Consumed: How Shopping Fed the Class System

Part memoir, part romping social history, part pop-economics primer, CONSUMED is a book about who the British are today from The UK Daily Telegraph's award-winning Retail Editor, Harry Wallop.
Wallop delves into the muddle of class distinctions and definitions, characteristics and etiquette to get to the bottom of what class is and how it has radically changed since the 1950s. Class tells the story of how social divisions have softened as Britain has got richer, more modern, more meritocratic, how the definitions and the structures of class have evolved resulting in the swelling of the middle classes. Wallop argues that class divides have not disappeared, as some would like to suggest, but that the Brits are still obsessed, if not more so, by categorising themselves along social dividing lines, but that the benchmarks are no longer their titles, acres owned or what their parents did, but the food they eat, holiday destinations, where they shop, and their clothes, cars, books and homes. This is the story of how what they consumed came to define who they are.
As a Retail Editor Wallop has spent a disproportionate amount of his working life chronicling the buying habits of the British people, what is selling at John Lewis, what food is no longer popular at Tesco, where they holiday, what property they can afford, their salaries and savings. Using this unique insight, archives and interviews, as well a look back at his own class-confused upbringing, Wallop builds a compelling narrative and a new outlook on Britain's social landscape.
So, whether you sit on a couch, settee or sofa? Do your weekly shop in Waitrose, Asda or Sainsbury's? Holiday in Devon or Spain? it says a lot more about you and your class than you might think ...