The Fugitives
**“In seaside towns, you find most people have come to escape something. That’s what brought me too, really.”** Photographer Carmina Ripollés on finding friendship among the sandcastles, arcades and ice-creams
Archive
Terminus
**“So if you ask me what motivates me to write about buses, it’s that so little attention is paid to the significance they have for people who have no other means of getting around. The quality of their commute is their quality of life.”**
As Council as They Come
If you don’t understand why the Beckhams are working class heroes, maybe you don’t understand the working class.
Willy Vlautin’s Everyday People
Willy Vlautin has won the Joyce Carol Oates prize for his heartbreaking novel **The Horse.** The Bee met up with him to talk about his hard-living characters, Trump, and his worst-ever job.
The Working Class Library Episode 2: Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Louise Doughty joins us to consider the place of Hilary Mantel’s memoir in our library.
An Introduction to Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Her working-class background was overlooked, but the double-Booker winner said it determined how she saw the world.
Publishing’s Class Problem
When you’re a child, your social class doesn’t determine how good you are at reading and writing. Yet half of our published writers are from middle-class backgrounds, and only 10 per cent are working class. Why?
Confessions of Nothing
How I revolutionised mascara at the age of seven in my mum’s car and how she didn’t understand.
The Working Class Library Episode 1: New Grub Street by George Gissing
Gissing expert Simon James joins us to consider how **New Grub Street** became so topical again, and to ask if it deserves a place in our fantasy library.
An Introduction to New Grub Street
How the troubled George Gissing inspired Orwell, and foretold the influence of Amazon, BookTok and poverty porn.
Plastic Venus
**“Life was hard in the city over the river. The summer’s riots still smouldered. Then one day, a car crossed the river. A Merc, with windows tinted darker than the night.”**
Procurement Process Blues
How did it become so hard to get paid what you’re owed?
