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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Unearthed Raymond Chandler Story Rebukes U.S. Health Care System

Raymond Chandler, the crime novelist, in 1946. One of his short stories, “It’s All Right — He Only Died,” was recently discovered and published by Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2017-11-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Evers and McWatt land £20k British Library residences

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[ The Bookseller | 2017-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Frying start

For Robert Webb’s How Not to Be a Boy, Canongate’s Jenny Fry, Anna Frame and Vicki Watson worked closely to deliver a nuanced message to a huge audience. Miriam Robinson spoke to Fry about the campaign’s finer points. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2017-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett by Helen Smith review – a cultural battleground

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[ The Guardian | 2017-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Investment bankers' guide for start-ups to PRH

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[ The Bookseller | 2017-11-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Touring the solar system with a new book of NASA photos

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[ Engadget | 2017-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Researching Gender Bias in Peer Review; Indexing an Info Systems Journal

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-11-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Stuff | 2017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The magic that inspired Harry Potter on display at the British Library

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[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A sneak peek at the British Library's Harry Potter exhibition

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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2017-10-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2017-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hodder to publish 'life-affirming' experience of locked-in syndrome

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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2017-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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