snobbery
The astonishing truth about 007
The world would never be quite the same again after we first glimpsed the casino of Royale-les-Eaux at three in the morning, says Philip Hensher
In praise of burning pianos
How are non-conformists assimilated within the cloistered walls of tradition? Richard Wagner supplied the best answer to the age-old question…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
Arthur Bryant: monstrous chronicler of Merrie England
If you want to judge how much society has changed, you might do worse than visit a few secondhand bookshops.…
Chips Channon’s diaries can read like a drunken round of Consequences
Chips Channon was conceited, snobbish, disloyal, voyeuristic and wrongheaded – all qualities most helpful to a great diarist, says Craig Brown
‘Crest’ and the absurd language of heraldry
A friend of my husband’s, yet a well-educated man, said in conversation as we walked to Tate Modern: ‘Is that…
The return of Lady Muck
My sainted mum was of untarnished working-class blood — she worked, variously, as a cleaner, factory hand and shop assistant…
Snobbery in the age of social media
We like to think we have moved on from the age of snobbery. Judging others by birth or status, or…
Class act
I wish I could say that some of my best friends are working-class, but it’s not true. I do have…
Kathleen Kennedy kicks over the traces
Kathleen Kennedy and her elder brother JFK were the grandchildren of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic immigrants. John F. Fitzgerald, ‘Honey…
Voting Remain is an act of heartless snobbery
One of the interesting features of the Brexit debate is that it has laid bare a schism in British society…
The polite anti-Semitism of 20th-century Britain
Though it seems to begin as an affectionate memorial to his maternal grandparents, a testimonial to a rare and perfectly…
The hatred that Martin Amis and Jeremy Corbyn have in common
Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You…
James Bond's secret: he's Jamaican
Lewis Jones on Ian Fleming’s Jamaican retreat and the inspiration it provided for the Bond novels
