For this episode, Richard and Claire are joined by novelist Sarah Hall to consider Flora Thompson’s memoir Lark Rise to Candleford. 

These days, Lark Rise to Candleford is perhaps the best-known English rural memoir in print. Thanks in no small part to the BBC’s 2000s TV adaptation, and historic class-washing in its jackets and illustrations, it is commonly thought of as a rather cosily nostalgic book. In reality, however, it is strongly class-conscious and political. Why is Thompson’s trilogy not celebrated as a classic of working-class literature?