In this blog Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, looks at the growth of reading as a leisure activity among the working classes in Britain during the early twentieth century and considers how broader society viewed this expansion. Rob specialises in researching people’s leisure practices, and teaches a number of units that focus on one of the most popular leisure pursuits of the first half of the twentieth century, going to the cinema. Do you ever think about how other people view the books you choose to read? Over the course of the last hundred or so years, people’s reading habits have been subject to intense scrutiny, particularly the […]
