'What else can you expect from class-ridden Britain?' The Whitehall studies and health inequalities, 1968 to c.2010

The Whitehall studies of British civil servants, running from 1968 until the present day, are some of the most influential in twentieth century public health. Believing that the stratification that they observed among civil servants was replicated in wider society through the class system, the Whitehall researchers argued that inequality was a powerful force in society, literally embodied by incidence of disease. But as politicians and sociologists questioned the continuing relevance of class, this article explores how these studies reflected and were in conversation with prevailing social attitudes about inequality in end-of-century Britain.