Richard Hoggart
- Prizes judged
Richard Hoggart was an academic who specialised in British popular culture. His evidence as an expert witness during the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960 was thought to be decisive.
Hoggart, who served in the Royal Artillery during the war, wrote The Uses of Literacy in 1957. An examination of the role of advertising, mass media and Americanisation on Britain’s urban working class, the book is one of the founding texts of cultural studies. He was a lifelong advocate of the importance of education and culture, and once wrote: ‘There are many who can take cultural debasement remarkably easily.’ As a formative influence on the young BBC2 and on the Arts Council, Hoggart was determined to counter that tendency.