Today, in 1956, the English class system is essentially tripartite – there exist an upper, a middle, and a lower class. It is solely by its language that the upper class is clearly marked off from the others.

Alan Ross, ‘U and Non-U: An Essay in Sociological Linguistics’, from Noblesse Oblige, edited by Nancy Mitford (1956)

Every Saturday night at 8

We want to drown our sorrows

So off we goes to the Waxworks

To look at the Chamber of Horrors.

There’s a lovely statue of mother there

We like to see it rather –

It’s nice to see her as she was

The night she strangled father.

Hilaire Belloc

‘It’s my belief,’ Constable Twitten announced, ‘that the person who’s been in charge of all things criminal in Brighton since 1951 is in fact you, Mrs Groynes! … And you have been operating from the very heart of the police station, where bally well no one takes any notice of you!’

From A Shot in the Dark (2018), concerning the management of crime in Brighton in 1957