Description

‘Fascinating’ Spectator
‘Entertaining’ Sunday Times
‘Enthralling’ Guardian
‘Beautiful, funny and moving’ Daily Mail
‘Compelling and moving’ Observer
‘Replete with vivid – often hilarious, often shocking – anecdotes’ Financial Times

While for generations Polly Toynbee’s ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family – which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop – Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

Publisher Review

Entertaining…a surprisingly enjoyable family memoir * Sunday Times * Part social analysis, part polemic (once a columnist, always a columnist), part compelling family memoir, replete with vivid – often hilarious, often shocking – anecdotes. It is ultimately, however, a work of love, forgiveness and understanding. * Financial Times * Fascinating…She has spent a lifetime highlighting the need for social change, and her book fizzes with that continuing purpose * Spectator * Enthralling…laceratingly honest and often funny * Guardian * An irresistible, self-aware British class comedy. It reads rather like an Evelyn Waugh novel * New Statesman * For the many people who have followed Toynbee’s career and felt a connection with her strong, radical voice, this book will delight and educate in equal measure * Yorkshire Life * Marked by its compassion, humour and elegiac tone * Irish Times * Funny, moving and crammed with extraordinary stories, the best, and least hypocritical, book about class I’ve ever read — Andrew Marr An outstanding work: totally absorbing and so well written, packed with interesting events, people and thoughts. — Claire Tomalin As usual with anything written by Polly Toynbee there is much insight and wisdom between its covers. What is unusual is the introspection. This is a book about class and feminism and social history. Above all it’s a riveting and moving memoir about growing up on the privileged side of a class divide that she dedicated her professional life to eradicating. — Alan Johnson An extraordinary family memoir of generations of Toynbees for whom opposing class and privilege became the defining concern of their lives. This is a wonderful book, astute, funny, honest and deeply pertinent to Britain today. — Caroline Moorehead A compelling and delicious narrative that vividly describes the gallery of amazing Toynbee forbears and connections but also gives us an extraordinary history of progressive politics and social reform in this country over 150 years. The Toynbee story is unlike any other. A wonderful read. — Baroness Helena Kennedy KC An absorbing picture of entwined families managing for generations to lead (mostly) comfortable middle class lives while holding radical liberal or left wing views – uneasy indeed, but where would we be without them and others like them? — Rt Hon Lady Hale DBE