Stewart Lansley

Joanna Mack

Poverty in Britain is at post-war highs and - even with economic growth -is set to increase yet further. Food bank queues are growing, levels of severe deprivation have been rising, and increasing numbers of children are left with their most basic needs unmet. Based on exclusive access to the largest ever survey of poverty in the UK, and its predecessor surveys in the 1980s and 1990s, Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack track changes in deprivation and paint a devastating picture of the reality of poverty today and its causes. Shattering the myth that poverty is the fault of the poor and a generous benefit system, they show that the blame lies with the massive social and economic upheaval that has shifted power from the workforce to corporations and swelled the ranks of the working poor, a group increasingly at the mercy of low-pay, zero-hour contracts and downward social mobility. The high levels of poverty in the UK are not ordained but can be traced directly to the political choices taken by successive governments. Lansley and Mack outline an alternative economic and social strategy that is both perfectly feasible and urgently necessary if we are to reverse the course of the last three decades.

The Rise of Mass Poverty

Breadline Britain

John Taylor

Gavin Weightman

Stephen Humphries

On their original publication, the four volumes of THE MAKING OF MODERN LONDON were hailed as innovative and riveting histories of the city, combining living memory with diligent historical resarch. Accompanying a popular television series of the same name, THE MAKING OF MODERN LONDON was a ground-breaking publication and drew upon the extensive knowledge and expertise of leading academics of the day.Now skilfully woven into one volume, this new publication picks up the story in 1815, when London was the gas-lit, horse-drawn city of Charles Dickens' day. In the two centuries that followed London has become one of the greatest cities in the world, with a history that is endlessly fascinating and enduring, especially when it is related in the words of the people who lived and breathed the city - from the lightermen on the 19th-century River Thames and the debutantes who jitterbugged their way around the dancefloors of the 1930s, to the East Enders whose poignant memories of the air raids and bombings of the Second World War stir our emotions even today. And this is one of the few histories of the capital that records the excitement of the Coronation in 1953, the 'Swinging London' of the 1960s and the revolution in dress and habits from the 1970s onwards. Written with verve, sympathy and elan, this is the intimate story of London as never told before.

Joanna Mack

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