The British Common People

"There are quite a few radical histories like this being written now, but this one is from 1938. A lot of it is incredibly dated, like the use of the phrase “post war” to mean after the First World War. It was written at a time when socialism was not totally discredited as an ideology, and you would be wrong to accept every one of the assumptions that lie behind it. But with that caveat, it’s full of absolutely fascinating facts about the small changes in British life from 1746 to 1938, and about the working class. It’s a classic book that makes you think about Britain in a different way. Every country has a class system, especially the ones that tell you they don’t. What is unusual about this country is the extent to which accent comes into it. We classify everyone we meet based on their accent, which works on two levels – regional and in class terms. Some accents are effectively classless: Edinburgh, for instance. Other accents are emphatically not, such as cockney. I think that classification based on accent is the key to the class system here. It permeates the way in which we think about each other."