Why read A Local Habitation (Life And Times, Volume 1?

Book cover of A Local Habitation (Life And Times, Volume 1: 1918-1940)

Book description

"A Local Habitation" is the first volume of Hoggart's autobiography, describing his childhood in a working class milieu in Leeds, his time at grammar school, his student days at Leeds University and his travels through Nazi Germany before World War Two. Richard Hoggart taught for many years at the Centre…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Local Habitation (Life And Times, Volume 1 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Chris Nickson

Author

Another memoir, but very different to Waterhouse. An academic, Hoggart had already drawn on his Leeds childhood for the seminal text, The Uses of Literacy. This expands on that, fleshing out the bones of the other work. It paints a broader picture of Leeds, overlapping a decade with City Lights. Hoggart has a prodigious memory, and while he can tend to paint the poor, working-class past with rosy colours sometimes, he certainly does evoke a time, seeing the events of the days through a child’s – and adolescent’s – eyes. He made good, going on to university, and…

From Chris' list on The best books on Leeds as it was.