Was life really better before industrialisation? Strip away the nostalgia and the past begins to look considerably less idyllic: famine, child mortality, casual violence, environmental destruction and entertainments of almost unimaginable cruelty.
In The Grim Old Days, author Chelsea Follett challenges our romantic vision of the pre-industrial world. Here, she tells Marc Sidwell how the Industrial Revolution did more than create factories and economic growth: it helped transform what ordinary people could expect from life, from childhood and family relationships to food, health and personal safety.
As artificial intelligence promises another technological revolution, our understanding of the first one could shape how we respond to the next. If prosperity has allowed us to forget just how precarious life once was, are we in danger of taking progress for granted? And what can the grim realities of the past teach us about building and protecting a more prosperous future?
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Has Britain become a nation ashamed of its own history? And what happens when a country loses faith in its past? Historian Robert Tombs joins Marc Sidwell on The Capitalist to challenge the increasingly negative account of British history being taught in schools, universities and museums. In his new book, Our Islands’ Story, co-authored with […]
Andrew Griffith says Britain has already gone over the fiscal cliff. The question now is whether it can pull itself back. In a conversation with Centre for Policy Studies director Liam Halligan, the Shadow Chancellor delivers a clear diagnosis of Britain’s economy: a state consuming 45% of national income, punitive energy costs, rising taxes, excessive […]
Can the Tories’ tough-love welfare plans get more people back into work? Helen Whately, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, joins Marc Sidwell to set out the Conservatives’ plans for reforming Britain’s welfare system – including tougher rules for young people and the long-term unemployed. Whately explains the party’s new ‘Get to Work’ plan, which would […]
