Official History of Britain
A wonderfully written and entertaining book which places Britain under the microscope and asks who we are today and how we’ve changed as a nation.
‘Entertaining and absorbing’ – The Sunday Times
In 1841 there were 734 female midwives working in Britain, along with 9 artificial eye makers, 20 peg makers, 6 stamp makers and 1 bee dealer. Fast forward nearly two centuries and there are 51,000 midwives working in the UK and not an eye maker in sight! For the past two centuries, the National Census has been monitoring the behaviour of the British: our work-lives, homes lives and strange cultural habits. With questions on occupation, housing, religion, travel and family, the Census is a snapshot of a country at any given epoch, and its findings have informed the economy, politics and every other national matter for decades that followed.
Now, for the first time ever, the Census findings of the past two centuries are collected in to a wonderfully written and entertaining book which places Britain under the microscope and asks who we are and how we’ve changed as a nation. On our occupations, our working lives, relationships; our quirks, habits, weird interests and cultural beliefs – this book takes the reader on a journey through the statistical findings of one of the most valuable pieces of ongoing historical research of modern times, and asks us what these fascinating numbers tells us about the Britain in the 21st century.
Boris Starling is an award-winning author, screenwriter and journalist who, with this book, has finally put his history degree of 30 years ago to good use. He is a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller for both fiction and non-fiction, and his first novel Messiah was adapted into a BBC series which ran for five seasons. He is also the author of the popular Haynes Explains series and writes regularly for several national newspapers. He lives in Dorset with his wife, children, greyhounds and chickens.
David Bradbury, who assisted Boris with this book, is a long-serving senior media relations officer for the Office for National Statistics. He too studied history at university and edited the award-winning Statlas UK: a Statistical Atlas of the UK for the Central of Information and the Ordnance Survey, before joining the ONS soon after it was established. He divides his time between London and Oxford.