Dragged Up Proppa

Author: Pip Fallow

Durham | c 1980 to c 1990 | Memoirs | Social mobility | Social classes | Politics & government

Published on 7^th March 2024 by Pan Macmillan (Pan Books) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 320 pages
129mm x 197mm x 21mm | 222g

Dragged Up Proppa is the story of growing up working class in a forgotten England.

Very compelling, beautifully written memoir of a time and England that no longer exists but remains just as important today as ever – Sebastian Payne, author of Broken HeartlandsPip Fallow was born in the coal-miner’s cottage where his family of eight lived, in a village near Durham. Pip was destined to join his father down the pit, but the closure of his village’s mine in the 1980s saw him at the back of the dole queue like the rest. This is Pip’s story of being ‘dragged up proppa’, living by his wits, working and travelling the world before finally settling a few miles from where he grew up.

A lot has been written about the red wall in recent years, but Pip Fallow has lived it. This is his account of some of the most important issues affecting Britain today – from levelling-up and the north-south divide, to social mobility and class, and the devastating social upheaval caused by decades of deindustrialization and government neglect – to show how broken promises of the past impact his village and the politics of today.

This is the memoir of a man who left school illiterate, but has now written a book. The story of a lost generation who were prepared for a life that had disappeared by the time they were ready for it, of communities with once strong social ties that have now disintegrated, and a way of living that simply no longer exists in Britain today.

Fallows memoir is not just a classic piece of working-class writing, but a truly gripping narrative – Brian Groom, author of Northerners: A History