Okay, we're live. Hi. This is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey investigates on today's show of a very special guest. He comes to us from the UK. His name is Lawrence James and he's just put out a new edition of a book he originally published in two thousand and six. The title of this book is The Middle Class, published in April seventh, twenty twenty one. Really a fascinating book goes in very great detail about kind of the rise of the middle class in Britain. But this is not
his only book. He's written eight or nine other books. He has another book coming out next year. But his first book was The Golden Warrior, The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, published nineteen ninety three. Also The Rise and Fall of the British Empire nineteen ninety seven, raj The Making and Unmaking of British India nineteen ninety eight, The Illustrated Rise and Fall of the British Empire two thousand.
Also Aristocrats, Power, Grace and Decadence Britain's Great Ruling Classes from ten sixty six to the present, published twenty ten. Also The Iron Duke and Military Biography of Wellington published twenty twenty, and also in twenty twenty Imperial Warrior, The Life and Times of Field Marshall, Viscount Allenby eighteen sixty one to nineteen thirty six. He also has a new book coming out next year. The title of it is The Lione and the Dragon. It's about the relationship between
Britain and China. So I'm looking forward to that. But again we're going to talk about this book titled The Middle Class. So, mister James, are you there, yes, awesome, Well, thanks for bringing to the interview for people who may not have heard of you here in the States or not familiar with your books. Can you talk about your background and what led you to write this book The Middle Class?
Well? I'm background is probably first of all, I was born a member of the middle class sty educated at York and Oxford Universities. I originally did research on medieval medieval English history, and after that I moved to the modern age, writing particularly about the British Empire and what might be called the forces which made Britain into the country it is now. The middle class is one of them. The Empire are rule over India and ah and Winston Churchill,
who I've written about and as an imperialist. So these are the sort of things that make Britain the country it is at the moment.
Right. So you have all of these very important things, and you write in this book the Middle Class that without the ingenuity and vibrancy of the middle class, there wouldn't have been a British empire. Can you talk about where it all started, where this the industrial Revolution, where the background of it really went back to, and its foundations in Britain.
Well, the middle class of Someone defined the middle class in Elizabeth the First Ring, and they said these were the men and the small extent women who live by their wits. They are people who have some kind of a special learning and they apply it. The doctor, the lawyer, the veterinary surgeon. Today, all these people. We often go to them with our troubles and they use their specialist skill to resolve these, to make life easier for us. And at the same time they are people of ingenuity.
They are the people who invent and above all are interested in making money, whether trading or investing. They are a sort of dynamic force and they exist and make their living because of their education because of their wit, their learning, and so they occupy they occupy a middle ground. In English. British society at the very top was an aristocracy which began life as a warrior elite, and below them are the massive people who work with their hands.
If you're in the middle class, you come home from your office wherever you're working with clean hands. If you're a member of the working class, you'll come home with dirty hands. You have to wash them. A very simple way of describing the difference. But the.
No, please continue.
Yeah, the very important factor is the middle classes are made by education, the treasure education, and they try and perpetuate it in their children. That is why the middle classes are so keen on their children's education, because they see this as maintaining their status and their wealth right.
And I think that was a very important aspect of your theme in your book, is the middle class ideal of status in maintaining that satus. Can you talk about what external and internal things these middle class British people did to maintain their status.
Well, it's once prestige one status. Adding a society matters to them. A Victorian dog Breeder wrote, it is ordinary. It is not for ordinary people to keep a mongrel. An ordinary person has a mongrel. A member of the middle classes has a thoroughbred dog. It is status, and status is always expressed in objects, whether it's your horse in the past, or your carriage or today your motor car, your house where you live. These objects, and they are
often quite expensive, objects, define your position in society. A tudor judge, a member of the middle class, a lawyer would always rise to the assizes on horseback with mounted servants behind him, fully robed in scarlet, and he was making a statement about himself. This is my position in the world. This is where I stand. Look at the rings on my fingers. Look at the dress my wife is where. Look at my house and its interior, it's decorations. All these things add up to status, and people are
still obsessed with Say you watched tonight's television. Look in the papers, look at the advertisements. They're telling us to buy such a product which will raise our standing with the rest of society.
Right, So this status element goes all the way back from the beginning, really where you started in thirteen fifty. So you see these people wanting the kind of heraldry gentility, tracing their ancestors back. Can you talk about kind of one of the foundations of the rise of the middle class, this idea of work and virtue and kind of the Calvinist view that really, I think was very influential in creating such a vibrant middle class in Britain.
Yes, it is the Calvinist view that for the middle class. The most important part of the New Testament is almost that moment when Christ reveals the parable of the talents. These are something which each individual possesses, their God given If you don't use your talent, you are failing yourself and failing your God. So developing your talent your intelligence and this the middle class would see their intelligence, their perseverance,
their ability to absorb learning and apply it. These are their talents and they are following, if you like, God's instruction in utilizing them to improve themselves. And they were that the rest of society. The lawyer would tell you, without the law, they're be chaos and anarchy. Therefore, he is a vital person performing a vital task. He still does right.
You saw that kind of idealized person that they had to increase their knowledge, and you really saw it, I think really from the very beginning there in medieval England. Is this desire to obtain books to this remarkable high literacy rates. Can you talk about that kind of drive for knowledge that also was an important factor in the middle class.
Yes, it's important. The first essential thing is to learn to read and write in English or probably in Latin as well. I mean, if you think of the anyone who is handling money has to record the money he gets and spends. The middle class housewife in Chaucer's time kept a household, you would have to have a household book recall how much she spent so her husband would understand she wasn't spending it on fripperies and jewelry and
this thing. So, being able to read and write gives you an extraordinary power, and it gives you a tremendous value of society. Can the businessman who has no books, no means of recording how he's made his money, what he has, what he owes the mammill fail. So it is literacy which is quintessential for the middle class to survive, to grow and prosper. Anyone engage in pomp, commerce or
the law or medicine must read and write. And this is why they have this tremendous passion for education and stress it for their own children.
Right, So you see that passing down, You see this passing down of knowledge, sending son to Cambridge, and really that was something that was also vibrant, was the disdiffus diffusion of knowledge in the press and papers and things like that. There was really a demand by this middle class to be well read correct.
Yes, there is. They want to read. They and they make sure their children will. And in Shakespeare is sent his father is a businessman in Strafford and Avon. He sends his son to the grammar school and in Shakespeare remembers it walking unwilling like a snail to school. But his father knows that William Shakespeare, whatever else he may become, must need to read and write. And of course he does it to wonderful effect, probably in a profession his
father would not have approved of. Actors have really other looked down on bitlooseh bit rioters who he'll behaved. But it is Shakespeare going to school. It epitomizes Elizabethan, the later middle class. And you mentioned the press, something that appears in the eighteenth century in Britain andie through the papers, and you see news, and then you see advertisements, and these advertisements are always advertising wares to improve your status.
You will see an advertisement, say for crockery. If you go to this shop, this cellar of plates and cups and whatsoever, is also supplying to the aristocracy, you know. And you still see in London a shop in which supplies her Majesty the Queen with cutlery, and the notion being that if the rich and very powerful, those at the top patronize these shops, then they must be very good.
And so the middle classes are always looking upwards, looking at what they look up But what are the rich and powerful that the titled ladies and gentlemen Jane Austen's family would have perused the papers, and Missus Bennett would have seen that the joke of Carlisle or something is buying his silverware from such a dealer. Therefore this must be very good. Consumption is very important, and consumption is tied in with status, everything from clothing to the pots and pans in the scullery.
Right, and so it becomes even as it advances. The middle class there in Britain being having those tastes differentiated themselves from the working class and the aristocracy. So there were specific tastes that merge in the middle class. Can you talk about those.
Yes, the tastes are always they look slightly above what does the aristocrat do. And some of the tastes are highly desirable, like visiting the opera, attending the theater, being seen in public assemblies and places. Always dressed and the clothing is a statement of who you are. And at the same time the aristocracy are expected to understand quality. So consumerism is always looking upwards. I look at modern car adverts. The car is not just a vehicle which
gets you from a to be. It says something about your standing in the world. Were purchasing power and this has always been so, certainly in the eighteenth century and nineteenth and the twentieth.
It's still the same, right, And I think that that one of the elements that made this vibrant middle class was also their commercial skills. So it's not just the ability of money, but the they were really a nation or the middle class was very much involved in economic issues. Can you talk about how that rise took place and ended up with the Industrial Revolution?
It's it's really, first of all, it's about obviously buying and selling. And you what you buy what you sell each Aucer's father was a wine merchant, and he made money selling wine. And you have after you made your profits in business, you tend to I tend to take them and invest them in land. Until the nineteenth century, land was the thing to possess. It not only gave you revenues, rents, etc. It gave you a standing in the world. But the middle classes were also developed a
knack of trading and also investment. When you had a surplus of capital, you transferred it somewhere else. A man in Charles the Seconds London may have made a fortune selling coal, shall we say, which came from Newcastle and sold in the London the warm people's homes. And then his surpose capital he says, well, what shall I do with it? I can invest it in that, but I could invest it in a trading company East India company, for instance, one of the many companies operating sugar plantations
in the West Indies. I put my money there and that'll give me an income. And this income will build up so they making money createswealth. And when you have enough wealth you can think about investment. And in the seventeenth eighteenth century Britain were two areas to invest in industrial development, building of canals later railways, coal mines, founderies or sending it overseas to first of all India and then the West Indian colon these and then the United States.
I mean the United States railways were built on money invested by rich people in Britain.
Right, So you see that middle class's influence in so many things. And what's remarkable to is the attitude of the middle class was had this progressive view. Can you talk about their outlook and why it was essential to their growth?
Their outlook, I mean, first of all, the middle class, the wool merchants and the cloth merchants of medieval England represent were members of Parliament. Every borough in England, a small town and city sent MPs. So the middle if you like, the commercial classes were always present in Parliament. They tended to be quiet that the big debates were sort of dominated by the knights of the shire, the landed gentry. But they're there and they become, if you like,
part of the government. They're prepared as time goes by to criticize governments. Parliament gets rid of two kings, rich of the second in thirteen ninety nine, and during the Wars of the Roses, Henry the sake there with the fourth and Richard third, and so Parliament's power increases. The middle classes join with the aristocracy in making the government of the country, and their attitudes vary. They are obviously in favor of any kind of policy which will make
Britain's commerce stronger. They will support government which goes to war with France and Spain in the eighteenth century to increase the size of our colonies. But they're always very money wise, so if governments who spend too much are likely to get quite a lot of criticism. Middle classes
don't like paying taxes. They will vote be grumble about taxes, but at the same time, by the eighteenth century, they wish to be part of a prosperous, powerful nation which is extending its overseas empire and offering further sources to make more money.
Right, so you just see that activity, that kind of buying and selling trading element. But it's also the middle classes in Britain were remarkable in their self assurance. There was something about them that they really thought they could do something and apply their talents and really succeed. I thought that was a theme within your book and an
interesting aspect of the British middle class. Can you talk about more about I mean it's there must be something based in the Puritanism or the Calvinism that they really thought that they could effectively put the capitalism to use.
Yes, it is the they feel there is. The making of wealth is a sign that you are a chosen person. These people the strong seventeenth eighteenth century belief in providence. If you succeed, this is a mark of God's blessing. At the same time, they are their outlook is extremely flexible. They are on lookout for chance and opportunity, and when they see it, they weigh it, and they may often take chances. The picture we get in the Merchant of Venice,
of waiting for your ship. They may be set in Venice, the merchant waiting for his ship to come back from foreign parts, anxious whether it's going to bring him a fortune or bankruptcy. But they are willing to take risks. I take an example of a friend's family class. Never wealth tend to go from eldest son to eldest son. So the children of the middle classes, those who are
not going to inherit the business. They have to seek their own fortunes, and so you might find a fringing experience of a friend of mine, her grandfather aged eighteen in the middle of the nineteenth century, is put on a boat to Cape Town in South Africa with a few pounds to keep him and they say, you'll go there and see what fortune you can make.
So that's it. I mean, you're really sent out to make your way in the world, and you know, come back with their money was a sign of success at that time. Can you you have a section in your book as the middle class is emerging about kind of the associations that the middle class had in the late eighteenth century early nineteenth century, can you talk about how people spend their time as members of the middle class.
Well, they're spending their time. This is up to individual choice, and the middle classes are always very emphatic. They are very individualistic. They enjoy the entertainment which is provided for them commercial entertainment, the theater, the ballet, musical concerts, assemblies, and dances, but they can pursue their own interests and these are not just reading and study, but causes in which they can use their influence and standing to sway
the world around them to change it. So in the eighteenth century you have a lot of middle class men and women banding together and demanding political change and political reform, extending the franchise, or some moral cause tempference, reducing the amount of drunkenness in the country, or something on the far greater scale, which is the abolition of the slave trade in which they succeed, and so that a man had not only a duty to employ his talents, but
a duty and the woman too. There is a strong women's work here to remake the world, will make it a better place, not only for the middle class, but for the rest of society. So you've got all sorts of society for the reform of public morals, which was keeping the street free of muggers and drunkers and prostitutes. All these things they throw their whole body and soul.
Into, right, So you saw that during this rise of the middle class, this desire to suppress vice make social changes for the better too, which I think was a vitally important element of that success and their ability to kind of make those changes. Can you talk about how the middle class developed as the nineteenth century progressed with other challenges that took place, and interpretations really like the way Marks interpreted the middle class in the UK.
Well, the middle class they see themselves as the most responsible, clear headache section of society. They see that there is much to be done, whether it's and they can do it because they dominate local government. The great cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham are run by Edinburgh. Glasgow are run by the middle classes, so they can build public libraries, pave the streets, installed gas lighting, all these things which are for the
betterment of humanity. At the same time, they're aware the industry has created an enormous working class. It tends to be slightly frightened of it. It can be very frightening. Then the mobs which appear, the mobs which appear the working classes must be first of all restrained and then taught to live sober and godly lives and improve themselves. If you like, imitate the middle class. It is the middle class set up a savings bank so the working man can put his money away and save it. The
middle classes are great believers in frift. Not all of them, but quite a lot were, and therefore pull himself upwards, and they had. There was an organization called the charity organization Society in which you not only gave money, but you walked and visited, walked to and visited the homes of the poor, You spoke to them, you gave them moral advice, and if you lent the money, you're expected to be repair In a sense, it was trying to They were missionaries for the morality of the middle class.
Self help, thrift and sobriety will bring you happiness. And of course everyone knew that the great, too great problems of Victorian urban life were prostitution and drunkenness on the scale which I think today we still can't imagine.
Can you talk more about that that was right around the nineteenth century, correct?
Yeah, Well, it is a sense that as the Industrial Revolution and it's great overseas commercial successes give the British people a very strong sense that they are a chosen people now the agents of providence, and not only must they uplift people abroad abolish slavery, but they must also remake their own country tree into a godly, upright and moral state. And this meant alleviating poverty, not my faring money at it, but making the poor responsible. Just like
the middle classes. The poor must make their own destinies, but they needed very intense guidance from above. And so you had the Victorian lady visiting the working family, praying with them, trying to guide them towards church, try to help the wife reform a drunkard husband. And this may seem highly emotional or melodramatic, but the drunkenness, say the murder of wives by husbands was usually caused by drunkness,
was fairly common in Victoria. In England, Oscar Wild's about read in jail, the man about to be hanged has, in a drunken fit, murdered his wife. And so you could see the Victorians read a story like this and say this is something we must do something about. This is what God tells us to do.
Right. So you really saw that change, and there was kind of a rise of evangelicalism. You write about how there was almost kind of a stuffy kind of Christianity that really wanted to impose its will upon certain members, members of the middle class in that society. It also was fascinating, like you saw the in the architecture and what was built the patronage of the middle class really made an impact upon the cities of the Clinton correct.
Yes, yes, the middle classes, the ruling classes of Saying Manchester wanted their city, and they deliberately look back to Athens and Rows, these great civic cultures, and they wanted to make their cities. They preferred on the whole the
Gothic to the Classical style. Classical styles tended to favor the aristocracy, but they wanted them to be memorials of the vibrant life of the city and to remind people that although they made their money from trade and investment, they were cultured men, men who appreciated fine art and exquisite buildings. And there's a moral purpers. I mean the public baths, it meant that people will be cleaner, washed themselves,
and the public bars are very important. Small things like drinking fountains, troughs for horses, payment, gas lighting, all these focused on the city as a center of civilization as it had been in the ancient world.
Right, So you really see this growth coming out of the middle class. Really, the beautification and the rise that you'd take for granted was really something that was done by these patrons. They started their own private libraries, interesting things like that. Can you talk about also kind of how the origin of speeches you talk about Darwin and the public schools, Can you talk about their impact there at the nineteenth century.
Well, the middle classes have a great faith in education. They want their children to be educated, so that just just to maintain their status and preferably go further upwards and standing in society. So the alternative were alternatives are the local grammar schools, which there are a huge number scattered about the country, or they could go to the
public schools. These were fee paying schools. Many were founded in the Victorian people deliberately period deliberately for the middle classes, but they wanted The old public schools of the eighteenth
century were real riotous places, disorderly, heavy drinking, violent. New public schools, thanks to doctor Arnold at Rugby, were places of soberness, godly learning in which the young middle class boy and later his sister would learn their duties as respectable citizens and also pick up the qualities of manliness, Christian fortitude. Play sports cricket rugby, uh so they're both physically fit, strong and self discipline. Sport is a discipline
of a kind played by the rules. And this notion of Christian manliness which the late mid and late Victorian public schools sold appealed to the middle classes. They didn't want to go to the to go to the old style public schools in which the boy would learn to drink, to chase girls and enjoy bad company. Know, they were there for a great moral education, and this was best carried out on the playing field, in the classroom, and above all in the chapel.
Right, So you see that sobriety, And how does the middle class adapt to the twentieth century? How does that progress in the chap.
It's going to undergo all sorts of revolutions. The first revolution of the twentieth century is that by nineteen hundred, by nineteen eighteen, Britain has become a democracy in which a great proportion of male and female population can vote. The middle class find extreme exciting new forms of entertainment, motor cars, cycling, foreign travel with me and the middle class have never had a better up and to enjoy themselves. And this continues to go on. One notices that church
going diminishes over time in the twentieth century. But who have the middle class patter familiars might go out and play golf on the Sundays rather than go to church. The middle class is also into the forefront in Two World Wars very instructive film and play. This Happy Breed by Noel Coward comes from a lower middle class family in London and his lower middle class figure stands up and says, it's up to ordinary people like ourselves to
keep things steady. And another film of the period, Missus Miniver, which is about an upper class lady in the countryside, shows how in wartime to members of the middle class do their duty before it patiently, honorably and patriotically. So they are drawn into these two great upheavals which transfer the country. And at the same time their numbers are increasing.
The number of clerks employed in offices of government offices, but more commercial offices, banks, solicitors, insurers means that the middle class is expanding, particularly it's lower levels, the clerical level, so their numbers are increasing. They do in two ship World Wars attempt to do their duty. They see themselves as rallying society, keeping it steady in nurl Card's words. And the same time there is a it's at a loosening of the Victorian corsets. People are more frank, more open,
people speak about sexuality. The nineteen twenties was seen as an era by some Victorians as one of decadence. But you know, with Charleston liberating dances and nightclubs, there's a lot more entertainment going on. There's a lot more freedom, a lot less stuffiness, and the middle class embraced this on the whole. The older generation, you know, pooh pooh it. They hold their breath and say no, no, it's not right,
it's wrong, but it's unstoppable. And then the motor car comes along, and the motor car gives a new dimension to life of the middle class. Henry Ford's popular motoring Austin in the nineteen twenties means you have this new and by the thirties and forties, the household is changing because the middle class wife is being liberated by domestic chores, by washing machines, hoovers, and so she has a greater freedom than her mother or grandmother. So there's a sense
of liberation going on. At the same time, the middle classes are still earning money, still getting on, still clinging to status. Your model T Ford might be purchased by the bank clerk. The chairman of the company will have.
A rolls right. So that's how it develops to World War two. Where do you see the middle class in Britain now and how do you perceive its future?
Well, it's getting larger and larger. The industrial working class, people working mines, shipyards, iron steel foundries, are diminishing in number by now. I think think at least sixty percent of the population are middle class. That is, they live by their wits. And the IT Revolution has generated thousands, perhaps millions of middle class jobs, not only in prison but across the world. People who live by their learning,
by their wits. And these people, this number of these people is increasing, So the middle classes is more and more numerous. They are also sending their children to university. Now most middle class families expect their children to go to university, if only sometimes the the sort of finishing school, almost broadening the mind, but more and more often in the last few years as a way of securing a job.
The notion of a job has changed. The middle class of the twenties and thirties thought of a job as something for life, but in fact there's no such thing as job for life. Someone may start in one profession and end in another. So this old fashioned flexibility is becoming more and more important. A middle class young man today may not know exactly what he might be doing in twenty years time his grandfather did, right, But.
You still see that continuum, the continuum with kind of status, with yeah, obtaining objects. It started all the way back, you know, fifteenth century, fourteenth century to the present. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really a fascinating book. I mean, how would you like to sum it up before we wrap a word about thirty seven minutes?
Well, I think I would sum it up is it's a it's a sort of it's a biography of a huge section of the country, but it's made up of lots and lots of individual biographies of individual men and women members of the middle class. And what they're hold in common is I think mixtures of self comp evidence, adaptability, and I think the perseverance. I mean that they're still a Victorian virtue, but it's still with us.
Right, you still see that today. I mean, it's really a remarkable story. And where's the best place for people to obtain the middle class?
Well, I assume any good book shop not very good on the distribution, but I'm sure if you order one it will turn up.
I'm sure there's one on Amazon, and you can be contacted through your publisher little brand, and people want to reach out.
Or yes, yes do. I hear lots of middle class people telling me about middle class experiences. And what's fascinating that the latest and the middle classes have more and more hobbies and pastimes than ever they had before. And one of the most interesting one is so many of them are trying to find out about their ancestors.
Right, that's the new thing, right ancestry dot com. Yeah, and again the title of the book is The Middle Class and it's a new edition twenty twenty one, and the author again is Lawrence James. Thank you so much, Lawrence, Thank you.
William.
Okay, stay there, don't go anyway.