Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?. David Boyle

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       Prologue

       ‘By the people, I mean the middle classes, the wealth and intelligence of the country, the glory of the British name.’

      Henry, Lord Brougham, 1831

      I was born in a corner of central London that wraps itself around a great grey-green greasy stretch of water called the Regent’s Canal. It was and is known as Little Venice.

      As anyone familiar with Little Venice will know, this defines me inescapably as middle-class. Not just slightly middle-class, but staggeringly, swelteringly, stratospherically middle-class, as middle as you can get. And not just by the broad American definition (average income) either, but by the specific British definitions which are harder to pin down, but which seem to be about attitudes and upbringing, culture and prejudices.

      But there are many kinds of middle class, even in the UK, and I hope this book will strike a chord with all of them. From the first-generation middle classes who followed the entrepreneurial path set out by Margaret Thatcher right through to the crustiest scion of the landed gentry. From the brand-new estate outside Bishop’s Stortford to the tumbledown off-grid eco-cottage outside Totnes. I mention Little Venice because anyone reading this book deserves to know about the niche in the class system I am writing from, but I am only too aware that there is more than one way of being middle-class.

      In my case, I am also middle-class because my parents are. Both my grandfathers were in the services, one rising to be a colonel in the army and the other to be a captain in the navy. Their service pensions and various modest pots of inherited money and property gave them relatively comfortable retirements. I owe my grandparents a great СКАЧАТЬ