Her characters come from the quiet and exceedingly comfortable middle class: doctors, lawyers, top military men, members of the clergy.
The reasons for such a small number are: refusal by management sponsored studies to grant medical certifications to workers suffering from occupational diseases, lack of training for doctors in diagnosis of occupational lung diseases, deliberate misdiagnosis by doctors of asbestosis as either chronic bronchitis or tuberculosis and the inherent class bias of middle class doctors against workers.
Despite being the epitome of middle middle class (doctor's daughter, grammar-school girl, boho provincial upbringing), being mistaken for a posho has been a lifetime affliction.
The income of this class is higher than that of the working-class but lower than that of the upper-middle class (doctors, engineers, lawyers, middle-size business owners) and upper class".
Laxmi's father worked as a cook for an upper-middle class doctor in Delhi, who helped pay her medical expenses.
He describes a cultural dilemma: an American Indian is waiting for a dialysis machine, but the white middle-class doctors don't want to put him high on the list because he is an alcoholic.
Only last weekend the Sunday Times, quasi-bible for many materialistic aspirants, quoted on page one a private school head (paywall) warning that layers of middle-class doctors, lawyers and teachers accustomed to sending their kids to private schools were being priced out of the market by fast-rising fees, quadrupled in 20 years.
The trouble for me was that the Tory vision of olde England didn't include mixed-race kids, even middle-class doctor's sons.
An eminent psychiatrist embarks on a flirtatious affair and finds himself fatally submerged by desire and madness; a middle-class doctor and housewife meet by chance in a station tea-room and fall hopelessly in love.
Unlike Dr. Waheed, who grew up religious, Mr. Khan was not particularly observant, the son of an upper-middle-class doctor who had come to Britain from Pakistan to study medicine and then stayed on.
Mr Longley travelled around the country for two and a half years to make his film; Laura Poitras spent nine dangerous months in Baghdad shooting "My Country, My Country", the story of a heroic middle-class doctor who runs a quixotic campaign for public office.
