There is a lot of talk about the role class plays in British society, but how exactly do we move from one ‘class’ to another – and, if we can do so, what effect does it have on us? Drawing on their own experiences , Lynsey Hanley – author of Estates and the forthcoming Respectable: The Experience of Class – and Gary Bell (who left school with no qualifications and is now a Queen’s Counsel) discuss social mobility and the psychological impacts of class.

Speaker biographies:

Born to a teenaged cigarette factory worker and a nineteen-year-old miner, Gary Bell grew up in a condemned slum terrace and a Nottinghamshire pit village. He left school without taking any exams and followed his father down the mine, but promptly quit and spent the next decade either homeless or working in a strange variety of jobs, from shelf-stacker to fireman to bricklayer. In his mid-twenties, he went to university to study law as a mature student, and landed a coveted post with a Beverly Hills law firm before he had even graduated. He returned to the UK, and 20 years later was appointed Queen’s Counsel. He has handled scores of gangland murder trials, multi-million pound fraud cases, and is among the country’s top defence barristers. Follow him on Twitter @garybellqc.

Lynsey Hanley was born in Birmingham. She is the author of Estates: An Intimate History and Respectable: The Experience of Class. She contributes commentary pieces, arts features and book reviews to the Guardian and the New Statesman, and has written for the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement and Prospect. She is a visiting fellow at Liverpool John Moores University, an honorary research fellow at Lancaster University, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Demos advisory council.

---