Somebody once tried to insult me by saying: "You're the kind of guy who likes Merchant-Ivory films, aren't you?" This was perfectly true (although I like many other films, too). Producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory made a series of elegant films exploring England's past: movies like A Room With A View (Chambre avec vue, 1986) and Howards End (Retour à Howards End, 1992). They often focused on the English class system. Which was ironic, because they were written by a woman who was born in Germany and spent many years in India - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who died last week at the age of 85.
The English have always been fascinated by class. And the English class system seems to fascinate everyone else, which explains the global success of Downton Abbey, a descendent of the Merchant-Ivory films. The rigid hierarchy of the great house in the series is easy to comprehend and largely unchallenged. It dates back to a time when English society was divided into three classes: lower (or "working") class, middle class, and upper class. But a recent study by the BBC Lab concludes that there are now seven classes in the UK, including "new affluent workers" and the "precariat" (precarious proletariat). According to the new rules I'm "established middle class", but as I no longer live in England it hardly matters. Here in France, nobody cares what school I went to.
