'Fascinating' Spectator
'Entertaining' Sunday Times
'Enthralling' Guardian
'Beautiful, funny and moving' Daily Mail
'Compelling and moving' Observer
'Replete with vivid - often hilarious, often shocking - anecdotes' Financial Times

While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family - which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop - Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

"Entertaining...a surprisingly enjoyable family memoir" - Sunday Times

"Part social analysis, part polemic (once a columnist, always a columnist), part compelling family memoir, replete with vivid - often hilarious, often shocking - anecdotes. It is ultimately, however, a work of love, forgiveness and understanding." - Financial Times

"Fascinating...She has spent a lifetime highlighting the need for social change, and her book fizzes with that continuing purpose" - Spectator

"Enthralling...laceratingly honest and often funny" - Guardian

"An irresistible, self-aware British class comedy. It reads rather like an Evelyn Waugh novel" - New Statesman

"For the many people who have followed Toynbee's career and felt a connection with her strong, radical voice, this book will delight and educate in equal measure" - Yorkshire Life

"Marked by its compassion, humour and elegiac tone" - Irish Times