Christmas for ordinary blokes
Nov 28th, 2008 | By Ian Poulton | Category: IrelandRobert Tressell’s “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists“ was published in 1914, three years after the author’s death. It is a comfortable read now, a century on from the exploitation that Tressell (real name Noonan) described; “a classic of working-class literature” says one commentator.
Tressell died of tuberculosis at the age of 41 – he would have needed to have lived at least thirty years more to see the Welfare State bring some of the changes for which he might have hoped.
The characters in the story struggle for a …