Introduction

Abstract

On 29 February 1960 an editorial in the Times Literary Supplement commented — ‘it is rather ironical that, at a time when the British working-classes seem to be growing conservative in their political views and growing middle-class in their tastes and habits, we should be enjoying for the first time in many years something like a renaissance of working-class literature’. This apparent paradox has since been noted with regard to a wide range of forms of representation, from sociological writing to commercial cinema and this book’s starting-point lies in the attempt to recognise and interrelate the variety of cultural practices and products which were concerned to provide representations of contemporary working-class life in the period 1957–64.