
Hanley devotes quite a bit of the book to the school system and how it reproduces the class system. She considers the implications of various educational reforms of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the decrepit comprehensive school she attended until sixth form. This reminded me of a piece of serendipity that has profoundly shaped my life: in 1996 I got an assisted place that allowed me to attend a former-grammar, now-private, single-sex high school. A year later, Labour won the election and abolished assisted places. There is no way I could have attended a fee paying school without what was effectively a means-tested scholarship. At my local high school, I wouldn’t have been able to study German, Latin, or economics; my exam results would have been worse; I very much doubt I could have got into Cambridge. A lot seems to hang on being lucky enough to be born at the right time.
Of course, plenty of other Labour policies reduced educational inequalities and I feel ambivalent about assisted places despite benefiting hugely from one. I benefited because I already had the middle class speech patterns and enthusiasm for learning, without my family having financial resources to shop around for high schools. Intangible social capital exerts considerable influence, from childhood into work life. As Hanley puts it:
I’d add networks to this - losing money needn’t mean the loss of social contacts, who can provide invaluable signposts to jobs, housing, etc. And on the subject of working harder than they need to, I think visibly working hard for excessive hours has become a matter of pride and signifier of privilege in middle class Britain. It demonstrates aspiration, suggests that you find your work worthwhile and interesting, and in a weird way has become associated with independence via ostentatious self-discipline. Under late capitalism, you can exploit yourself for the benefit of international capital! Perhaps this fetishisation of hard work also reflects a very neoliberal perception that the richest people, those at the top of the hierarchy that we should be looking up to, work the hardest of all. Which is garbage - once you have a large enough pile of wealth, you can do nothing whatsoever and let the magic of compound interest take care of you and your descendants.
I think anything I write about class is likely to be angrier than Hanley’s book, as I seem to have more ungrateful resentment about the system's hypocrisies than she does. Most likely this is thanks to Cambridge, which inculcates a willingness to criticise and sense of entitlement to be heard like nowhere else (except Oxford). Since the British class system really needs qualitative analysis, I’d love to read more memoirs of this kind. Please recommend me any that you know of. For a more quantitative analysis of Britain’s class system, I suggest Mike Savage’s Social Class in the 21st Century.
The interesting thing about entering the middle class is that everything you have known is turned on its head. You go from being invisible to society, and yet at the same time the object of constant scrutiny and mistrust, to being at once anonymous and in possession of a voice. You are trusted to get on with things, and encouraged to go on endlessly about the way in which you do them.
That’s as neat a description of how privilege plays out in 21st century Britain as I’ve ever come across. I also liked this concise explanation of class differences in speech:
Another quality that Bernstein identified in working-class speech is its fragmentary nature. By sticking with the description of individual events rather than unifying them into a larger narrative, you accept that contingency of things: after all, your circumstances may have changed by tomorrow, and in any case what you’ve said is likely to have significance only in the specific context in which you said it. Middle-class speech, by comparison, smacks of grandeur, because it seeks to place feelings and events in a universal context, with the inference that the individual speaker and his perceptions matter in the greater scheme of things.
In my experience, at the top of middle class and above speech becomes either very self-deprecating (with tacit subtext of superiority) or even more grandiose. Often both, varying by context and topic.
Hanley devotes quite a bit of the book to the school system and how it reproduces the class system. She considers the implications of various educational reforms of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the decrepit comprehensive school she attended until sixth form. This reminded me of a piece of serendipity that has profoundly shaped my life: in 1996 I got an assisted place that allowed me to attend a former-grammar, now-private, single-sex high school. A year later, Labour won the election and abolished assisted places. There is no way I could have attended a fee paying school without what was effectively a means-tested scholarship. At my local high school, I wouldn’t have been able to study German, Latin, or economics; my exam results would have been worse; I very much doubt I could have got into Cambridge. A lot seems to hang on being lucky enough to be born at the right time.
Of course, plenty of other Labour policies reduced educational inequalities and I feel ambivalent about assisted places despite benefiting hugely from one. I benefited because I already had the middle class speech patterns and enthusiasm for learning, without my family having financial resources to shop around for high schools. Intangible social capital exerts considerable influence, from childhood into work life. As Hanley puts it:
Upward social mobility is more common than downward because it is generationally harder to lose middle-class privileges, once you have them, than it is to gain them. A family may rapidly lose money - through repossession or bankruptcy, for instance - but its members can’t lose knowledge already gained, qualifications already earned, expectations already entrenched, half as quickly. This is something which members of the middle class tend to overlook or underestimate, and which causes them to work harder than they probably need in order to retain those privileges.
I’d add networks to this - losing money needn’t mean the loss of social contacts, who can provide invaluable signposts to jobs, housing, etc. And on the subject of working harder than they need to, I think visibly working hard for excessive hours has become a matter of pride and signifier of privilege in middle class Britain. It demonstrates aspiration, suggests that you find your work worthwhile and interesting, and in a weird way has become associated with independence via ostentatious self-discipline. Under late capitalism, you can exploit yourself for the benefit of international capital! Perhaps this fetishisation of hard work also reflects a very neoliberal perception that the richest people, those at the top of the hierarchy that we should be looking up to, work the hardest of all. Which is garbage - once you have a large enough pile of wealth, you can do nothing whatsoever and let the magic of compound interest take care of you and your descendants.
I think anything I write about class is likely to be angrier than Hanley’s book, as I seem to have more ungrateful resentment about the system's hypocrisies than she does. Most likely this is thanks to Cambridge, which inculcates a willingness to criticise and sense of entitlement to be heard like nowhere else (except Oxford). Since the British class system really needs qualitative analysis, I’d love to read more memoirs of this kind. Please recommend me any that you know of. For a more quantitative analysis of Britain’s class system, I suggest Mike Savage’s Social Class in the 21st Century.
February 20, 2022
Recently, I joined a book club and they send me a book a month to read and I don't know what book I will receive. This may sound a bit odd - indeed it does sound odd when I read what I've just written - but it does mean I read books on subjects I wouldn't normally read.
Such is the case with Respectable by Lynsey Hanley, a book that to me is about social class and social mobility. This book describes the journey from a working-class background as a young person to a middle-class status as a mature adult, with the steps taken along the way. Hanley is socially mobile and yet psychologically divided between her place of origin and her current status, which is where she ended up by being encouraged to improve herself by teachers and family.
A class system needs socially mobile people and socially immobile people in order to prove its own existence. This book describes the pressures that are exerted on working-class people to both stay where they are and to also strive to escape their background. These pressures are exerted by different groups of people in various ways.
The book uses as a guide "The Uses of Literacy" by the cultural critic Richard Hoggart written in 1957, a book that describes apparently huge changes in society which were in truth only superficial. Hoggart was aware that every educational exam he passed took him further away from where he'd begun in a working-class neighbourhood to a modern comfortable middle-class existence where he felt loneliness.
Hanley used "The Uses of Literacy" as the backbone of her book and as is the way with all good books such as "Respectable", it's opened up another path of reading for me. I will be reading Richard Hoggart's book in the near future.
Such is the case with Respectable by Lynsey Hanley, a book that to me is about social class and social mobility. This book describes the journey from a working-class background as a young person to a middle-class status as a mature adult, with the steps taken along the way. Hanley is socially mobile and yet psychologically divided between her place of origin and her current status, which is where she ended up by being encouraged to improve herself by teachers and family.
A class system needs socially mobile people and socially immobile people in order to prove its own existence. This book describes the pressures that are exerted on working-class people to both stay where they are and to also strive to escape their background. These pressures are exerted by different groups of people in various ways.
The book uses as a guide "The Uses of Literacy" by the cultural critic Richard Hoggart written in 1957, a book that describes apparently huge changes in society which were in truth only superficial. Hoggart was aware that every educational exam he passed took him further away from where he'd begun in a working-class neighbourhood to a modern comfortable middle-class existence where he felt loneliness.
Hanley used "The Uses of Literacy" as the backbone of her book and as is the way with all good books such as "Respectable", it's opened up another path of reading for me. I will be reading Richard Hoggart's book in the near future.
April 29, 2016
BOTW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0785nl9Description: Journalist Lynsey Hanley's personal exploration of the experience of class in Britain over the past four decades.
"Changing class is like emigrating from one side of the world to the other, where you have to rescind your old passport, learn a new language and make gargantuan efforts if you are not to completely lose touch with the people and habits of your old life, even if they are the relationships and things that are dearest to your heart."
Class is a subject we're all aware of but rarely talk about - aside from the insidious line that 'we're all middle class now'. Hanley examines class aspiration and social mobility through the lens of her own life; providing a fascinating insight into what it took to leave her home in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, and make her way against the odds through sixth form college, university and on into the world of professional journalism.
Received wisdom tells us social mobility is an unequivocally positive phenomenon, for individuals and for society. Yet changing class can be a lonely, anxious, psychologically disruptive process, which leaves people divided between the place they left and the place they have to inhabit in order to get on.
Blimey, don't think I am going to become too involved with this anthropocentric subject, yet the music it recalls is great:Mel & Kim - Respectable
The Rolling Stones - Respectable
This is My Truth Respectable in the 80s Respectable in the 90s Snakes and Ladders
December 26, 2017
The premise of this book is a very interesting one, and it's very definitely a book that makes you think.
I'm not sure whether it's about class, or social mobility. I think that both of those topics are big enough for a book of their own.
I'm very glad to have read this, it was useful and helpful. Having grown up as an expat I'm sort of half in / half out on the class thing.
It was, though, a huge relief to get to the end. The book is intelligent and well argued. But it goes on and on - like a well meaning, impassioned, relative with one too many chardonays on board at the lunch table.
Good book, some great, intelligent arguments.
And ranty. But probably worth it.
I'm not sure whether it's about class, or social mobility. I think that both of those topics are big enough for a book of their own.
I'm very glad to have read this, it was useful and helpful. Having grown up as an expat I'm sort of half in / half out on the class thing.
It was, though, a huge relief to get to the end. The book is intelligent and well argued. But it goes on and on - like a well meaning, impassioned, relative with one too many chardonays on board at the lunch table.
Good book, some great, intelligent arguments.
And ranty. But probably worth it.
July 17, 2016
This was a book which needed to be written and was worthwhile to read - about how it feels to move out of the working class into the middle. Lynsey Hanley said it was hard to write (I don't think in an especially emotional sense) and sometimes that's apparent. At times I felt it might possibly have been condensed into a taut essay... or expanded to convey more detail of Hanley's own personal trajectory, or that of comparable others. There were some interesting themes I'd like to explore further - she gives the nod to the impact of being an only child and I wonder if upward class mobility particularly in terms of educational path is disproportionately linked with this status or similar. Quite possibly for very simple financial reasons, but potentially others. She also highlights her social awkwardness... too far... for reasons which are not clear... from her peers, she seems to have known deep down that she couldn't fit in so she didn't need to try... the ropes tying her to her class of birth were not tight.
Sometimes it seemed rather confused and contradictory - but I suspect that is at least partly a function of the phenomenon being confused and contradictory. She makes some good points, especially about the kinds of information and guidance people need to smooth their path... her needlessly difficult bus journey to Sixth Form College, her choices of A level subject and the preparation she received for her Cambridge application and interview (I am impressed she came out of that nasty little experience with as much positivity as she did) She makes a much more subtle point about differences in teacher expectations at different schools than is often made, and as a result I feel she probably comes much closer to the truth.
It's neither a sour or a hand wringing book which in the hands of a less writer it could have been.
Sometimes it seemed rather confused and contradictory - but I suspect that is at least partly a function of the phenomenon being confused and contradictory. She makes some good points, especially about the kinds of information and guidance people need to smooth their path... her needlessly difficult bus journey to Sixth Form College, her choices of A level subject and the preparation she received for her Cambridge application and interview (I am impressed she came out of that nasty little experience with as much positivity as she did) She makes a much more subtle point about differences in teacher expectations at different schools than is often made, and as a result I feel she probably comes much closer to the truth.
It's neither a sour or a hand wringing book which in the hands of a less writer it could have been.
March 20, 2023
The best book I've ever read. A must for any 'socially uprooted' person looking to better understand the world and their place in it.
Hanley articulated so many of my experiences that I could never put into words. She treats them with such sensitivity that I found myself throughout saying 'Ah - you too?' or 'Wow. There are others!'
A heartfelt handbook to compare and contrast your life against someone refreshingly 'in the know' and real. This quote sums it up:
Hanley articulated so many of my experiences that I could never put into words. She treats them with such sensitivity that I found myself throughout saying 'Ah - you too?' or 'Wow. There are others!'
A heartfelt handbook to compare and contrast your life against someone refreshingly 'in the know' and real. This quote sums it up:
I equated getting an education with becoming equal to others who didn’t face a similar fate. So all this learning, this endless refusal to fit in and accept an ‘easy life’, all this was, after all, done for instrumental reasons. It was about nothing more than wanting, needing, to get to a different place. It had nothing to do with wanting to be posher and everything to do with not wanting to suffer;...
December 27, 2017
“Our culture contains many silent symbols more powerful than money. It contains keys that can’t be bought, which gain access to rooms whose existence you can barely imagine, unless you get to enter them. Social and cultural capital works on a compound-interest model: the more you have, the more you get. The more knowledge and influence you accrue, the more you get to know other people with knowledge and influence, and the more knowledge and influence you acquire to share among people who have it. Mainstream media, including social media, function both as an expression and as a propagator of this model.”
Hanley uses personal experience, as well as referencing many social, political and historical works in her research to bolster the flesh and bones of this thoroughly enjoyable piece of contemporary commentary. She employs an effective balance between so called high and popular culture, moving comfortably between both, to bring forth some very convincing arguments with many well thought out conclusions.
She readily champions the fruits of working class and middle class culture, but she shows that we shouldn’t confine ourselves to one or the other, but instead we should try to make the most of both in order to enjoy a wider, fuller and richer experience of all cultures. She makes a roll call of the many middle class names which have been at the forefront of popular culture in Britain for decades, the likes of Lennon and McCartney, to Ray Davies and Mick Jagger and many more. She admits to having a fondness for Oasis, but is also not afraid to highlight their limitations either, saying, “One of their most plaintive expressions of something or other came in the song ‘Live Forever’, which rhymes ‘pain’ with ‘rain’ but never quite gets to the point of what it is that’s so painful. Existence or trapped wind, I’m never quite sure. Compare the cereal-packet wisdom of Noel Gallagher with the compassionate witness borne by one of his heroes, a 23 year old Paul McCartney, in songs such as ‘Eleanor Rigby.’”
Being only slightly younger than Hanley, I found myself laughing and/or nodding along in recognition at many points through her delightful and witty observations of growing up in the 80s and 90s. The names, places and reference points brought back many memories and associations. Though I’m not sure I buy her whole theory on the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, but nevertheless I found it funny and understand the point she was making. In saying that, I found it a lot harder to disagree with almost any of her political points. Time after time she would make another great point, such as,
“Governments spend entire political terms in election-mode panic, with the single object of convincing working class people that they’re middle class and middle class people that they’re working class. That way, everyone is kept on the edge of their seats by the thought that either they’ll be rich tomorrow (if the Tories get in) or poor tomorrow (if Labour get in).”
She makes some good points about the middle classes having a ‘Glass floor’. She expands further, “Upward social mobility is more common than downward because it is generationally harder to lose middle class privileges, once you have them, than it is to gain them. A family may rapidly lose money-through repossession or bankruptcy, for instance-but its members can’t lose knowledge already gained, qualifications already earned, expectations already entrenched, half as quickly. This is something which members of the middle class tend to overlook or underestimate, and which causes them to work harder than they probably need to in order to retain those privileges.”
Hanley shows how a common problem facing working class people, especially younger and more impressionable people, is the decision whether or not to break out of the mould of their peers and family. “The difficulty comes when you have a thought that goes along the lines of ‘I believe life can be better than this’; a thought which is then interpreted by other people as ‘You believe you’re better than me.’” She goes on further to insist that, “The revolution, it turned out, was bloodless because it never actually happened. The coffin of class remained open, whether deliberately or by default, through the mechanisms of a class-bound education system, class segregated housing, a media and cultural landscape that has persistently reinforced class prejudice, and a bizarre historic tendency among British voters to elect governments which act against their own interests.”
As well as drawing obvious inspiration from the late Richard Hoggart, which she explicitly mentions throughout, this book covers similar ground to, and makes an idea companion with Selina Todd’s “The People” and Owen Jones’ “Chavs”, both are actually mentioned in here. All of these books succeed in challenging many of the myths around the class system in the UK in the 21st Century and reflect the realities through social, political and historical facts and realities. This was a really refreshing and sensible piece of writing that makes a lot of important points on many important issues and I highly recommend it.
April 30, 2016
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Journalist Lynsey Hanley's personal exploration of the experience of class in Britain over the past four decades.
2/5: "I can draw an outline of the landscape that shaped us with words such as Nice biscuits, pornography, underpasses, 2p bus fares." Hanley's childhood spanned the 1980s; when she discovered early on the joys and consolations of music, and gained political awareness by observing the ways in which different newspapers covered the Miners' Strike.
3/5: Growing up in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, she found school to be a mostly disappointing experience. Instead, she found solace in the local library and gained knowledge through the pages of music magazines and broadsheet newspapers.
4/5: In this episode, Hanley looks at the process of applying for university - and of how many students make educational decisions based on their backgrounds: 'old' universities for the middle-class, 'new' for the working-class, limiting potential advantages for the latter.
5/5: In this final episode, she looks at the divisive notion, encouraged by politicians of all parties over the past two decades, that we're all middle-class now.
"Changing class is like emigrating from one side of the world to the other, where you have to rescind your old passport, learn a new language and make gargantuan efforts if you are not to completely lose touch with the people and habits of your old life, even if they are the relationships and things that are dearest to your heart."
Class is a subject we're all aware of but rarely talk about - aside from the insidious line that 'we're all middle class now'. Hanley examines class aspiration and social mobility through the lens of her own life; providing a fascinating insight into what it took to leave her home in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, and make her way against the odds through sixth form college, university and on into the world of professional journalism.
Received wisdom tells us social mobility is an unequivocally positive phenomenon, for individuals and for society. Yet changing class can be a lonely, anxious, psychologically disruptive process, which leaves people divided between the place they left and the place they have to inhabit in order to get on.
Written and read by Lynsey Hanley
Abridged by Sian Preece.
Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0785nl9
Journalist Lynsey Hanley's personal exploration of the experience of class in Britain over the past four decades.
2/5: "I can draw an outline of the landscape that shaped us with words such as Nice biscuits, pornography, underpasses, 2p bus fares." Hanley's childhood spanned the 1980s; when she discovered early on the joys and consolations of music, and gained political awareness by observing the ways in which different newspapers covered the Miners' Strike.
3/5: Growing up in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, she found school to be a mostly disappointing experience. Instead, she found solace in the local library and gained knowledge through the pages of music magazines and broadsheet newspapers.
4/5: In this episode, Hanley looks at the process of applying for university - and of how many students make educational decisions based on their backgrounds: 'old' universities for the middle-class, 'new' for the working-class, limiting potential advantages for the latter.
5/5: In this final episode, she looks at the divisive notion, encouraged by politicians of all parties over the past two decades, that we're all middle-class now.
"Changing class is like emigrating from one side of the world to the other, where you have to rescind your old passport, learn a new language and make gargantuan efforts if you are not to completely lose touch with the people and habits of your old life, even if they are the relationships and things that are dearest to your heart."
Class is a subject we're all aware of but rarely talk about - aside from the insidious line that 'we're all middle class now'. Hanley examines class aspiration and social mobility through the lens of her own life; providing a fascinating insight into what it took to leave her home in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, and make her way against the odds through sixth form college, university and on into the world of professional journalism.
Received wisdom tells us social mobility is an unequivocally positive phenomenon, for individuals and for society. Yet changing class can be a lonely, anxious, psychologically disruptive process, which leaves people divided between the place they left and the place they have to inhabit in order to get on.
Written and read by Lynsey Hanley
Abridged by Sian Preece.
Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0785nl9
February 6, 2018
I didn't always agree with the author's conclusions but I found the book to be interesting and thought provoking. The first half of the book concentrates on the author's experiences of growing up on a Birmingham council estate. The impact, through education, of coming in to contact with the middle classes for the first time, and the difficulties and alienation inherent in having to adapt your behaviour and outlook as you move from one class to another, resonated in particular. Given the emotive context and the author's personal background being such an influence, with some notable exceptions I also felt this to be a relatively even-handed discussion of what is (still) a huge political and social issue that has no sign of disappearing any time soon.
December 6, 2016
Hanley acts as an agent for Richard Hoggart name checking The Uses of Literature and Growing Up in just about every chapter. I realise I am trapped in my class (the Middle) and sub-caste (liberal elite); I can't unlearn what I know, my vocabulary, my degree and post graduate qualifications. My father didn't have a hereditary title so there is no way up the ladder for me. Hanley made her step up by reading lots of books (using words like immure, inure,mimesis, melismatic) and going to university; sounds easy; although I don't suppose it was. Her idea of "walls inside her head" has a resonance but this is not the equal of other social mobility literature.
July 8, 2017
As a view of the British class system, the personal, autobiographical matters are both interesting and illuminating. Unfortunately, everything seems prefaced by firm beliefs and conclusions that may not cover the complexity of matters like class, literacy and social mobility. As a result, even incidents that merit extensive description and explanation appear just as arguments that reinforce what has already been said.
March 16, 2017
A very readable combination of the author's autobiographical reminiscences of growing up as 'respectable' working class on a Birmingham council estate with academic analysis of class divisions in British society.
It's a pity it was published too early to include any analysis of the Brexit vote.
It's a pity it was published too early to include any analysis of the Brexit vote.
July 28, 2017
I want to rave about it, but there's something mildly irritating about it. I think perhaps I wanted it to be a densely argued case but instead it's reminiscence without any clear sense of what might be done.
May 15, 2016
Superb!
A moving, touching and funny account of social mobility. Hugely thought-provoking; a great read - I could not put it down.
A moving, touching and funny account of social mobility. Hugely thought-provoking; a great read - I could not put it down.
May 9, 2016
A very good book drawing on the life of the author who was born into working class Britain, and through education moved to become "middle class". It is, more broadly, a study of what it means to be working class, as well as how difficult it is to extract one from it. And the failings of successive governments to address it satisfactorily. Quite a unique insight and a very interesting book.
January 10, 2024
I just didn't find the biographical elements of this book particularly engaging. Its elucidation of the class system is good, but perhaps better for an introductory reader than someone who is already aware that the game is not zero sum and that nepotism and networking are the bread and butter of Britain.
April 29, 2016
A brisk exploration of how social mobility is allied to education, with the author drawing on her own experience and examines what is lost and gained in the transition from one class to another. It's a decent little read, but only if you're really interested.
October 23, 2016
This was a really good read, at times I felt like it drifted a bit but it was insightful and interesting.
May 15, 2017
Highly recommend this book. Excellent on UK social class. Read and digest.
June 7, 2025
3.5
This was advertised to me as the author discussing social class in Britain. In reality, she does that mostly by talking about her own experiences of moving between classes.
Let's premise by saying that if this had been shortened into a long essay about a personal experience of class, I'd have loved it. And while I loved and related a lot with the first part, I think this became quite meandering soon after and I lost some of my interest and attention. It would have been better advertised as a biography.
On the relatable side, many points hit true for me. Yes, I come from a different country, but the social rules, if not exactly the same, nuances apart, are universal. She speaks of class building an invisible wall in our head, a wall that lingers even after you have technically moved to a different class. She mentions the Berlin wall and how its destruction was physical, but not as much mental. In my very limited personal experience with people who lived that period and the aftermath, I found this statement incredibly truthful. I have a social wall in my head, no matter where I am now. Indeed, class is also a state of mind, and behaviours tend to stick around long after you drag yourself through a different class. Often, there is no welcome, and you are put into a subcategory of people that, economically, let's say, are middle class but socially are still working class or the new money compared to old money. What also hit home was the fear that the shifting class means. This lingering feeling of the new status taken away. Personally, that hit home and what I noticed myself experiencing, going through some passages of this book, was a deep sense of shame. Shame that is mine and perhaps absorbed and taught in childhood for belonging to a social class that is, broadly speaking, nowadays considered uncouth and inherently shameful.
Often, she would be giving voice to flimsy thoughts and sensations I experienced. Like the desire for self-improvement, coming not necessarily to climb the class ladder per se but indeed with the desire of not ending up as others in the family had. Exploited. Belittled. I am trying to climb because it's shameful to stay at the bottom and I can bear many things, but apparently not shame.
I do dress in casual cynicism to accept a mad life. I did leave in order to break the cycle...She's talking to me, she's talking with me, she's talking as if she were me.
But she's also talking about so many others. Others I've met and so many more I'll never meet. She discusses the school system quite a lot. She talks about boys being disruptive and failing to say fuck you to a system that is expecting just that of them. Isn't that sad? She highlights how biased we are in judging a place or experience or type of education-" if we liked it, therefore it is good," and if we have a bad experience with it, then it's bad. In CBT, we call it "emotional thinking," where your feelings make up your reality, although we know that in reality, that is not true. But it becomes true in a sense if you truly believe it, right?
She also made me think about different aspects that I had not considered before. How things can change while the inequalities stay the same. class has evolved somehow in the last few decades and yet the new structures, such as new universities, replicate the same condition, thus keeping the divide.
She talks about the government, which keeps classes divided but also close enough that the higher classes are brought to obedience and compliance with tax payment, so they don't get to fall below, because look how they struggle there. She talks about newspapers which exploit that inherent need to have their own interests expressed- hence we read a paper closer to our political stance.
She goes through so many interesting concepts but she does so while also spending the majority of the time making her way though her personal circumstances and going on an on about some personal things or bands for pages and pages and it become very dispersive and too focused on her own personal experience; down to what I thought were pointless details at time so although I loved how emotionally relatable this was, it draws short on bringing to the table a broader discussion including other classes as well as discussing more intersectionality which she completely ignored (e.g. sex/race etc) and in the end I was quite bored unfortunately.
I will seek out more comprehensive books about the topic, though, so I'm still very grateful to this for opening up the conversation.
*quick FYI: I have a booktube channel! You can find me at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKIN...*
This was advertised to me as the author discussing social class in Britain. In reality, she does that mostly by talking about her own experiences of moving between classes.
Let's premise by saying that if this had been shortened into a long essay about a personal experience of class, I'd have loved it. And while I loved and related a lot with the first part, I think this became quite meandering soon after and I lost some of my interest and attention. It would have been better advertised as a biography.
On the relatable side, many points hit true for me. Yes, I come from a different country, but the social rules, if not exactly the same, nuances apart, are universal. She speaks of class building an invisible wall in our head, a wall that lingers even after you have technically moved to a different class. She mentions the Berlin wall and how its destruction was physical, but not as much mental. In my very limited personal experience with people who lived that period and the aftermath, I found this statement incredibly truthful. I have a social wall in my head, no matter where I am now. Indeed, class is also a state of mind, and behaviours tend to stick around long after you drag yourself through a different class. Often, there is no welcome, and you are put into a subcategory of people that, economically, let's say, are middle class but socially are still working class or the new money compared to old money. What also hit home was the fear that the shifting class means. This lingering feeling of the new status taken away. Personally, that hit home and what I noticed myself experiencing, going through some passages of this book, was a deep sense of shame. Shame that is mine and perhaps absorbed and taught in childhood for belonging to a social class that is, broadly speaking, nowadays considered uncouth and inherently shameful.
Often, she would be giving voice to flimsy thoughts and sensations I experienced. Like the desire for self-improvement, coming not necessarily to climb the class ladder per se but indeed with the desire of not ending up as others in the family had. Exploited. Belittled. I am trying to climb because it's shameful to stay at the bottom and I can bear many things, but apparently not shame.
I do dress in casual cynicism to accept a mad life. I did leave in order to break the cycle...She's talking to me, she's talking with me, she's talking as if she were me.
But she's also talking about so many others. Others I've met and so many more I'll never meet. She discusses the school system quite a lot. She talks about boys being disruptive and failing to say fuck you to a system that is expecting just that of them. Isn't that sad? She highlights how biased we are in judging a place or experience or type of education-" if we liked it, therefore it is good," and if we have a bad experience with it, then it's bad. In CBT, we call it "emotional thinking," where your feelings make up your reality, although we know that in reality, that is not true. But it becomes true in a sense if you truly believe it, right?
She also made me think about different aspects that I had not considered before. How things can change while the inequalities stay the same. class has evolved somehow in the last few decades and yet the new structures, such as new universities, replicate the same condition, thus keeping the divide.
She talks about the government, which keeps classes divided but also close enough that the higher classes are brought to obedience and compliance with tax payment, so they don't get to fall below, because look how they struggle there. She talks about newspapers which exploit that inherent need to have their own interests expressed- hence we read a paper closer to our political stance.
She goes through so many interesting concepts but she does so while also spending the majority of the time making her way though her personal circumstances and going on an on about some personal things or bands for pages and pages and it become very dispersive and too focused on her own personal experience; down to what I thought were pointless details at time so although I loved how emotionally relatable this was, it draws short on bringing to the table a broader discussion including other classes as well as discussing more intersectionality which she completely ignored (e.g. sex/race etc) and in the end I was quite bored unfortunately.
I will seek out more comprehensive books about the topic, though, so I'm still very grateful to this for opening up the conversation.
*quick FYI: I have a booktube channel! You can find me at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKIN...*
April 27, 2025
O dear. Another book about class in England
Well the good news is that , that’s me done on the subject. I’m not reading any more - my next book will be about Rewilding
This particular book is written by a so called working class born lady who hoists herself up in to the middle class cohort. Like many of my reviews , these words are more about my state of mind than the state of the book !
Read and skimmed in a day the author is a very articulate and fluent writer. But there just too much dissection of social differences and I just got bogged down.
The good news is - I did come to a conclusion about class in the Uk. In 1970 40 odd percent of the population identified as working class. In 2025 a similar number. So the message is - things don’t really change much over time. So why fret about it.
If you don’t want to remain in your stratum in society , the key to mobility is education and state of mind. So the message is - spend a great deal of time studying and reading. As for state of mind - keep your mind alive and open to all new experiences. Surely in this way you can learn to treat each person you meet the same way - high or low , and in this way you lose the fetters of your so called social position.
Perhaps that is easy to say and think from the “ settee “ in my comfortably furnished rural apartment .
Now on to something altogether more fulfilling
Well the good news is that , that’s me done on the subject. I’m not reading any more - my next book will be about Rewilding
This particular book is written by a so called working class born lady who hoists herself up in to the middle class cohort. Like many of my reviews , these words are more about my state of mind than the state of the book !
Read and skimmed in a day the author is a very articulate and fluent writer. But there just too much dissection of social differences and I just got bogged down.
The good news is - I did come to a conclusion about class in the Uk. In 1970 40 odd percent of the population identified as working class. In 2025 a similar number. So the message is - things don’t really change much over time. So why fret about it.
If you don’t want to remain in your stratum in society , the key to mobility is education and state of mind. So the message is - spend a great deal of time studying and reading. As for state of mind - keep your mind alive and open to all new experiences. Surely in this way you can learn to treat each person you meet the same way - high or low , and in this way you lose the fetters of your so called social position.
Perhaps that is easy to say and think from the “ settee “ in my comfortably furnished rural apartment .
Now on to something altogether more fulfilling
Read
August 18, 2019- Her observation that moving countries and changing social class has parallels both in a geographic sense (moving within a city or cities) and in a culture change sense struck me as very perceptive and on the mark.
- This book sparked the thought that I don’t have take issue with class existing but I find it strange that in Britain, classes are segregated all the way through life. The elite go from beautiful school to beautiful school in serene environments with their own rooms to study in quiet while the worst off are stuck in rowdy class rooms, in run down schools, in run down cities. It’s also a self reinforcing. If people in political power come from those top schools and they don’t know anyone on the minimum wage and have never been in a state funded school, how can they make sound decisions on these matters from yet another beautiful building in the heart of London?
- “Graw wrote an article relating how Labour’s central staff had found it impossible to find a worker on the minimum wage to speak to Miliband for a press call, because none of them knew any. Which kind of says it all.” (p 207)
- This book sparked the thought that I don’t have take issue with class existing but I find it strange that in Britain, classes are segregated all the way through life. The elite go from beautiful school to beautiful school in serene environments with their own rooms to study in quiet while the worst off are stuck in rowdy class rooms, in run down schools, in run down cities. It’s also a self reinforcing. If people in political power come from those top schools and they don’t know anyone on the minimum wage and have never been in a state funded school, how can they make sound decisions on these matters from yet another beautiful building in the heart of London?
- “Graw wrote an article relating how Labour’s central staff had found it impossible to find a worker on the minimum wage to speak to Miliband for a press call, because none of them knew any. Which kind of says it all.” (p 207)
Read
August 7, 2022Awesome, erudite and witty
Lynsey Hanley is an amazingly engaging and talented writer. Interjected with her own experience of social mobility, the author has a deep and incisive understanding of the multilayered and many faceted system of class in the UK.
She is a master of explaining very complex ideas without ever being dry, boring or turgid. Like many Brits, I have long been fascinated by class, after all, we are all born into one, especially in England. I found this book utterly fascinating, extremely well written, beautifully put and incredibly insightful. Pop music, magazines, newspapers, school, further education, attitudes, everything; the emotional toll of upward mobility laid spare.
Recommended as a jolly good read.
Lynsey Hanley is an amazingly engaging and talented writer. Interjected with her own experience of social mobility, the author has a deep and incisive understanding of the multilayered and many faceted system of class in the UK.
She is a master of explaining very complex ideas without ever being dry, boring or turgid. Like many Brits, I have long been fascinated by class, after all, we are all born into one, especially in England. I found this book utterly fascinating, extremely well written, beautifully put and incredibly insightful. Pop music, magazines, newspapers, school, further education, attitudes, everything; the emotional toll of upward mobility laid spare.
Recommended as a jolly good read.
August 24, 2019
I met Lynley at the Tate Liverpool event recently. She and I attended the same Sixth Form College in Solihull so reading ‘Respectable - Crossing the Class Divide’ - gave added personal interest.
Anyone with a interest in education would find insights to enjoy in this book. 35 years on one wonders if anything has changed to make education more equitable. Universal tertiary education has produced the smartest society ever lived. One feels Lynley would be happy with that.
Learning how to learn is a lifelong journey. Opportunities to become Respectable continue!
Anyone with a interest in education would find insights to enjoy in this book. 35 years on one wonders if anything has changed to make education more equitable. Universal tertiary education has produced the smartest society ever lived. One feels Lynley would be happy with that.
Learning how to learn is a lifelong journey. Opportunities to become Respectable continue!
December 29, 2024
as a relative outsider and newbie to the british class system, yet someone who has been thrown into the deep end of it when i moved here for 😳🫣 medical school at 18, i am fascinated and bewildered by it.
in this book, lynsey uses her own lived experience to explore the reality of social mobility in england, and navigates the challenges to identity formation and personal and professional development that are so prevalent and yet so rarely discussed. framing these rather complicated issues and their interplay with her own personal narrative makes this an accessible and engaging read.
in this book, lynsey uses her own lived experience to explore the reality of social mobility in england, and navigates the challenges to identity formation and personal and professional development that are so prevalent and yet so rarely discussed. framing these rather complicated issues and their interplay with her own personal narrative makes this an accessible and engaging read.
January 14, 2020
I enjoyed Lynsey's book 'Estates' and enjoyed this book on social mobility equally.Easy to read with many personal insights it certainly resonated with me.Some of her early recollections seemed to me to be second hand as I'm sure she was too young to remember , however that is a minor quibble.Walls in the head is the phrase that sticks with me and certainly connects with my experience.A very enjoyable read.
January 16, 2021
An informative and very honest description of class as experienced by someone growing up in the latter half of the 20th century. Interestingly I shared some of these experiences although I was educated earlier. It was good to realize someone else understood the challenges but saddening that the opportunity for upward social mobility is still an issue that has not been addressed.
July 20, 2025
Excellent. I wish more people could read this. Despite both coming from working-class backgrounds, our early/pre-18 experiences are very different. I want to read more about those who *don't* excel at school, who don't have the support and encouragement of teachers, family and friends. Despite being published in 2016, much of what she writes still stands. I wish this existed when I was 18.
May 27, 2018
Familiar to my own experiences in places but couldn’t help feeling it went on a bit.
Learnt through this book that I grew up in one of the poorest U.K. constituencies though!
Learnt through this book that I grew up in one of the poorest U.K. constituencies though!
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