It is a largely forgotten fact that Britain was the first industrialized country in the world, but Guy Martin - the cult motorcycle racer and mechanic - is about to remind us how the industrial revolution helped make Britain great. Guy shows how the discoveries made in the late 18th-19th centuries are to thank for the ease of our every day lives: in order to cook a bacon and egg sandwich in Industrial-era conditions, Guy has to restore a steam locomotive and railway to have the components delivered to the local shop; he has to bring a saw mill back into working order to be able to make a bicycle; he has to revamp a Victorian fishing trawler so he can cook himself some fish and chips, and when he decides to mow the lawn, he restores a Victorian botanical garden. After all that, he's in need of a holiday - so he sets to work restoring a Victorian holiday resort. Illustrated throughout with specially commissioned photography as well as historical images, Guy will take us through each project; his passion, enthusiasm and sheer inventiveness bringing a completely new perspective to the Industrial Revolution. He invites us to live it with him, to enjoy the nostalgia, marvel in the mechanics and learn from its legacy.

'Absorbing . . . an intelligent and clear-eyed account of much that goes on in our country' Sunday Times Getting to grips with Great Britain is harder than ever. We are a nation that chose Brexit, rejects immigration but is dependent on it, is getting older but less healthy, is more demanding of public services but less willing to pay for them, is tired of intervention abroad but wants to remain a global authority. We have an over-stretched, free health service (an idea from the 1940s that may not survive the 2020s), overcrowded prisons, a military without an evident purpose, an education system the envy of none of the Western world. How did we get here and where are we going? How Britain Really Works is a guide to Britain and its institutions (the economy, the military, schools, hospitals, the media, and more), which explains just how we got to wherever it is we are. It will not tell you what opinions to have, but will give you the information to help you reach your own. By the end, you will know how Britain works - or doesn't. 'Stig Abell is an urbane, and often jaunty guide to modern Britain, in the mould of Bill Bryson' Irish Times

The coastline of Victorian and Edwardian Britain provided beauty, entertainment and the venue for most people's holidays. But it was also a thriving centre of industry shipbuilding and fishing, plus the numerous trades associated with dockyards, coastal transport and the leisure industry. This book travels around Britain's coast clockwise from London looking at the industries that could be found at many of the cities and towns en route. Illustrated with an amazing collection of coloured postcards and other early photographs, the working coast of Britain is brought to life in all its bustling detail.

A history of the common people and the Industrial Revolution: “A true masterpiece” and one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the twentieth century (Tribune). During the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class—the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England’s greatest cultural and political force. Crucial to contemporary trends in all aspects of society, at the turn of the nineteenth century, these workers united into the class that we recognize all across the Western world today. E. P. Thompson’s magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class defined early twentieth-century English social and economic history, leading many to consider him Britain’s greatest postwar historian. Its publication in 1963 was highly controversial in academia, but the work has become a seminal text on the history of the working class. It remains incredibly relevant to the social and economic issues of current times, with the Guardian saying upon the book’s fiftieth anniversary that it “continues to delight and inspire new readers.”

This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

Why did the industrial revolution take place in 18th century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the 17th and 18th centuries.

A comprehensive study of the occupational health of employed children within the broader context of social, industrial and environmental change between 1780 and 1850.