The Sunlit Uplands

Kevin Cox was a lower-middle class, in fact very ‘lower’, child growing up in an aspirant household and observing the social mores and practices of the immediate postwar period. His memories of that time include the intense sociability of that class, the importance of radio and cinema in everyday lives, the omnipresence of cigarette smoke, and the limits to getting around; and then, for the author, a dominantly working-class village before there was any thought of it being gentrified.

It was the end of the Victorian era. Repression was draped across the young like a heavy, suffocating blanket. For adults it was a question of a wink and a nod, to be indulged by the inside pages of the Sunday News of the World, which in turn helped to relieve the boredom of that day as it then was. Discipline in schools was strict and capital punishment supported, even relished. It was also the dawn of the welfare state, whose provisions for education were of immense benefit to the author.

This was an experience which will resonate with many others who lived that time and will be a benchmark for those who live in a less generous one. It was the age of the eleven-plus exam, the passing of which entitled you to an education that could be very good indeed; and then, if parental means failed, a free education, everything included, at university. Those who experienced it look back to it with fond eyes, as can be seen from this coming-of-age memoir.