This intriguing book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers' memoirs, social surveys, library registers and more, the author discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves and what they knew.
'Vast in scope and absorbing in every detail. As you read it, the air fills with the voices of the long unheard.'-John Carey, The Sunday Times
'Rose's book is a brilliant and often moving record... It deserves its place alongside writers who have yielded important new insights into our cultural ancestry and who shed light on ourselves.'-Ian Jack, The Daily Telegraph
'Brilliantly readable.'-Philip Pullman, The Daily Mail
'Deeply inspiring... It should be read with minute attention by all educationists and politicians: and, indeed, by anyone with an interest in the future of our civilization.'-The Sunday Telegraph
'A passionate work of staggering ambition.'-Wall Street Journal
'This is an incomparable book: scholarly to a scruple; majestic in its 100-year reach; ardent in its reaffirmation of faith in what good books, splendid music and fine art may do to turn a people's history into a long revolution on behalf of liberty, equality and truth.'-The Independent
