DOCKERS AND DETECTIVES

Ken Worpole

Five Leaves 2nd Ed 2008 - £8.99

ISBN 978-1-905512-37-9

Dockers and Detectives is a pioneering study of working class reading and writing. Its first publication helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain. Dockers and Detectives drew attention to a group of Liverpool writers who produced a series of expressionist novels about tenement life and the hardships of life at sea, while also containing an essay on the vibrant literature of London's Jewish East End. It provided an assessment of the popularity of American 'tough-guy' crime-writing in Britain in the 1930s, and was also the first to take seriously the popular literature of the Second World War — on the home front, on the battlefield, and in the prisoner-of-war camp — with all the moral and political questions raised by that writing.

Ken Worpole is the author of a number of books on architecture, landscape and social history. The Independent newspaper reported that, 'For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape.' Dockers and Detectives was his first book. It was widely reviewed and praised on first publication, and is now available in a revised edition for a new generation of readers.

...a very welcome book. It is very good to have this material which Worpole has so patiently collected and analysed. Raymond Williams, New Society

What makes Dockers and Detectives a good read is the quality of intelligent thoughtfulness that suffuses the book... He succeeds in making the reader want to rush out and read the books he is discussing because he tells a story well, and that in itself is still rare in books about literature.

City Limits