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An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals
'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.
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.
434 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 1, 2023
59 people are currently reading
387 people want to read
About the author
Polly Toynbee
29 books38 followersPolly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee, 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing, though during the 2010 general election she urged a tactical vote in support of the Liberal Democrats in an attempt to bring about a Lab-Lib coalition in support of proportional representation. She was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007. In 2007 she was named 'Columnist of the Year' at the British Press Awards.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 3, 2024
Examination and commentary of the authors Liberal family members over the years. Interesting insights of a bygone era
July 25, 2023
Really the hardback.
This is how a memoir should be written: interestingly, a bit of history thrown in, famous people mentioned (but not too many and in context), and most of all, in fun. Why aren’t more like this? No annoying footnotes or superscripts, no dry dissection of facts, just fascinating stories about a famous and engaging family, all being privileged left wingers or liberals.
My only disquiet is the part at the end when she has extracts from her books ‘Hard Work’ and ‘A Working Life’. I’m not sure why she did this, apart from allowing her to compare her prosperous life with that of the ‘underclass’. Everything else I loved, and made me wish that my family was anywhere near as interesting.
This is how a memoir should be written: interestingly, a bit of history thrown in, famous people mentioned (but not too many and in context), and most of all, in fun. Why aren’t more like this? No annoying footnotes or superscripts, no dry dissection of facts, just fascinating stories about a famous and engaging family, all being privileged left wingers or liberals.
My only disquiet is the part at the end when she has extracts from her books ‘Hard Work’ and ‘A Working Life’. I’m not sure why she did this, apart from allowing her to compare her prosperous life with that of the ‘underclass’. Everything else I loved, and made me wish that my family was anywhere near as interesting.
March 20, 2025
Best Bio I've read this year, and best - and most literate and telling - bio I've Ever read, if my fading memory is not inaccurate.
August 20, 2023
Good read - refreshing perspective of lack of social mobility and steep liberal and left-wing family history.
July 14, 2024
The overall theme of this book is interesting – class is important but how should one treat this if you are solidly of the left but have no working class roots, andt instead a long history of middle class background? The book is about two-thirds personal family memoir, and about one-third pulling in facts from the research of Toynbee and others about the realities of working class life in the UK and the blindness of those from more upper social strata to this.
For an Australian reader, though Ttoynbee calls herself 'middle class', I found the class location of the memoir to be closer to the conservative upper class families whose outer circles she inhabits (in particular the Mitfords), since her forbears and family all have strong missions and identities of the kind that are reported in the press – no-one lives an anonymous life as a teacher or the like. Instead they are professors (in particular her famous grandfather Arnold), journalists, start charities or other good works (like her father Philip, who goes on to start a very unsuccessful commune).
On the whole, Toynbee is very quick on pointing out the class privilege behind the experiences of the various members of her family (and indeed this is the point of the book). She argues that all children are aware of fine class gradations from an early age (the contact with servants!). But arguably a lot of her story is precisely about her particular class gradation, since it is on the lower border of the aristocracy that so much of this is about feeling the slights of judgements from others about subtle gradations of class – I don’t know that many others are so consciously obsessed with this (or perhaps it is that you are most aware of it close to where are you are situated yourself – the ‘respectable WC eg compared with those on welfare, but less delineation of the differences in the classes above). As someone reading from Australia, and from a lower class background, I became a bit overwhelmed with the amount of famous people that came into this story and whom Toynbee had met or knew or who knew her.
She writes as a journalist who has done quite a lot of research on material poverty and the blindness of the privileged, and ends with recent research confirming the persistence of this. But the book does not try to disentangle two distinct elements of class analysis – the material (including educational advantages) and the judgemental/identificational that also bestow avantages and disadvantages, and have been the subject of a lot of academic work on this subject. But in some ways she bears out Bourdieuean analysis - coming from a line of academics even she is obsessed as she tells each story in her memoir with whether they passed the 11+, whether they went to Oxbridge (they almost always did), whether they got a ‘good’ degree. From her personal experience she is good on how the Oxford interview and entrance exam was set up to advantage people like her – from the kind of cultural backgrounds that could talk fluently (and shallowly) about a range of subjects rather than being good at learning what school teaches.
The central story about her own family case is well sustained – that they all had tremendous advantages both educational and safety net and expectations as a result of their background; but the long tradition of trying to work for the left and for liberal ideals even from such backgrounds led many to burnout, depression, alcoholism, or as in her case, just some guilt. A major theme, like Anna Funder's Wifedom, is the way spouses and children of strong reformers with high public reputations often bear the brunt of neglect and are not treated well.
The book has many excellent and colourful anecdotes. But it is not well edited – a number of sentences or facts are repeated, sometimes within a few pages; and a number of sentences are surprisingly ungrammatical. Nevertheless it is extremely readable and combines the pleasures of a gossipy memoir with a serious attention to the persistence of class effects and blindnesses.
For an Australian reader, though Ttoynbee calls herself 'middle class', I found the class location of the memoir to be closer to the conservative upper class families whose outer circles she inhabits (in particular the Mitfords), since her forbears and family all have strong missions and identities of the kind that are reported in the press – no-one lives an anonymous life as a teacher or the like. Instead they are professors (in particular her famous grandfather Arnold), journalists, start charities or other good works (like her father Philip, who goes on to start a very unsuccessful commune).
On the whole, Toynbee is very quick on pointing out the class privilege behind the experiences of the various members of her family (and indeed this is the point of the book). She argues that all children are aware of fine class gradations from an early age (the contact with servants!). But arguably a lot of her story is precisely about her particular class gradation, since it is on the lower border of the aristocracy that so much of this is about feeling the slights of judgements from others about subtle gradations of class – I don’t know that many others are so consciously obsessed with this (or perhaps it is that you are most aware of it close to where are you are situated yourself – the ‘respectable WC eg compared with those on welfare, but less delineation of the differences in the classes above). As someone reading from Australia, and from a lower class background, I became a bit overwhelmed with the amount of famous people that came into this story and whom Toynbee had met or knew or who knew her.
She writes as a journalist who has done quite a lot of research on material poverty and the blindness of the privileged, and ends with recent research confirming the persistence of this. But the book does not try to disentangle two distinct elements of class analysis – the material (including educational advantages) and the judgemental/identificational that also bestow avantages and disadvantages, and have been the subject of a lot of academic work on this subject. But in some ways she bears out Bourdieuean analysis - coming from a line of academics even she is obsessed as she tells each story in her memoir with whether they passed the 11+, whether they went to Oxbridge (they almost always did), whether they got a ‘good’ degree. From her personal experience she is good on how the Oxford interview and entrance exam was set up to advantage people like her – from the kind of cultural backgrounds that could talk fluently (and shallowly) about a range of subjects rather than being good at learning what school teaches.
The central story about her own family case is well sustained – that they all had tremendous advantages both educational and safety net and expectations as a result of their background; but the long tradition of trying to work for the left and for liberal ideals even from such backgrounds led many to burnout, depression, alcoholism, or as in her case, just some guilt. A major theme, like Anna Funder's Wifedom, is the way spouses and children of strong reformers with high public reputations often bear the brunt of neglect and are not treated well.
The book has many excellent and colourful anecdotes. But it is not well edited – a number of sentences or facts are repeated, sometimes within a few pages; and a number of sentences are surprisingly ungrammatical. Nevertheless it is extremely readable and combines the pleasures of a gossipy memoir with a serious attention to the persistence of class effects and blindnesses.
August 18, 2024
Polly Toynbee was aware from an early age that she was a privileged child. On the other hand, her father would park her, and her sister, outside a pub with a fizzy drink while he went in to get drunk. His behaviour was erratic and PT and her sister knew why. This is one uneasiness - being the child of a brilliant and charming drunk. Eventually, Polly's Mum got a divorce and they all got re-married - this isn't easy either for the children. But being so "privileged" Polly went to boarding school, of course. She disliked it and left with poor qualifications and subsequently went to a London Comprehensive school, where she was given some good tuition and got into Oxford. Did the famous name help? Her grandfather was a celebrated historian and his sisters were academics too.
The liberal tradition is complicated. Sometimes aristocratic and titled, usually educated in the ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome about high standards in public life, Liberals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were deeply concerned about the lives of the factory workers whose long hours of drudgery kept the dividends coming. They were not so much concerned with removing Capitalist structures and sharing their power - leave that to the socialists - as collecting damning facts and shocking statistics in order to shame the influential into enforcing such reforms as Factory Acts, which protect workers from the most extreme forms of exploitation. They believed in gradual amelioration rather than revolutionary change.
As capitalists with consciences, they felt guilty, but not guilty enough to make the case for systematic change. This stance was difficult and different branches of Polly's family dealt with it in different ways. She goes through the various members of her family tree telling the story of their
political activism or social work, including the farm commune founded by her father, and how they coped or did not, when their efforts failed to make a difference.
Polly tells us of her own research into the pay and conditions of the lowest paid workers in our economy. She's very much in her family's tradition. Her account and analysis of social and economic changes are helpful to our understanding of the difficulties of the poor. I enjoyed these chapters especially.
You may say that Polly is very lucky, but I would say that she is also very unfortunate, but she has worked very hard all her life and has steadfastly stuck to her values like a Great Liberal, and I think that all her illustrious forbears, had they been able to look down from Heaven and watch her over the decades, would have been very proud of her.
The liberal tradition is complicated. Sometimes aristocratic and titled, usually educated in the ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome about high standards in public life, Liberals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were deeply concerned about the lives of the factory workers whose long hours of drudgery kept the dividends coming. They were not so much concerned with removing Capitalist structures and sharing their power - leave that to the socialists - as collecting damning facts and shocking statistics in order to shame the influential into enforcing such reforms as Factory Acts, which protect workers from the most extreme forms of exploitation. They believed in gradual amelioration rather than revolutionary change.
As capitalists with consciences, they felt guilty, but not guilty enough to make the case for systematic change. This stance was difficult and different branches of Polly's family dealt with it in different ways. She goes through the various members of her family tree telling the story of their
political activism or social work, including the farm commune founded by her father, and how they coped or did not, when their efforts failed to make a difference.
Polly tells us of her own research into the pay and conditions of the lowest paid workers in our economy. She's very much in her family's tradition. Her account and analysis of social and economic changes are helpful to our understanding of the difficulties of the poor. I enjoyed these chapters especially.
You may say that Polly is very lucky, but I would say that she is also very unfortunate, but she has worked very hard all her life and has steadfastly stuck to her values like a Great Liberal, and I think that all her illustrious forbears, had they been able to look down from Heaven and watch her over the decades, would have been very proud of her.
May 12, 2025
A eye-opening account of the British class system from a so-called middle class perspective (upper middle, surely). I’m Australian, with working class grandparents, so my lived experience of class is quite different. Nevertheless I appreciated the honest wrestlings here of the author between ideas and her reality.
My reflections on reading this:
- although the author’s family did strive to make their world a better place, they often weren’t very likable or easy to live with.
- the critical importance to the left in Britain of changing society to make it fairer for all especially from an economic/opportunities perspective. I don’t feel like the left in my country of Australia are much concerned about this.
- I work with beggars in a developing country and I’m strongly pro having a minimum wage that is possible to live on (with more than just lentils and porridge for food). I know in the developing country I live in this is not the case. But to be honest, I don’t know how easy it is to live on benefits or the minimum wage in my own country of Australia.
- I know that there is blame cast from those more well-off towards those who struggle with poverty. I’m not sure how you balance personal responsibility with unfair power structures. My working class grandfather made sure he always paid his bills before having a drink at the end of the week. (He didn’t want to be an out-of-control alcoholic like his own father.) He chose to be responsible with his money and his family grew up the better for his good choices.
- My grandfather actually felt himself a rich man because he owned his own house when he died, but he got the deposit for that house by a lucky win on lottery tickets. Would the remuneration he received for his regular work ever have made that dream possible otherwise?
- I note that Polly in her experience of living as single woman on a minimum wage didn’t experience having a partner also on a minimum wage. Would pooling resources have made for a better standard of living? Or does being a couple tend to lead to children and a plunge downward into greater poverty?
-This story does at least include the freeloader in her father’s commune, those not wanting to work or contribute, expecting him to provide everything. They ended up contributing to the suffering of her father. How should society treat those who can work but do not want to is not a question answered here.
Overall, a thought-provoking read. I also enjoyed the name dropping.
My reflections on reading this:
- although the author’s family did strive to make their world a better place, they often weren’t very likable or easy to live with.
- the critical importance to the left in Britain of changing society to make it fairer for all especially from an economic/opportunities perspective. I don’t feel like the left in my country of Australia are much concerned about this.
- I work with beggars in a developing country and I’m strongly pro having a minimum wage that is possible to live on (with more than just lentils and porridge for food). I know in the developing country I live in this is not the case. But to be honest, I don’t know how easy it is to live on benefits or the minimum wage in my own country of Australia.
- I know that there is blame cast from those more well-off towards those who struggle with poverty. I’m not sure how you balance personal responsibility with unfair power structures. My working class grandfather made sure he always paid his bills before having a drink at the end of the week. (He didn’t want to be an out-of-control alcoholic like his own father.) He chose to be responsible with his money and his family grew up the better for his good choices.
- My grandfather actually felt himself a rich man because he owned his own house when he died, but he got the deposit for that house by a lucky win on lottery tickets. Would the remuneration he received for his regular work ever have made that dream possible otherwise?
- I note that Polly in her experience of living as single woman on a minimum wage didn’t experience having a partner also on a minimum wage. Would pooling resources have made for a better standard of living? Or does being a couple tend to lead to children and a plunge downward into greater poverty?
-This story does at least include the freeloader in her father’s commune, those not wanting to work or contribute, expecting him to provide everything. They ended up contributing to the suffering of her father. How should society treat those who can work but do not want to is not a question answered here.
Overall, a thought-provoking read. I also enjoyed the name dropping.
August 3, 2023
Polly Toynbee is just a few months younger than me, and so initially I was interested in this book to see if her experience of living on the left had any parallels with my own life. It certainly was a fascinating glimpse into a whole dynasty of people with highly developed social consciences, striving to be and to do good. My parents lived through the left wing flirtations with communism in Cambridge and Oxford respectively and I grew up with some of the names mentioned in this book echoing in my ears. She dropped out of the privilege of 1960's university while I considered it seriously wanting to roll up my sleeves and get out in the world to "do good" (but didn't in the end as it would have disappointed and worried my education obsessed parents too much). This is as you would expect a very readable book by a very experienced social affairs journalist of great repute, and packed full of facts and figures as well as compassion. I did not score it five stars, because at times I found it a little bit rambly and repetitive, but I guess that is the nature of family history when all said and done.
February 11, 2025
This is an excellent book. Well-written and consistently interesting, it gives a picture of Toynbee's own family as well as of the development in the UK over the past 100ish years. The many names I did get a little lost in - maybe a glossary would have been useful at the end?
Someone wrote that they didn't like the excerpts/summaries of Toynbee's books about her taking short-term simple jobs. I liked them, both in terms of understanding the development of the UK labour market and in terms of understanding where Toynbee's spirit and interest in labour market issues originated.
The book makes you angry. I wish more people would act on their privilege and do more good for the world. Toynbee has clearly done a lot of good.
Highly recommended. I may still prefer Hard Work though, if I had to choose one of her books ;-) I hadn't read her 1970s book on taking simple jobs but may well look for it now.
Someone wrote that they didn't like the excerpts/summaries of Toynbee's books about her taking short-term simple jobs. I liked them, both in terms of understanding the development of the UK labour market and in terms of understanding where Toynbee's spirit and interest in labour market issues originated.
The book makes you angry. I wish more people would act on their privilege and do more good for the world. Toynbee has clearly done a lot of good.
Highly recommended. I may still prefer Hard Work though, if I had to choose one of her books ;-) I hadn't read her 1970s book on taking simple jobs but may well look for it now.
October 12, 2023
This was extremely interesting. Toynbee looks at the class system through the stories of her family. Resolutely middle class, yet always liberal or left in their politics, she explores her family's often complex feelings about their own privilege. The story dots about a bit, which I found a little annoying at times, shuttling back and forth in time in such small chunks, the stories are quite fragmented. Having said that, it was largely fascinating and I particularly enjoyed the writing about her own life and work.
August 12, 2024
A really interesting read. I had no idea that there were so many connections within Polly Toynbee’s world. The premise of liberalism and inequality while being securely middle class and affluent and how you manage the contradictions was fascinating but ultimately unresolved. I loved the depictions of her relatives as wanting to do well for the world but abysmally failing their own families. Hope was a good factor even in bleak circumstances.
February 23, 2025
Tremendously self-aware, and a fascinating journey through progressive activism over the past hundred and fifty years. I have huge admiration for the author after reading this - I'll be revisiting her back catalogue in due course. In many ways disheartening, but her final chapter filled me with new hope and determination to crack on with building a better world (and having the courage to follow in her forebears' steps by standing up to fascism).
September 27, 2023
Polly Toynbee chronicles the characters and fortunes of her forebears, many of them famous movers and shakers of their times. Found myself agreeing with so much of her left wing viewpoint and felt particularly aggrieved that low income families get so little opportunity to improve their lives. Very readable and both guilt inducing and anger making .
December 17, 2023
Cool story bro
Some favourite quotes:
"his uncontrollable rages over minutiae"
"elliptical (concise) take on life"
"subtle gradiations of social difference"
"The rule isn't absolute: clever, talented, funny, interesting or just plain lucky children break free of low social origins"
"Expectation is everything"
"mind is placed on inferior objects"
Some favourite quotes:
"his uncontrollable rages over minutiae"
"elliptical (concise) take on life"
"subtle gradiations of social difference"
"The rule isn't absolute: clever, talented, funny, interesting or just plain lucky children break free of low social origins"
"Expectation is everything"
"mind is placed on inferior objects"
June 12, 2024
Eye opening and inspiring book for anyone who are on the “left” of the political spectrum.
While it is a family story of the author of their particular struggle, the guilt, the uncomfortable privilege and at times helplessness is all too common.
Highly recommend anyone who is involved with activism to read this book.
While it is a family story of the author of their particular struggle, the guilt, the uncomfortable privilege and at times helplessness is all too common.
Highly recommend anyone who is involved with activism to read this book.
June 19, 2023
The author comes from a life of middle class comfort and ancestors who have tried to change society in their lifetimes. It’s depressing to realise how the gulf between rich and poor has widened in the past 50 years.
June 8, 2024
Great illustration of how money don’t make you happy, by a clearly very good person. She says herself that her life has been charmed - unlike so many of her immediate and long deceased family members. Great stories, anecdotes and reflections abound.
September 24, 2023
So interesting
I gobbled up this part memoir, part family history, part social analysis about social class and the tricky self awareness that comes with privilege on the left
I gobbled up this part memoir, part family history, part social analysis about social class and the tricky self awareness that comes with privilege on the left
November 28, 2023
Very interesting read, providing a biography of her life and family generally, with a special focus on class in Britain.
Good start, slower middle, redeems itself in the last chapter for me.
Good start, slower middle, redeems itself in the last chapter for me.
January 19, 2024
Some really interesting nuggets in here about intergenerational trauma, class and politics
April 8, 2024
Interesting.
April 25, 2024
If I ever had one of those 'fantasy guest' dinner parties, Polly Toynbee would be on the list.
Hats off to her - what an inspirational woman.
Hats off to her - what an inspirational woman.
October 8, 2024
A bit worthy and self absorbed (even for a biography!)
April 14, 2025
Interesting biography of a fascinating family
December 27, 2024
I first read Polly Toynbee's articles on the Guardian Women's page when I was about 12 and have always admired her very much. But I was surprised to learn just how well-connected her family is when reviews of 'An Uneasy Inheritance' began to appear. What makes this 'inheritance' 'uneasy' is the clash between her family's privileged social position and their desire -- often expressed in powerful life choices -- to improve and assist the lives of the impoverished, the marginalised and the vulnerable.
Toynbee defines her family as 'middle class' but admits 'sometimes that ought to include the borderlands of "upper middle class and aristocracy" '. Her great-grandparents, were in fact, the aristocratic owners of one of Yorkshire's most famous estates and stately homes.Castle Howard was left to her grandparents, who because of their socially-conscious values, passed it to another member of the family.
Toynbee's father's family, on the other hand, descend from a long and illustrious line of wealthy, left-leaning intellectuals, including her famous historian grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, and her novelist father Philip, (who set up an experimental commune in Gloucestershire in the 1960s, which, sadly, failed). The book is, in part, a catalogue of encounters with other famous human beings. Jessica (Decca) Mitford is Polly's official 'non-godmother' and they spent many holidays on her private Scottish island. Need I say more?
Still, the inclination of Polly T and her ancestors to help those less fortunate, at some personal cost, is wholly admirable. I also admire her greatly for her books on working people -- which involved her rolling her sleeves up and actually doing their often soul-destroying jobs, at least for a while. The first of these, A Working Life, was written in the 1970s. It saw her employed in a car parts factory, in a steelworks, down a colliery and in the Women's Army, among other things. The second, Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain, was published in 2003, after Thatcher had destroyed manual labour in Britain and it had been replaced by low-paying service jobs. This time Polly worked undercover as a dinner lady, a hospital night cleaner, and a care home assistant, responsible for the washing, toileting, dressing, feeding and general well being of six incontinent residents. RESPECT. Her best job was when she lucked out with a position as a childcarer at the Foreign Office nursery.
So, overall I really liked this book and found it a riveting read. But I do have a little beef with Polly regarding her take on social class. Towards the beginning of the book she writes: 'Even a full quarter of those who have middle class parents still claim working class authenticity by reaching back to grandparents and even to great-grandparents, I understand the urge, but it's ludicrous. (My wise daughter interjects (...) If we had working-class grandparents, wouldn't our lives and attitudes and self-confidence be subtly different? She may be right.) The search for these origin stories springs, the LSE researchers suggest, from the need to prove their own merit ...'.
Well ooff. I take umbrage with that, I'm afraid Polly. I really do.
You may be middle-class because you have professional parents. But when your grandad has worked in a factory all his life and you visit your grandparents every other weekend in their factory- owned terraced house on a lane opposite the factory, you don't have to 'search' for your working -class roots. They are a part of you. When you go from a Yorkshire comprehensive (albeit a 'posh' one) to Oxford you notice the difference, however 'middle -class' you are, nominally. 'Which school did YOU go to?' Even 'Did YOU have a pony?' And the subtle (and not-so-subtle) take-downs of your accent. Until you realise, one day, it has almost gone.
Your daughter is right. Your self -confidence WOULD be different. You wouldn't have had private schools and a million contacts; you wouldn't have had the same set of choices; you wouldn't be a part of the powerful ruling club. You might have spent time wondering why there is not one single famous person in the entire history of your family. Until you found out, eventually, that until the 1870 Education Act, no one on either side of your family could actually read.
Working-class roots, you see Polly, are not just about work and status. They are about identity and culture. They are about knowing where you came from and being grateful and proud.
There are no chips on any shoulders here. (That is an invention of the powerful to keep working-class people and working-class-origin people down.) Who are the lucky ones amongst us? I think in many ways, they are working-class-origin-middle-class people like me. There is nothing 'uneasy' about my inheritance. And no one can take that away from me.
Toynbee defines her family as 'middle class' but admits 'sometimes that ought to include the borderlands of "upper middle class and aristocracy" '. Her great-grandparents, were in fact, the aristocratic owners of one of Yorkshire's most famous estates and stately homes.Castle Howard was left to her grandparents, who because of their socially-conscious values, passed it to another member of the family.
Toynbee's father's family, on the other hand, descend from a long and illustrious line of wealthy, left-leaning intellectuals, including her famous historian grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, and her novelist father Philip, (who set up an experimental commune in Gloucestershire in the 1960s, which, sadly, failed). The book is, in part, a catalogue of encounters with other famous human beings. Jessica (Decca) Mitford is Polly's official 'non-godmother' and they spent many holidays on her private Scottish island. Need I say more?
Still, the inclination of Polly T and her ancestors to help those less fortunate, at some personal cost, is wholly admirable. I also admire her greatly for her books on working people -- which involved her rolling her sleeves up and actually doing their often soul-destroying jobs, at least for a while. The first of these, A Working Life, was written in the 1970s. It saw her employed in a car parts factory, in a steelworks, down a colliery and in the Women's Army, among other things. The second, Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain, was published in 2003, after Thatcher had destroyed manual labour in Britain and it had been replaced by low-paying service jobs. This time Polly worked undercover as a dinner lady, a hospital night cleaner, and a care home assistant, responsible for the washing, toileting, dressing, feeding and general well being of six incontinent residents. RESPECT. Her best job was when she lucked out with a position as a childcarer at the Foreign Office nursery.
So, overall I really liked this book and found it a riveting read. But I do have a little beef with Polly regarding her take on social class. Towards the beginning of the book she writes: 'Even a full quarter of those who have middle class parents still claim working class authenticity by reaching back to grandparents and even to great-grandparents, I understand the urge, but it's ludicrous. (My wise daughter interjects (...) If we had working-class grandparents, wouldn't our lives and attitudes and self-confidence be subtly different? She may be right.) The search for these origin stories springs, the LSE researchers suggest, from the need to prove their own merit ...'.
Well ooff. I take umbrage with that, I'm afraid Polly. I really do.
You may be middle-class because you have professional parents. But when your grandad has worked in a factory all his life and you visit your grandparents every other weekend in their factory- owned terraced house on a lane opposite the factory, you don't have to 'search' for your working -class roots. They are a part of you. When you go from a Yorkshire comprehensive (albeit a 'posh' one) to Oxford you notice the difference, however 'middle -class' you are, nominally. 'Which school did YOU go to?' Even 'Did YOU have a pony?' And the subtle (and not-so-subtle) take-downs of your accent. Until you realise, one day, it has almost gone.
Your daughter is right. Your self -confidence WOULD be different. You wouldn't have had private schools and a million contacts; you wouldn't have had the same set of choices; you wouldn't be a part of the powerful ruling club. You might have spent time wondering why there is not one single famous person in the entire history of your family. Until you found out, eventually, that until the 1870 Education Act, no one on either side of your family could actually read.
Working-class roots, you see Polly, are not just about work and status. They are about identity and culture. They are about knowing where you came from and being grateful and proud.
There are no chips on any shoulders here. (That is an invention of the powerful to keep working-class people and working-class-origin people down.) Who are the lucky ones amongst us? I think in many ways, they are working-class-origin-middle-class people like me. There is nothing 'uneasy' about my inheritance. And no one can take that away from me.
October 29, 2025
Loved this book. Found it so interesting and informative about a part of British history I didn't know about. Highly recommend
February 13, 2025
I really enjoyed this memoir! Polly Toynbee is a wonderful narrator, she is probably a great bed time storyteller! (I listened to the audiobook version of this book!) The content was very entertaining and the little fun anecdotes and name drops (Lord and Lady Glenconner, Boris, The Cambridge Five etc) undergirded a highly informative discussion on (the middle) class and family dynamics over multiple generations!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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