The Class of '37

Telling Tales of Girlhood from Before the War

By: Claire Langhamer, Hester Barron

Narrated by: Bea Holland

Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

It is 1937 in a northern mill-town and a class of 12- and 13-year-old girls are writing about their lives, their world and the things that matter to them. They tell of cobbled streets and crowded homes, the Coronation festivities and holidays to Blackpool, laughter and fun alongside poverty and hardship. They are destined for the cotton mill but they dream of being film stars.

Class of '37 uses the writing of these young girls, as collected by the research organisation Mass Observation, to rediscover this lost world, transporting listeners back in time to a smoky industrial town in an era before the introduction of a Welfare State, where once again the clouds of war were beginning to gather. Woven within this rich, authentic history are the twists and turns of the girls' lives from childhood to beyond, from their happiest times to the most heartbreaking of their sorrows.

A compelling social history, this intimate reconstruction of working-class life in 1930s Britain is a haunting and emotional account of a bygone age.

©2021 Claire Langhamer and Hester Barron (P)2021 Bonnier Books UK

Beautiful social history, would love to hear it narrated by a local.

Can’t fault the book, it’s well researched and brings to life ordinary working women and their inter-war childhood in ‘Worktown’. It’s such a shame that a Lancashire narrator, capable of accurately imitating a Bolton accent could not be found. Local place names were mispronounced (notably Westhoughton and Hall’i’th Wood) and for a book celebrating Mass Observation’s accounts of working class Bolton, it was jarring to hear a Southern accented narrator attempt to mimic the local dialect. In all other regards I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend this audiobook.