Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide

Society is often talked about as a ladder, from which you can climb from bottom to top. The walls are less talked about. This book is about how people try to get over them, whether they manage to or not.

In autumn 1992, growing up on a vast Birmingham estate, the sixteen-year-old Lynsey Hanley went to sixth-form college. She knew that it would change her life, but was entirely unprepared for the price she would have to pay: to leave behind her working-class world and become middle class. In this empathic, wry and passionate exploration of class in Britain today, Lynsey Hanley looks at how people are kept apart, and keep themselves apart - and the costs involved in the journey from 'there' to 'here'.