Working Lives

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. For the many millions of men and women hard at work during that time, an infernal landscape of smoke-blackened factories, towering slag heaps and fiery furnaces dominated their lives. From the deep docks and towering cranes of the Tyneside shipyards to the mills and chimneys of Lancashire and beyond, Working Lives takes us right to the heart of those industrial centres through the words of those who…