Three volumes of autobiography - 'A Local Habitation', 'A Sort of Clowning' and 'An Imagined Life' follow the life and times of Richard Hoggart from 1918-1991, through his childhood in Leeds, World War Two, North Africa, Naples, and his academic career. More broadly, they trace a changing Britain and Europe between two world wars.
Orphaned, Hoggart pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a cultural commentator and conscience of his age. Although sacked by Margaret Thatcher from his post as Arts Council vice-chair in 1982, his ideas on censorship, public broadcasting, and weakening the sense of social class, have entered the bloodstream of English discussion.
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