The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose

What books did people read? What newspapers did they have access to? What conversations were they party to? Who went to evening classes or WEA organised courses? Much of this seems impossible to trace or pin down but Rose has done a truly remarkable piece of academic detective work to pin down a body of evidence that’s never been available before. Rose does, of course, face a formidable research challenge – finding the evidence for what might be seen as untraceable or ephemeral pursuits. What is really interesting about Rose’s book is that we see how this desire to learn wasn’t all about what we now call ‘social mobility’ – moving from the working class to the middle class – but about becoming an educated member of the class in which they lived their lives. And, it’s important to note, this wasn’t simply a process of self-education designed to help climb the ladder of social status but frequently a desire for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In many ways this is a study of the indomitable spirit and intellectual curiosity of sections of the working class who were effectively cut off from education and exposure to ideas and artistic expression by the middle class establishment.Ī good proportion of the book is in fact a study of the temper and attitudes of the working class autodidact and sets out to draw a portrait of the different pathways towards the goal of self-improvement.

I think it’s a shame that the book has a slightly pompous and overly academic title because in the end I don’t think it does the body of ideas here any favours. For a start it tries to do something that looks completely forbidding – to establish just what a great swathe of the population did for entertainment and intellectual stimulation before television and the growth of a mass media accessible by all – and then it goes on to challenge a number of long held but ultimately erroneous assumptions about working class life. This is an extraordinary book in many ways. Posted on The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose