{"product_id":"respectable-the-experience-of-class-by-lynsey-hanley","title":"Respectable: The Experience of Class by Lynsey Hanley","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003eIn her new book, Lynsey Hanley tells the “age-old” story of the “lonely journey” from lower class to middle class, said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday – a journey she describes as “like emigrating from one side of the world to the other”. Although she grew up on a Birmingham council estate (an experience she wrote about in an earlier work, \u003ci\u003eEstates\u003c\/i\u003e), Hanley wasn’t “classically working class”. Her father, a clerk, wore a tie to work; the family ate “HP Sauce, not Daddies”. From an early age, Hanley felt herself a “misfit” on the tough Chelmsley Wood estate, with its “casual racism and casual violence”, and she had a strong “urge towards self-improvement”. Aged 17, she was “doing five A-levels and four jobs”; as an adult, she became a successful journalist and academic. These days, favouring “ground coffee” and “continental travel”, she belongs to London’s “established middle class”.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eRespectable\u003c\/i\u003e is an “ambitious” and “impressive” attempt to update Richard Hoggart’s seminal 1957 study of class, \u003ci\u003eThe Uses of Literacy\u003c\/i\u003e, said Colin Grant in The Guardian. Using herself as a “case study”, Hanley “quietly” exposes the lack of mobility and equality at the heart of British society. Occasionally, she can’t stop her true “fury” rising to the surface – as when she describes being laughed at by a “snobbish don” during a Cambridge interview. Hanley is an “engaging” writer, but her view of class is “dated”, said Melanie Reid in The Times. I wasn’t convinced by her descriptions of “rigid class divisions”. Things today are “more fluid and egalitarian”– especially among the young, for whom class is “an analogue cliché in a digital age”. Though Hanley is “undoubtedly” sincere, “you want to shake her and say: ‘Get over it, woman!’”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Week Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":54037949776148,"sku":"ofe1789764747360","price":14.88,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1011\/7627\/9316\/files\/respectable-the-experience-of-class-by-lynsey-hanley_1.jpg?v=1789764751","url":"https:\/\/straphemfit.shop\/products\/respectable-the-experience-of-class-by-lynsey-hanley","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}