academic, novelist and critic
. He was an influential figure within the New Left
and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books have sold in UK editions alone and there are many translations available.
If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Alfred TennysonTears, Idle Tears (1850)|Tears, Idle Tears valuable.
We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.
Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.
The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide.
Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.