Working Lives by David Hall (2012-07-19)

A fascinating oral history of working lives in post-war industrial Britain. In the early 1950s Britain was still the most urbanized and industrialized nation in the world, a global power in shipbuilding and the leading European producer of coal, steel, cars and textiles. Engineering workshops the size of small towns -- manufacturing everything from nuts and bolts to enormous engines and generators -- covered vast swathes of our cities. Sixty years on and Britain's industrial landscape has changed beyond whole industries have disappeared, workforces have been decimated and entire communities have been forced to adapt to new types of employment or, in many cases, to no work at all. Taking us right to the heart of the country's great industrial centres, Working Lives introduces to the men and women who were working during that period as they look back on the dangers and hardships of their jobs, the place of industry in their close-knit communities and how they spent their much-deserved leisure time. Between them, these fascinating individual voices paint a vivid and moving portrait of a time when our nation was still the workshop of the world.