Work by Oliver Kilbourne, one of the Pitmen Painters Culture Belongs to Everyone One day at school, when I was about fourteen years old, our English teacher, Mister McNamara, played us a videotape of a production of Arnold Wesker’s play, Chips With Everything. The play is a fairly devastating attack on the British class system, using the vehicle of national service in the Royal Air Force. Wesker himself was a national serviceman, doing two years in the RAF. There is a particularly powerful episode, a Christmas party at which both officers and ordinary aircraftmen are present. The officers expect the entertainment from the erks and NCO’s to be bawdy and crude. Two guys produce a guitar and fiddle and perform the folk song The Cutty Wren. To this day, I am quite proud of the fact that I and my pals recognised the performers as those giants of English folk music, Marti...