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"Social classes Great Britain"
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Leisure, citizenship and working-class men in Britain, 1850-1945
From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.
eBook
To Exercise Our Talents
In twentieth-century Britain the literary landscape underwent a fundamental change. Aspiring authors--traditionally drawn from privileged social backgrounds--now included factory workers writing amid chaotic home lives and married women joining writers' clubs in search of creative outlets. In this brilliantly conceived book, Christopher Hilliard reveals the extraordinary history of \"ordinary\" voices. In capturing the creative lives of ordinary people--would-be fiction-writers and poets who until now have left scarcely a mark on written history--Hilliard sensitively reconstructs the literary culture of a democratic age.
eBook
The class ceiling : why it pays to be privileged
Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful 'class pay gap' exists in Britain's elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies--television, accountancy, architecture, and acting--they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. -- Dust jacket.
Book
'Talking proper' : the rise of accent as social symbol
This book is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. The book traces the origins of the phenomenon in late 18th-century London, follows its history through the 19th and 20th centuries, and charts its downfall during the era of New Labour. The book provides a readable account of a fascinating subject, liberally spiced with quotations from English speech and writing over the past 250 years.
eBook
Classes, cultures, and politics : essays on British history for Ross McKibbin
This book investigates those fields in British history that have been illustrated by the works of Ross McKibbin, one of the foremost historians of twentieth-century Britain. The book examines McKibbin's life and thought, and explores the implications of his arguments. One of his most important achievements has been to break down the artificial barriers that existed between ‘social’ and ‘political’ history, in order to enrich the writing of both; that legacy is reflected throughout this book. From international football to Liberal internationalism, from the hedonism of the early Labour party to the relationship between London cabbies and Thatcherism, this book attempts to explore contemporary Britain, endeavouring to be as original, sincere, rebarbative, and diverting as the historian whose work has inspired it.
eBook
At home at Highclere : entertaining at the real Downton Abbey
Lady Carnarvon's love of history is richly rewarded at Highclere Castle with its mine of family records going back some 300 years. She has delved into the archives to create a book that invites you inside the Castle, past and present. Throughout the centuries, Highclere has welcomed Royalty, Statesmen, Egyptologists and pioneers of technology along with men and women from the worlds of music, art and letters. The etiquette of the invitation, the balance of guests at a weekend house party, their 'placement' at dinners, and the entertainment of friends, as well as the domestic management required to execute the perfect occasion, have all preoccupied successive generations of chatelaines. This book tells the story four real life weekends - from 1866 to 1936 - when the great and the good gathered at Highclere to change the world in some large or small part. It then reflects on how the current Countess entertains 'At Home' at Highclere today, including recipes throughout.
Book
An Everyday Life of the English Working Class
This book concerns two men, a stockingmaker and a magistrate, who both lived in a small English village at the turn of the nineteenth century. It focuses on Joseph Woolley the stockingmaker, on his way of seeing and writing the world around him, and on the activities of magistrate Sir Gervase Clifton, administering justice from his country house Clifton Hall. Using Woolley's voluminous diaries and Clifton's magistrate records, Carolyn Steedman gives us a unique and fascinating account of working-class living and loving, and getting and spending. Through Woolley and his thoughts on reading and drinking, sex, the law and social relations, she challenges traditional accounts which she argues have overstated the importance of work to the working man's understanding of himself, as a creature of time, place and society. She shows instead that, for men like Woolley, law and fiction were just as critical as work in framing everyday life.
eBook