The Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl Episode Guide

Episode Guide

• Leaders of Society

  Geoffrey Palmer examines the role of Britain's middle class in its heyday between the wars, when the bourgeoisie were at the head of commerce, politics and Empire. He also investigates the way status changed during and after World War Two, as the nation entered a new era of meritocracy and economic upheaval

• Lessons in Class

  The importance of education in the success of the middle classes over the years, comparing and contrasting the social mores and cultural differences between Winchester College and a nearby comprehensive school and illustrating how generations of parents have used academic achievement as a means of social climbing

• The People in Between

  Series tracing the rise of the class described as the backbone of Britain, beginning with a visit to the leafy suburb of Headingley, Leeds, which attracted large numbers of professionals in the 1870s. Relatives of previous occupants recount their family histories, including the story of the founder of London's first department store, who was murdered by a man claiming to be his illegitimate son. Part of The Edwardians - the Birth of Now season

• Them and Us

  How rural English idylls were destroyed by the onslaught of suburbia between the wars, and the reaction of existing residents to the new working-class housing estates. The quiet suburb of Cuttleslowe in north Oxford typified the British penchant for snobbery, being divided for many years by a high wall topped with barbed wire to keep council house residents at bay

• Trouble Ahead

  Changing attitudes to work and money, contrasting the positions of respect enjoyed by professional people prior to Margaret Thatcher's cultural revolution with their current loss of status, and how the qualities of commitment, prudence and loyalty prized by stalwarts of the City have been replaced by pragmatism and self interest. Tim Emens explains how financial gain has failed to compensate for the lack of job satisfaction enjoyed by his father Mike

• Troublemakers

  Members of the middle classes with a taste for political protest, including a profile of defiant bourgeois Angie Zelter. Ostensibly an ordinary home-loving mother who bakes her own bread in a converted farmhouse, Angie has been imprisoned 16 times for participating in a variety of radical movements, resorting to direct action when she feels the Government isn't pulling its weight