Social classes

The successful Broadway run of The Pitmen Painters, Lee Hall’s drama set in a north-east mining community, has introduced US audiences to a remarkable chapter in British working-class life, writes  Robert Colls.

As bankers gain pariah status, William D. Rubinstein discusses Britain’s changing attitudes towards the wealthy.

Paula Bartley takes issue with those historians who depict the suffragettes of the Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union as elitists concerned only with upper- and middle-class women.

Edward Royle explains how labels were used in early industrial Britain for propaganda rather than description.  

Bryan Palmer looks at the dialogue between Marxism, class struggle and working-class identity in the changing fortunes of working-class history in North America and beyond.

Despite the aspirations of Disraeli and others for 'one nation', the dynamics and disparities of Victorian society inexorably sharpened the sense of class identity and its verbal expression.

Penelope Corfield finds that economic progress and new self-awareness in language and gesture disturbed the tranquility of the ‘Age of Elegance'.