Dear colleagues,

Of interest? Two new books about Richard Hoggart:

• Michael Bailey, Ben Clarke & John K. Walton, Understanding Richard Hoggart: A Pedagogy of Hope, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 232 pp.

'I am glad to be able to write a foreword to this illuminating book. Its authors rightly insist on the continuing relevance of Richard’s work, which has covered aspects of life that have always interested me... I think that Richard would approve of its subtitle A Pedagogy of Hope, for there can be no acceptable future without hope. This is a book which avoids nostalgia and which will appeal, I am sure, not only to his few surviving contemporaries but to a readership of people of all ages situated, if not always firmly, in their own times'.  Asa Briggs, University of Oxford
 
‘This is an engaging, informative and combative work. It is exactly what it says, a “critical introduction” that moves way beyond plain description of Hoggart’s life and works, showing the relevance (but also, sometimes, the limitations) of his work and constantly contextualizing it within debates in both cultural studies and the wider political field. It is extremely well rooted in the various relevant literatures but also adds much knowledge from new sources, particularly those contained in the Hoggart Archive. In every sense, it is a good advert for, and defence of, studying the humanities.’  Dave Russell, Leeds Metropolitan University 
 
'A fascinating and insightful analysis of a leading public intellectual, obsessive autobiographer, founder of a new academic discipline, and original cultural critic.’  James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London

• Michael Bailey & Mary Eagleton (eds), Richard Hoggart: Culture & Critique, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2012, 256 pp.

‘This is a thought-provoking, inquiring collection of new essays, which opens up a rich matrix of themes, many not hitherto explored. It is another welcome sign of a long-overdue revival of interest and scholarship in Richard Hoggart’s work’.  Stuart Hall, Open University
 
‘This is a quite magnificent collection. Perhaps for the first time, Richard Hoggart's astonishing career and achievement is given its full credit and significance - significance not only of an intellectual kind but as a whole lifetime of practical moral effort and consequence. The book therefore implies a new, timely and rousing evaluation of a man whose exemplary life, still vividly present to our society, can show us how to cherish and renew the best parts of our culture and, just as powerfully, how to name and reject what is worst. Each of these admirably edited essays takes with absolute seriousness the great life-questions which it was Hoggart's mighty purpose to pose and face: what is our civilization worth? what is the duty of each individual towards it? what is the nature of a citizen's responsibility for the way we live now?’  Fred Inglis, University of Sheffield

Best wishes,
Michael

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