Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

'Pithy and provoking, spiced with the personal' Hilary Mantel Lynsey Hanley grew up part of the 'respectable working class'. At university, she discovered that social mobility is not all it seems. This book is about what it means to cross class divides, what we leave behind in order to get on, and how class affects all of us today. 'There is fury contained within the pages and between the lines of Respectable ... intelligent and important' Colin Grant, Guardian 'Honest, brave and moving' Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level 'Lynsey Hanley is such a crucial voice. When she writes about class, she is writing about lived experience' Owen Jones, New Statesman 'Hanley vividly describes the "risky, lonely journey" she undertook from one class to another ... She is tremendous at detailing her personal transition' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

When a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the superficial and the material - or can they be a force for good? When Richard Hoggart asked these questions in his 1957 book The Uses of Literacy Britain was undergoing huge social change, yet his landmark work has lost none of its pertinence and power today. Hoggart gives a fascinating insight into the close-knit values of Northern England's vanishing working-class communities, and weaves this together with his views on the arrival of a new, homogenous 'mass' US-influenced culture. His headline-grabbing bestseller opened up a whole new area of cultural study and remains essential reading, both as a historical document, and as a commentary on class, poverty and the media.