Book review: Class and contemporary British culture

"Class and Contemporary British Culture." Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn. Palgrave Macmillan. April 2013. --- How does culture articulate, frame, organise and produce stories about social class and class difference? What do these stories tell us about contemporary models of success, failure, struggle and aspiration? Drawing on examples from the 1980s to the present day this book investigates the changing landscape of class and reveals how it has become populated by a host of classed figures including the Essex Girl, the ‘squeezed middle’, the ‘feral underclass’, the ‘selfish baby boomers’ and others. Steven Harkins finds one of the most concise, well written and researched overviews of the ‘underclass’ available in scholarly literature.