“Sex in Shiny Packets”

“Sensation without commitment”, “life like a permanent wank inside you” and “a sort of dry-rot amid the odour of boiled milk”: turns of phrase and ideas from Richard Hoggart’s ‘The Uses of Literacy”. A pioneer of Cultural Studies – “a combination of literature, sociology and moral uplift” – Hoggart’s 1957 classic on the British working-class broke new ground and launched his career which included helming UNESCO. "Sex in Shiny Packets" is the title of a chapter in that book. In this episode we learn of his significance both as a scholar and a public intellectual who famously took the stand at the trial on the banning of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.