
An Uneasy Inheritance
My Family and Other Radicals
Polly Toynbee(Author)
Atlantic Books (Publisher)
Published on 6. June 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
448 pages
978-1-83895-837-4 (ISBN)
Description
'Fascinating' Spectator
'Entertaining' Sunday Times
'Enthralling' Guardian
'Beautiful, funny and moving' Daily Mail
'Compelling and moving' Observer
'Replete with vivid - often hilarious, often shocking - anecdotes' Financial Times
While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?
Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family - which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop - Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.
'Entertaining' Sunday Times
'Enthralling' Guardian
'Beautiful, funny and moving' Daily Mail
'Compelling and moving' Observer
'Replete with vivid - often hilarious, often shocking - anecdotes' Financial Times
While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?
Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family - which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop - Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.
Reviews / Votes
Entertaining...a surprisingly enjoyable family memoir * Sunday Times * Part social analysis, part polemic (once a columnist, always a columnist), part compelling family memoir, replete with vivid - often hilarious, often shocking - anecdotes. It is ultimately, however, a work of love, forgiveness and understanding. * Financial Times * Fascinating...She has spent a lifetime highlighting the need for social change, and her book fizzes with that continuing purpose * Spectator * Enthralling...laceratingly honest and often funny * Guardian * An irresistible, self-aware British class comedy. It reads rather like an Evelyn Waugh novel * New Statesman * For the many people who have followed Toynbee's career and felt a connection with her strong, radical voice, this book will delight and educate in equal measure * Yorkshire Life * Marked by its compassion, humour and elegiac tone * Irish Times * Funny, moving and crammed with extraordinary stories, the best, and least hypocritical, book about class I've ever read -- Andrew Marr An outstanding work: totally absorbing and so well written, packed with interesting events, people and thoughts. -- Claire Tomalin As usual with anything written by Polly Toynbee there is much insight and wisdom between its covers. What is unusual is the introspection. This is a book about class and feminism and social history. Above all it's a riveting and moving memoir about growing up on the privileged side of a class divide that she dedicated her professional life to eradicating. -- Alan Johnson An extraordinary family memoir of generations of Toynbees for whom opposing class and privilege became the defining concern of their lives. This is a wonderful book, astute, funny, honest and deeply pertinent to Britain today. -- Caroline Moorehead A compelling and delicious narrative that vividly describes the gallery of amazing Toynbee forbears and connections but also gives us an extraordinary history of progressive politics and social reform in this country over 150 years. The Toynbee story is unlike any other. A wonderful read. -- Baroness Helena Kennedy KC An absorbing picture of entwined families managing for generations to lead (mostly) comfortable middle class lives while holding radical liberal or left wing views - uneasy indeed, but where would we be without them and others like them? -- Rt Hon Lady Hale DBEMore details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
Integrated B&W images throughout
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
399 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83895-837-4 (9781838958374)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2023
Atlantic Books
€9.99
Available for download
Person
Polly Toynbee is a journalist, author and broadcaster. A Guardian columnist and broadcaster, she was formerly the BBC's social affairs editor. She has written for the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times and been an editor at the Washington Monthly. She has won numerous awards including a National Press Award and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
Content
1: What Children Know 2: Arnold 3: Harry: A Social Reformer's Tragedy 4: Rosalind 5: Good People, Bad Parents 6: Philip the Child 7: Philip at Oxford and at War 8: My Mother Anne 9: Philip the Father 10: Rhodesia: Many Painful Political Lessons Learned in One Brief Episode 11: Josephine 12: Escaping Oxford, Starting Work 13: Philip - Older But Not Wiser 14: Work, Thirty Years Later 15: An Ending