Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 4547

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'It is equally possible for the same reader to adopt different frames for the same story, relishing it on one level while seeing through the claptrap on another. In his youth Aneurin Bevan enjoyed the Magnet and Gem surreptitiously (his father forbade them) and devoured H. Rider Haggard at the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library. But during the 'Phoney War' he lambasted the government's stupidly optimistic predictions in precisely the same terms: "Immediately on the outbreak of war, England was given over to the mental level of the Boys' Own Paper and the Magnet..." In 1944 Bevan freely admitted that "William le Queux, John Buchan and Phillips Oppenheim have always been favourites of ours in our off-moments. Part of their charm lies in their juvenile attitude".'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: unknown
Country: Wales
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Aneurin Bevan
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 15 Nov 1897
Socio-economic group: Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation: miner's son, later Labour politician
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: Wales
Country of experience: Wales
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: n/a
Title: The Magnet
Genre: Fiction, Children's Lit, Ephemera
Form of Text: Print: Serial / periodical
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 4547  
Source - Print  
  Author: Jonathan Rose
  Editor: n/a
  Title: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
  Place of Publication: New Haven
  Date of Publication: 2001
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 332
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 332, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=4547, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

See Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan (London, 1962) Vol I, pp. 22, 307, 395

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)