A resource that can help us make up our own minds about extremes of wealth and poverty, privilege and want, instead of being encouraged to other welfare claimants and kid ourselves we share the interests of the profiteering one per cent. We should arm ourselves with it in all our anti-poverty struggles. Cost of Living The key takeaway of this excellent history is that poverty cannot be fought effectively, unless we also tackle the social and economic inequality that creates it. Labour Hub "Lansley is a master of the telling anecdote and has produced a wonderfully readable and insightful history of how the rich have impoverished the poor." Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York A readable and illuminating context to our present day extreme inequalities, exposing the narratives that justify these persistent conditions and the folly of ignoring them. Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies Scrupulous, impressive and irrefutable. No one can read this damning historical portrait without wondering why we allow such grotesque gaps seldom related to merit or social worth to continue. An utterly necessary book. David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain Crucially, the book extends our understanding of inequality by showing the clear, dependent relationship, between poverty and wealth creation. The book forces readers to confront, not just the reliance of the rich on the poor to make money, but also the long-standing and stubborn nature of this relationship in Britain. Brave New Europe
A vivid description of the fall and rise of poverty and inequality... impressive survey and analysis of 200 years of inequality." Journal of Social Policy
Important....passionate and thoroughly researched. Political Quarterly
