Disability

About the Book

A ground-breaking history of modern Britain that puts the experiences of disabled people to the fore for the first time.

'A timely and enjoyable untold history' PHILIPPA GREGORY

'A rare feat of a book: so many extraordinary stories, so many lost names, brought to light' RAYMOND ANTROBUS

Despite there being more than 16 million disabled people in the UK today, disability rarely features in mainstream accounts of our past. That absence is not down to any lack of evidence: it is a forgotten, suppressed history – the result of deliberate choices about whose histories matter. For the first time, this book puts disabled lives at the centre of the story of modern Britain.

It tells a story of resistance and ingenuity, and often one of flourishing, full of people who refused to be silenced or pitied. We meet the seventeenth-century labourer, who fights accusations in court that he’s faking his disability – and wins; the eighteenth-century painter who signs her miniatures for royalty ‘without hands’; the nineteenth-century one-armed textile worker who turned his injury into activism, demanding reform in Parliament. From the mid-twentieth century, we see how disabled people got together to demand equality in education, housing, transport and the workplace – fighting for their right, not to be treated specially, but to lead ordinary lives like everybody else.

For this ground-breaking and campaigning book, David Turner has unearthed countless forgotten voices and tales. He tells a story not about ‘progress’ led by doctors or philanthropists, but a ground-up history of ordinary people demanding dignity and justice. And by putting disabled people back into the national story, reveals a much fuller and richer history of modern Britain.

'Gripping, profound and important' GABRIEL WESTON

'A lively, sensitive history' GAVIN FRANCIS

'A fascinating, brilliant book ... I learned so much' TOM SHAKESPEARE

About the Author :
David Turner is an award-winning social and cultural historian, with expertise in disability, medicine, gender and the body. Based at Swansea University, he is the first person in the UK to be promoted to a professorship based on their work on disability history, and his research has appeared in publications such as iNews and BBC History Magazine. David also co-devised the BBC Radio 4 series Disability: A New History.

Review :
A timely and enjoyable untold history, filled with resilience, courage and even humour A rare feat of a book: so many extraordinary stories, so many lost names, brought to light, re-evaluated and revised through a caring and knowledgeable disability lens. A nuanced, intersectional and textured human history, David Turner has done us all a great service with Disability A fascinating, detailed and brilliant book, from which I have learned so much. Exactly what we all need A lively, sensitive history of disability and ableism, from the workhouses of the 'age of faith' through to our age of austerity. With moving vignettes and powerful storytelling, Turner sets out the struggle of disabled people for dignity, humanity and respect, and demonstrates with eloquence just how far we have to go to build a society that puts people before profit A profound chronicle of the lives of British disabled people throughout history, this book is a necessary reminder of the extraordinary abilities and resourcefulness of those who are too often still pushed to the margins. Gripping, profound and important