A Local Habitation

Apr 17, 2025 9:42 PM

Author:Richard Hoggart

A Local Habitation

Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literary, established his reputation as a uniquely sensitive and observant chronicler of English working-class life. In this vivid first volume of autobiography he describes his origins in that milieu. Orphaned at an early age, Hoggart grew up in a working-class district of Leeds, in an intimate world of terraced back-to-backs, visits from the local Board of Guardians, clothing checks and potted-meat sandwiches. With affectionate insight he recreates the family circle - a loving grandmother, one domineering and on gentle aunt, and a bibulous, melancholy uncle - and recalls his early schooling, the friends he made and the mentors he admired. Hard-working and articulate, Hoggart did well enough at grammar school to go on to Leeds University. This volume ends as, having earned a higher degree and travelled in Nazi Germany, he prepares to leave Yorkshire, via the Army, for the world beyond. Wry, compassionate, exact, A Local Habitation is a classic recreation of working-class England between the wars.

Reviews

A beautiful and poignant account of growing up in the working-class back-to-back houses of inner-city Leeds in the 1920s and 1930s

—— Rachel Reeves , New Statesman

Superbly researched and academically impeccable, yet written with all the pace of a thriller, The Devils' Alliance shines a powerful beam into one of the undeservedly least known aspects of the Second World War

—— Andrew Roberts

Meticulous and vividly readable… Moorhouse’s grim and compelling book could not be more topical

—— Sunday Telegraph

A highly enjoyable history written with verve and attention to detail

—— Financial Times

Superb

—— Brendan Simms , Wall Street Journal

Authoritative and highly readable

—— Lawrence James , The Times

Lucid and well-researched

—— Keith Lowe , Mail on Sunday

Elegant

—— Independent

Moorhouse is the best guide now available to explain…the awful consequences for those caught in the unscrupulous coils of dictatorship

—— Richard Overy , Literary Review

Thorough and eloquent... a scholarly yet accessible reminder of the frighteningly tangible costs of totalitarianism

—— New Statesman

Roger Moorhouse’s definitive book blends eyewitness accounts with an authoritative master narrative… The Devils’ Alliance is not just a good book, it’s an important one, making a significant contribution to our understanding of the two worst dictators of the 20th Century, and the calamitous conflict they both had a hand in causing

—— History of War Magazine

In this profoundly researched, briskly argued and wonderfully readable book, full of dramatic and darkly comic detail, Roger Moorhouse has done history a great service. He has rescued one of the Second World War’s dirtiest little secrets from the shadows into which the pro-Soviet bias of post-war historians had swept it and reveals in all its moral squalor the deal that made it possible for Hitler to go to war.

—— Professor Adam Zamoyski

A terrifying account of cynical diplomacy, deceit, untrammelled power and the echoes that can be heard even now

—— Sinclair McKay , Daily Telegraph

Authoritative, highly readable account.

—— Lawrence James , The Times

Intelligent, well-informed.

—— Evan Mawdsley , BBC History Magazine

Has a lot more to offer than the usual facts and figures thrown together about a largely forgotten part of history… This has a certain amount of written fluidity… I have read any number of books about this subject and I have to say that this is one of the best researched that I have found… I found it a satisfying read throughout, I learnt a lot and filled in a few holes in my knowledge, an excellent book.

—— Reg Seward , Nudge

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