I have just started to read, with rather horrified fascination, The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge, first published in 1965.
Horrified because, although the London in which it is set is only too recognisable – I remember it well – it did not seem nearly half so grim, when you were actually living in it, as it now sounds.
Language has changed in subtle & unsubtle ways too. I was pondering quite how it is that we, exhorted & encouraged as we are to be entrepreneurial, should nevertheless talk so much about working for a company.
The 1960s intellectuals spoke naturally, but disparagingly, of those who worked for a firm, & imagined assuaging their jealousy of those lucky enough to have a family car, courtesy of the firm they worked for, by making them emblazoning the name of that firm along its side. Not an age which had learnt to wear its logos with pride.
Nowadays one hardly hears the word firm used to refer to an organisation unless it is qualified as ‘family’ or ‘old-fashioned’ or possibly just ‘long-established.’
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