"This updated, second edition offers some important and inventive thinking about systematic attempts to impoverish, if not eradicate, workers' culture in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By following the endeavours of several wealthy socialists, Szczelkun traces the colonialization of the country's bawdy, unruly, interior by its ruling and rentier classes – albeit in the guise of philanthropy, through championing the culture of 'the common people,' as Cole and Postgate (1938) and indeed as Jarvis Cocker et al (1995) would have it. In many ways, this assault forms part of the class war waged through the enclosure of the commons, closing down the possibility of communal ways of living, political organization, and even singing and dancing. Here, perhaps, there are parallels to the 'cultural genocide' visited by Empire on indigenous people throughout its territory. This book reminds us of how violence of this kind is enacted 'at home', as well as abroad.

Szczelkun presents plenty of evidence of how the cultural practices of the urban poor in Britain were suppressed for contradicting the picturesque vision of a peasantry living harmoniously in an orderly, rural 'squirearchy.' As the author suggests, even when well-meaning, Clough-Ellis, Sharp – and particularly Morris – remained insensitive to anything that fell beyond the limits of their concept of 'good taste,' and sought to simplify or erase whatever they found objectionable. As a consequence, the solidarity that they sought with working people eluded them, and as such, this book can be read as a counterbalance to recent attempts to reassert Morris' reputation as champion of the honest, working poor – such as in Jeremy Deller's recent exhibition 'Love is Enough' (2015).

Not only does the theme of this book resonate with our contemporary situation, how it was written reminds us of the importance of intellectual work by those of us whose culture is too often dismissed as unsophisticated or inconsequential. Szczelkun's work is motivated by claiming back 'poor' culture, and asserts the strength and vitality of finding solidarity through the production of a culture in common."  Simon Pope