Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

Where Are All the Working Class Writers?

RADIO 4, 11.30AM

 Writer Kit de Waal, whose first novel, My Name

Is Leon, was published in 2016 when she was 55, explores the barriers faced by writers from a workingclass background. Using part of the advance she received, de Waal has set up a creative writing scholarship with the aim of improving working-class representation in the arts. “All we need is the space, the time to do it – oh yes, and some way to pay the bills,” she says. She also talks to other writers, including Tim Lott and Julia Kingsford, about their experiences. RADIO 4 EXTRA, 1.30PM

 Ian Mcmillan charts the history of Arlo Guthrie’s 18-minute-long ballad, Alice’s Restaurant, the enormously influential satire of Sixties counterculture. The song begins with Guthrie being arrested for littering at Thanksgiving (hence the programme’s broadcast – it’s Thanksgiving in America). It soon spirals into a convoluted tale of Guthrie then not being drafted into the US Army to fight in Vietnam because of his minor conviction. Mcmillan meets fellow Guthrie fans who praise the song as a key piece of anti-war art.