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 ]
News tagged with:
#harry potter
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 15/02/2011 - 17:04 All remaining 28 British Bookshops and Stationers stores will shut up shop within a month, unless a last-minute deal can be made with any interested parties. The programme of closure will begin over the next week, with around... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#interested parties
#british bookshops
#made redundant
Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 08/02/2011 - 09:10 W H Smith has acquired 22 stores previously run by British Bookshops and Stationers in a £1m deal. The bookshops will continue to trade under BB&S until a "phased takeover" begins later this month in stores in Teddington... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#british bookshops
Written By: Charlotte Williams Little, Brown will be examining Britains industries with a title by Evan Davis, Dragons Den and Today programme presenter. Made in Britain will be published on 5th May as an £18.99 hardback, tying-in to a three-part BBC2 series of the same name, fronted by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#intellectual property
#charlotte williams
Written By: Charlotte Williams Hodder & Stoughton has acquired the account of the life of "real life Charlotte Gray". Pearl Witherington was the only female agent in the Special Operations Executive to run her own network in France during the second world war. Hodder non-fiction publisher... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-01-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#curtis brown
#elizabeth sheinkman
#world war
TED, known for exclusive events and online videos of speeches by celebrities like Al Gore, Bono and Malcolm Gladwell, plans to publish its own short ebooks, beginning with three that went on sale Wednesday. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-01-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#short ebooks
#malcolm gladwell
#al gore
#online videos
#media decoder