Who Speaks for the English Ordinary?

Alan Bennett’s late diaries suggest that the old, genteel literary voice that once articulated the ‘ordinary’ English no longer commands the national conversation. Instead, the social types Bennett used to depict have been liberated into louder, often populist political expression, leaving cultural intermediaries uncertain about representation. — If traditional cultural interlocutors no longer mediate ordinary people’s concerns, new (often more polarizing) actors will fill the gap, reshaping politics and public policy priorities.