Anders Hanson

I’ve just started reading a book that describes itself as “a journey into the English mind”. The book - “Welcome to Everytown” by Julian Baggini is about six months he spent living in S66 - apparently the most typical postcode in the country statistically. The book starts off by pointing out how most of the media portrays “middle England” as somewhere in the Home Counties, but in reality the real middle England is places like Brampton and Wickersley in Rotherham. It’s that continual difference between median and mean that is great for proving whatever you want.

Although the subject of the book is interesting in itself, the thing that drew me to it in the bookshop is that I know where the area is and to some extent what it looks like. S66 is supposed to be typical in that it has the right proportions of each social group within it. But it is soon made clear that a key point is that despite the great social changes over the last twenty years, most of England is still working class.

The interesting thing with reading the book will be to see how much I feel I can relate to the people he writes about. When you have grown up in Sheffield, you feel you understand what working class areas like this are like, and indeed anyone who doesn’t know the city assumes that the city is purely working class.  But in reality I grew up in Sheffield Hallam - supposedly the most middle-class constituency in the country and with the highest number of millionaires outside the South East. It is probably fair to say that growing up in Sheffield does at least mean that you aren’t completely clueless about “how the other half lives” as you still see a certain amount of it day to day and you work with people from different backgrounds, but it not the same as living in a working class area.

AMAZON UK: Welcome to Everytown by Julian Baggini

JULIAN BAGGINI