Was reading 'The People - The Rise and Fall of the Working Class' by Selina Todd. Obviously by a female author, you can expect a bit of female perspective and bias, but was unprepared for just how little concern is shown for the consequences of their actions on men. This is particularly evident in 'The Interludes', the story of Viv Nicholson, British Football Pools winner (actually, it was her husband who won the money). Unconsciously, inadvertently, and perhaps unfortunately, the author puts female nature on prominent display. Viv gets pregnant by a local miner, Matt, simply to escape her family home and get a council house of her own. "Just falling pregnant was a means of escape. I didn't love Matt - not ever." Matt is in regular work, and is thoughtful and helpful. He is a good provider, and gives all of his wages to his wife for housekeeping. He often works double shifts to feed her appetite for materialism. They now have a son, Stephen, with health problems. But Viv hankers for the dance halls and pubs. "I just wanted to be out among the girls and have that enjoyment, those bright lights again." Shamefully, she tells her parents that Matt isn't giving her any money, as an excuse for going to work as a barmaid, leaving her parents to babysit. Her excuse for pleading poverty? According to the author, she was 'desperate'... desperate for distraction from domestic drudgery, her sick baby, and an early marriage she was beginning to regret. And, we're invited to feel sorry for her. Her council house was apparently 'difficult to keep clean'.

At the pub, Vivian meets Keith Nicholson, sixteen year old trainee miner. She gets pregnant by him, and demands a divorce from Matt - who moves back in with his mother, while Keith moves into Vivian's council house. Like society in general, the author doesn't spare a thought that this was also Matt's home, and his child is now in the hands of a feckless sixteen year old who can't be bothered to go to work (probably too tired). Meanwhile, a respectable, hard-working husband is forced to slink back to his mother, cuckolded, an object of scorn and ridicule within the community. Vivian indulges her penchant for material things, paying for them on credit, and hiding this from Keith. "We had a three piece suite, nice red carpet, nice little table lamp and a rented TV. We got it all on tick, of course, with a little help from my mum. I didn't tell Keith that we were drowning in debt, cos he might have left. And, I'd have been left on my own with the bloody kids." There were three children now. Fortunately, Keith won £167,000 (a fortune in 1961) on the football pools. Although Keith won the money, Vivian spent the lot, and they ended up destitute.

This is where the author really comes into her own, in her criticism of how the story was reported in the newspapers of the time. "Men got on in life by hard work. Women got by with luck, deception and sex. So such stories implied. Behind these tales lurked a fear that the economic independence caused by affluence might unleash working class women's rapacious sexual and materialistic appetite."

Thank you for the insight, Ms Todd. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.