This Is My Truth

Journalist Lynsey Hanley's personal exploration of the experience of class in Britain over the past four decades.

"Changing class is like emigrating from one side of the world to the other, where you have to rescind your old passport, learn a new language and make gargantuan efforts if you are not to completely lose touch with the people and habits of your old life, even if they are the relationships and things that are dearest to your heart."

Class is a subject we're all aware of but rarely talk about - aside from the insidious line that 'we're all middle class now'. Hanley examines class aspiration and social mobility through the lens of her own life; providing a fascinating insight into what it took to leave her home in Chelmsley Wood, a vast council estate near Birmingham, and make her way against the odds through sixth form college, university and on into the world of professional journalism.

Received wisdom tells us social mobility is an unequivocally positive phenomenon, for individuals and for society. Yet changing class can be a lonely, anxious, psychologically disruptive process, which leaves people divided between the place they left and the place they have to inhabit in order to get on.

Written and read by Lynsey Hanley

Abridged by Sian Preece.

Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.