If you watched ITV’s recent adaptation of Vanity Fair – a sparkling period piece high on periwigs, bonnets and wry Regency manners – you will know that Olivia Cooke played the charismatic protagonist, Becky Sharp, a young woman striving to make her way in the world and improve her station in life. But throughout the drama and, indeed, throughout William Makepeace Thackeray’s original satire of English society, Sharp finds that she is never allowed to forget the fact of her own low birth. It hangs around her neck for all to see and comment upon. We were, in the 19th century, completely obsessed with class. Cooke is from a working-class family in Oldham…

Source: The Times December 29, 2018 00:00 UTC