'Of course it matters, in one way, it matters that people are dying. I just don't think that's what art should be about. It'…'Of course it matters, in one way, it matters that people are dying. I just don't think that's what art should be about. It's like painting a train crash. Of course it's dreadful, but it's not...' She was groping for words. Thus Elinor, a protected middle-class girl who has enough of a sense of independence to take herself off to the Slade in the years just before WW1 but who is still, as we see, wedded to conventional definitions of art, too blindly like the 'two old codgers' as she calls them who visit Kit Neville's exhibition and shake their heads saying "it's not much like cricket, is it?". On the other side of the debate is working-class Northerner, Paul, who argues for painting the reality of war and, specifically the wounds and mutilations of the Western Front: "because it's there. They're there, the people, the men. And it's not right their suffering should just be swept out of sight."It's a fascinating subtext, this theme of art and society, and questions about the relevance of art, but, from what I recall, it is given more prominence in the sequel, Toby's Room. Life Class can be said to be 'about' many things: it's a sort of coming-of-age novel (though the protagonists are perhaps older than we might expect - but, then, this is Edwardian England), it's neatly sculpted into a 'peace' and 'war' section with the split coming at precisely 50%, and it deals with issues of vocation, of class and sexuality, of women's options all with a light touch. I'd forgotten just what an excellent writer Barker is: her prose is seemingly plain - no extravagant metaphors and similes, she keeps it clean and pared back, but she is precise and, if not exactly elegant (though there's nothing rough either), she has the knack of drawing us deeply into the lives of her characters. As always, she's researched her topics (witness the brief …