The Bee
@beelitmag.bsky.social
đ€ 2110
đ„ 86
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A home for working-class readers and writers
https://thebeemagazine.com
In this live recording for the Working Class Library podcast Val McDermid will be talking to hosts
@clairemalcolm.bsky.social
and Richard Benson about the Scottish crime novel that most inspired her â William McIlvanney's Laidlaw. See you there!
www.hexhambookfestival.co.uk/event/the-wo...
about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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It took a while to digest Keshed by
@stuhennigan.bsky.social
, because it's such a big, powerful and important novel. Apart from anything else, it brings home how xlass works on you internally and externally, a combination of feeling and material conditions.
about 2 months ago
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I sometimes wonder if, when someone finds an old coin, say a Roman one, are they first person to touch it since the last Roman person it? Is there a corresponding Roman person 2000 years ago going âDamn, Iâve lost that sodding aureus.â?
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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Not enough books about darts. Thank you Kit Fielding, Iâm going in đŻ
2 months ago
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The Bee is hosting an online launch event for Chopsy, with @clairemalcolm, publisher of The Bee and CEO of New Writing North, in conversation with Maya Jordan, and questions from the audience to follow. The event takes place at 7.30pm on Wednesday 25 March 2026.
2 months ago
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3 months ago
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Growing up in a working-class family in Newcastle, David Olusoga experience devastating economic decline, and racism. Yet he "rejected his rejection", and has come to love his home region, as he explain in an essay in The Bee:
thebeemagazine.com/david-olusog...
3 months ago
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To write about working-class lives and working-class experience, many writers need to invent a working-class form and style.
@dantyte.bsky.social
, documenting life in his native South Wales, does just that, with taut, pared-back language that complements his charactersâ focus on self-preservation.
3 months ago
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Quite rightly singled out by the Observer as one of the best debuts of 2026 â an empathetic evocation of the experience of learning disability, and a brilliant new voice for non-gentrified east London. Read our interview with Lucy Apps here:
thebeemagazine.com/lucy-apps-ou...
3 months ago
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Our interview with the poptastic memoirist Adelle Stripe, who asked if we could begin with some Smash Hits type questions as well as literary ones is here:
thebeemagazine.com/adelle-strip...
4 months ago
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The difficulties with Starmer identifying as working class are obvious, but itâs interesting that the biggest objectors are clearly middle class right wing journalists. Most seems incapable of understanding you might base your identity on things other than job & money.
4 months ago
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âWuthering Heights is a story by and about people from below,â writes Richard Benson in a a short history of adaptations of the book. âMillions have identified with it as such for 150 years. Fennell's version takes the pretty bits, and made them into a film for people from above.â
bit.ly/wh26x
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âWuthering Heightsâ Review: Problems Arenât Only About Race and Class
The problem with Emerald Fennellâs Wuthering Heights run deeper than its awful casting.
https://thebeemagazine.com/wuthering-heights-review-problems-arent-only-about-race-and-class/
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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I love photography work in which the photographer makes themselves parrndo the story, rather than just being the detached eye
add a skeleton here at some point
5 months ago
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The documentary photography of working-class people that gets published tends to show people looking pitiable and/or threatening. We try to challenge that a bit, and Carmina Ripollés is one of the photographers who helps us. Here's her fabulous festive portfolio:
thebeemagazine.com/when-were-sm...
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When Weâre Smiling
Do photographs of working-class people have to be sombre, serious and vaguely threatening? Not if Carmina RipollĂšs is taking the pictures, they donât. Hereâs her show of smiles from the past year to c...
https://thebeemagazine.com/when-were-smiling/
5 months ago
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Looking forward to columnists exploring further class-related statistical anomalies, such as employed working-class people having to claim benefits to cover basic living expenses.
5 months ago
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Had a lot of fun working with Leesa Morris on this, a comic festive disaster story about a working-class woman's first Christmas with her fiancĂ©'s middle-class parents. Her observations of rituals and manners from sausage rolls eating to present opening are a yuletide delight đđđđđđ
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How I Ruined a Middle-Class Christmas
Her family scoff sausage rolls, love a bit of tinsel, and open their presents when they get up. His eat tiny amounts of Thorntons, colour-co-ordinate, and â yes, we are in Hell â wait until after dinn...
https://thebeemagazine.com/how-i-ruined-a-middle-class-christmas/
5 months ago
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reposted by
The Bee
Pittsburgh Review of Books
6 months ago
Born in the Mon Valley, Phillip Bonosky transformed from a devout Catholic into a committed Communist writer, chronicling the struggles of working-class immigrants. Richard Gazarik tells his story.
pghrev.com/phillip-bono...
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Phillip Bonoskyâs Fight for the Working Class - Pittsburgh Review of Books
Phillip Bonosky wanted to be a Catholic priest growing up during the Great Depression amid the slag heaps of a nearby steel mill in Duquesne, a gritty steel
https://pghrev.com/phillip-bonoskys-fight-for-the-working-class/
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Anyone else noticing âcanonicalâ replacing out âiconicâ in ads? I have just watched an an advert for a canonical calendar.
5 months ago
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The new episode of our Working Class Library podcast, in which Kevin Barry makes the case for Angelaâs Ashes as a working class classic, is out now - on all platforms, and our site - see link here đđ
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The Working Class Library Episode 6: Angelaâs Ashes by Frank McCourt
Kevin Barry joins Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, and Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, to discuss Frank McCourtâs 1996 memoir Angelaâs Ashes.
https://thebeemagazine.com/the-working-class-library-episode-6-angelas-ashes-by-frank-mccourt/
6 months ago
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reposted by
The Bee
@Galleybeggars
6 months ago
This doesn't sound good:
www.thebookseller.com/news/waterst...
(And it's already terrifying that such an important asset to the UK economy, cultural soft power and to generally making life better is owned by a US hedge-fund.)
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Waterstones and Barnes & Noble owner 'looks to list them on stock market'
The owner of Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, a US hedge fund, is reportedly looking to list the booksellers on the stock market.
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/waterstones-and-barnes-noble-owner-looks-to-list-them-on-stock-market
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Just discovering Thomas Burke, a prolific early 20th c working class writer who joined London Bohemia, and then pointed out that most of the convention-challenging it was so proud of had been/was already being done by working-class Victorians decades earlier. Looking forward to reading more in 2026
6 months ago
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Why IS Angelaâs Ashes called Angelaâs Ashes? Kevin Barry has a theory.
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6 months ago
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We recorded an episode of the Working Class Library podcast about Angela's Ashes at Hexham Book Festival with Kevin Barry. Kevin's a native of Limerick and his dad knew the McCourts. It was a great conversation & confirmed my belief that AA is an overlooked working-classic. Podcast coming Thursday
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6 months ago
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Gary Stevenson, author of Trading Game, was responding to Rory Stewart's claim that he was "not an economist", just "a City trader". Gary has a Master of Philosophy degree in Economics from Oxford University.
6 months ago
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Quite so ,Mr Doyle
6 months ago
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We're proud and excited to say our Working Class Library podcast episode about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, featuring David Nicholls, is now available on all good podcast platforms, and on our site. We loved doing this, and hope you like it too đ
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The Working Class Library Episode 5: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 Ÿ by Sue Townsend
Richard and Claire are joined by novelist David Nicholls to consider Sue Townsendâs 1982 novel The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 Ÿ.
https://thebeemagazine.com/the-working-class-library-episode-5-the-secret-diary-of-adrian-mole-aged-13-3-4-by-sue-townsend/
7 months ago
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A little taster of the full episode, which we'll be posting on on Monday.
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7 months ago
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Congratulations to
@newlands.bsky.social
for this deserved recognition. Tom was on our Writing Chance programme for working-class writers in 2024, and we are very proud for him.
7 months ago
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reposted by
The Bee
Electric Literature
7 months ago
âWe live in a time when standards of masculinity are being dictated to us by deeply problematic men.â
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This Memoir Takes A Sledgehammer to Notions of Masculinity - Electric Literature
Adam Farrerâs âBroken Biscuitsâ uses vulnerability and incisive humor to deconstruct his relationship with his father, brothers, and male friends
https://buff.ly/CE2wmOd
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reposted by
The Bee
David Whitehouse
7 months ago
I wrote one of the episodes for the newly relaunched Play For Today, which starts tonight (my episode is on in a couple of weeks). This is an article about that .
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
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Play for Today: The revival hoping to save British TV from a class crisis
Play for Todayâs one-off films were a seminal moment in television in the Seventies and Eighties, writes Hannah J Davies. Decades later, Channel 5 is bringing them back, and aiming to diversify small-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/play-for-today-channel-5-b2863772.html
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One of our favourites Watch out for our Working Class Library podcast episode about her and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, featuring guest David Nicholls, coming soon. For an introduction, see
thebeemagazine.com/a-guide-to-the-secret-diary-of-adrian-mole-aged-13-3-4-by-sue-townsend/
7 months ago
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Working-class & comic novels receive little scholarly attention in the UK. Funny working class novels really struggle, however loved they are. Seems less so in Europe, which explains why Sue Townsend's work receives more scholarly attention there. This is nice:
www.ethesis.net/townsend/tow...
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A comprehensive study of the non-dramatic work of Sue Townsend. (Jurgen Willems)
https://www.ethesis.net/townsend/townsend_deel_II_12.htm
7 months ago
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Our designer David has a game called fantasy classics, where he chooses books he thinks should be published as classics. With him all this way on this one. Look out for an episode of our Working Class Library podcast about it, featuring the great novelist and Mole fan David Nicholls, coming soon.
7 months ago
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Now we've closed our first open submissions, we made a little list offering some thoughts on what makes proposals stand out, and where writers might think about tuning them up.
thebeemagazine.com/advice-for-w...
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Advice for writers
Feedback from our editors following the Beeâs first open submissions.
https://thebeemagazine.com/advice-for-writers/
7 months ago
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We started off looking at social class in Dracula as a bit of fun really, but it's more interesting than you might think. It's fairly well known that vampires were often used to refer to the parasitical rich in the 18th and 19th centuries - in this picture by Walter `Crane.
7 months ago
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7 months ago
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We'll be recording our episode on class in Dracula at Whitby Lit Fest in November. Join us if you dare đ§đ»ââïž
whitbylitfest.org.uk/event/the-wo...
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7 months ago
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We'll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this modern working-class classic on Wednesday, with
@helenmort.bsky.social
. If you're in the area, join us if you can đ
8 months ago
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RIP Tony Harrison. One of the great 20th-century British poets and indescribably inspiring to working-class writers "Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard to find my slab behind the family dead, butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread."
8 months ago
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"I donât think Iâll ever really be middle-class," says Stephen Tuffin. Itâs like being British and going abroad â I tell other middle-class people Iâm just there in their world as a visitor.â Read his heartbreaking short story about a boy left alone with his father when his mum leaves, here:
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The Gift
The bus was empty but for one passenger who sat halfway down the seats on the lower deck. The woman was the manâs wife and the boyâs mother and she was leaving.
https://thebeemagazine.com/the-gift/?fbclid=IwY2xjawM_O8JleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBCZ3dsdXhoMHhoWUZsVWxHAR7g-j-9zIvC1GDQUhwEBey-8PaNEddTJ-eErWWOdymDh5dIzA4IPVu8oPvPHw_aem_G2xnhAbD3HDzSngSFxiXuQ
8 months ago
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Really enjoyed this from
@damianbarr.bsky.social
Such a good understanding of how social class doesnât just influence lives, but also silences voices. Damian unions how that works, and how it feels.
9 months ago
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One Conservative commentator says it's time we stopped "sanctifying" "working-class credentials" đ It's one of those moments when you realise some middle class people's idea of what being working class involves doesn't have much to do with reality.
thebeemagazine.com/are-working-...
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Are working class people saints?
Britain needs to stop its âsanctificationâ of working-class people, says one conservative commentator. We werenât aware it had ever started.
https://thebeemagazine.com/are-working-class-people-saints/
9 months ago
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One reason literature tends to be seen as âmiddle classâ is working-class writers and books being class-washed â presented and adapted in ways that strip out their working-class identity. Lark Rise to Candleford is a prime example.
9 months ago
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9 months ago
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Becka White, you may remember, is a working-class writer from south-east London with a rare gift for combining the personal and the political in her work. We published her story In Search of the Perfect Mushroom Omelette in July. This time, she has written a coruscating critique of local...
9 months ago
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In order to want to save the planet, a person must feel they belong in it. Yet Black people are often told they do not belong in certain places.
9 months ago
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Come one, come all.
9 months ago
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We're proud to publish
@darrenmcgarvey.bsky.social
on the UK's health lottery & why health inequality is a political choice. Right now there's a lot of bogus blaming in the news that distracts from real issues like this. This is an honest assessment, based on real experience.
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Class & the Health Lottery
Why canât all the fat, lazy, poor people be as healthy and successful as right-wing political commentators?
https://thebeemagazine.com/class-and-the-health-lottery/
9 months ago
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