He was Sen, but I don't think my Grandfather was unique; his generation becaame educated becuse of their politics
MacColl used to describe how, during the depression, unemployed workers would shelter in the Libraries and work their way through the most unlikely literature - he chose Engles because of his Salford connection (Condition of the Working Class in England sourced most of its information from there)
Walter Pardon had worked his way through all of Dickens and Hardy at least half a dozen times (Except Tess - he couldn't bear the idea of her being hanged)
He once told us, "The two greatest crimes in English literature was the hanging of Tess and the drowning of Maggie Tulliver (Mill on the Floss"
My father once asked me shortly after I left school whether I had read 'The Grapes of Wrath'
When I said I hadn't, he said, "You're lucky - you've got that in front of you".
He was right
Jim Carroll".