Polly Toynbee

I enjoyed this book enormously. I am a near contemporary of Polly Toynbee, she's a couple of years older than I am. If you are a baby boomer, this book really is a must read. It reads fluently but she states that the book was 10 years in the writing. No doubt she found better things to do. The subtitle is a hat tip to Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals - and what a menagerie she parades before us. She's an oddity - solidly upper middle class but strongly socialist. Her family is very well connected to the upper echelons of British society - particularly the Howard family. Yes, that Howard family - the one that occupied Castle Howard, the dream set for so many TV and film productions about nob life. I share some of her life experiences but my life is not one half as well-lived as hers. I said to my wife, "I want a divorce so I can marry Polly Toynbee" - she tartly replied, "She's happily married." It's one of those books that you are sorry to reach its end.… (meer)

A passionately expressed and extensively researched study by journalist Polly Toynbee, into the lives of the poor end of society that everyone else, on the whole, would rather not have to think about.

For the sake of social experiment, Toynbee moves into one of the poorest and most destitute council estates in London and sets about attempting to live on the minimum wage, scraping by just like her neighbours and colleagues. From furnishing her flat at minimum cost from a local charity project, to surviving on less than ten pounds’ worth of food for a fortnight, she aims to live authentically, taking on a variety of low-paid manual jobs, including a care home assistant, hospital porter, school cook and nursery nurse, to pay her way.

Despite her admirable goal (and a fairly admirable achievement), Toynbee never really makes her study as authentic as the blurb suggests. She doesn’t actually utilise benefits services, instead paying large donations for their cooperation. She still flits back to her 'old life’ as a journalist from time to time, to her nice house, when things get a bit dire. Some of the most profound moments actually stem from this, showing the difference in her two sets of wages, and the reactions of the benefit agencies to her hypothetical concerns.

This is definitely a worthwhile read, but sadly lacks grit and tails off to a disappointingly political and long-winded conclusion. Could have been done better.… (meer)