How will these resources help you?

In general, there are still far fewer writers from working-class backgrounds than more affluent backgrounds. Before the British new wave of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, realistic depictions of modern-era working-class lives in mainstream culture simply didn’t exist. Since then, working-class culture has had to battle against often imagined, sometimes romanticised and mostly stereotyped depictions by middle-class writers and performers. The authentic and insightful voices discussed here are important for building an accurate picture of post-war life in Britain. If students do not already study the novel A Kestrel for a Knave or the film Kes (1969, U) as part of the school curriculum, it would fit well within this topic.