Polly Toynbee: what my privileged start in life taught me about the British class system

It wasn’t just luck that steered the Guardian columnist to Oxford and into a media career ... She reflects on the subtle mechanics of class (and an early encounter with a naked future PM)Children know. They breathe it in early, for there’s no unknowing the difference between nannies, cleaners, below-stairs people and the family upstairs. Children are the go-betweens, one foot in each world, and yet they know very well from the earliest age where they belong, where their destiny lies or, to put it crudely, who pays whom. Tiny hands are steeped young in the essence of class and caste. In nursery school, in reception they see the Harry Potter sorting hat at work. They know. And all through school those fine gradations grow clearer, more precise, more consciously knowing, more shaming, more frightening. Good liberal parents teach their children to check their privilege – useful modern phrase – but it swells up like a bubo on the nose. There’s no hiding it.I can summon up the childhood shame at class embarrassments. Aged seven like me, Maureen, with her hair pinned sideways in a pink slide, lived in a pebble-dashed council house by the water tower. They were at the other end of Lindsey, more hamlet than village, half a mile down the road from my father’s pink thatched cottage set in the flat prairie lands of Suffolk, where I spent half my time, the other half in London, shuttling between divorced parents. I envied Maureen for what looked to me like a cheerful large family... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-05-20 12:00:56 UTC ]
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Naomi Klein investigates ‘conspiracy theory culture’ that has shaken her life

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[ The Guardian | 2023-05-17 13:00:30 UTC ]
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Life-Changing Books for Every Reader: PW Talks with Laura Schreiber

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-05-16 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The British Book Awards Honor Salman Rushdie

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2023-05-16 00:21:54 UTC ]
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Kelly McMasters on Starting a Bookstore to Save Her Marriage

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-05-09 08:53:39 UTC ]
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7 Babysitters Club Books that Changed My Life

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[ Electric Literature | 2023-05-05 11:10:00 UTC ]
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Literati Book Fairs Expand into Minneapolis with Start Reading Now Partnership

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-05-03 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“Maybe This Means Something.” Min Jin Lee on Vulnerability and Audacity, in Life and on the Page

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The best gifts for the new grads in your life

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[ Engadget | 2023-05-01 13:15:46 UTC ]
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Where are fiction’s real working-class heroes? | Letter

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[ The Guardian | 2023-04-30 16:40:05 UTC ]
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Attacks On The Nation’s Libraries Are About Class As Much As Censorship

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[ HuffPost | 2023-04-28 09:45:11 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-04-25 08:53:29 UTC ]
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How the social traffic that gave life to BuzzFeed News ultimately led to its demise

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-04-21 04:00:00 UTC ]
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A Dancer’s Life: Chita Rivera on Working Hard and Learning From the Best

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[ The New York Times | 2023-04-19 09:00:33 UTC ]
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London Book Fair 2023: Brian Murray, the Ukrainian First Lady, and a Shocking Arrest Start the Show

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-04-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Granta 163: Best of Young British Novelists 5 review – more solipsism than state of the nation

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[ The Guardian | 2023-04-16 06:00:03 UTC ]
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Here is the Granta 2023 Best of British Novelists list.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-04-13 13:57:54 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2023-04-13 07:00:37 UTC ]
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The Steve Jobs Archive releases e-book chronicling the Apple co-founder's life in his own words

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