Richard Hoggart (ePub)

Richard Hoggart has been, perhaps, the best-known, and certainly
the most affectionately acknowledged, British intellectual of the
past sixty years. His great classic, The Uses of Literacy,
provided for thousands of unsung working-class readers a wholly
recognisable and tender account of their own coming-to-maturity and
of the preciousness and the hardships of the life of the poor in
pre-World War II Britain.

But he was far more than narrator of a neglected class. Hoggart was
also a public figure of extraordinary energy and eminence. He
dominated the single most important Royal Commission on
broadcasting, and single-handedly he is remembered as clinching for
the defence the publication of Lady Chatterley's
Lover, after which he became a leading officer and defender of
the international agency protecting the culture of the very world,
UNESCO.

This is the first biography of this amazing man. It seeks to tie
together in a single narrative life and work, to settle Hoggart in
the great happiness of a fulfilled family life and in the
astonishing achievements of his public and professional career,
considering each of his books in detail, and following him through
the long and hard labours of his different public and academic
offices.

Fred Inglis tells this gripping tale of a figure of great
significance to anyone who cherishes the stuff of culture, and
tells it vividly and directly. It is a tale of a good man with
which to edify the present, and to teach us of all that now
threatens our best national (and international) forms of
expression: our art, our culture, ourselves.