David Turner

Splendid ... Turner's detailed study explores the objectification and stigmatisation in the UK's past and instead celebrates a history of activism that helped the disables rights movement grow over centuries ... There are so many interesting threads to a story I suspect few of us know much about ... [A] well-researched and engrossing book

The sweeping narrative is anchored by incredible personal stories … In showing how disabled people throughout history have rejected the narratives foisted upon them, Turner in turn rejects another false narrative: that disabled people are passive recipients of both discrimination and help. This book tells another, truer story: that we have always resisted and always fought to make things better

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

Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

A fascinating, detailed and brilliant book, from which I have learned so much. Exactly what we all need

Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

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

A rich, immersive and well-rounded narrative on the extraordinary battles undertaken for the right to an ordinary life. Disability is a bold declaration that disabled people have always been here, in all sections of society. Truly fantastic

Grace Spence Green, author of To Exist As I Am

A ground-breaking book that uncovers the hidden histories of disabled people who fought against injustice

A ground-breaking addition to British disability history, placing the experiences of disabled people to the fore

A History of Resistance

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

David Turner

Praise for Disability

Splendid ... Turner's detailed study explores the objectification and stigmatisation in the UK's past and instead celebrates a history of activism that helped the disables rights movement grow over centuries ... The ...

The sweeping narrative is anchored by incredible personal stories … In showing how disabled people throughout history have rejected the narratives foisted upon them, Turner in turn rejects another false narrative: t ...

A timely and enjoyable untold history, filled with resilience, courage and even humour

Splendid ... Turner's detailed study explores the objectification and stigmatisation in the UK's past and instead celebrates a history of activism that helped the disables rights movement grow over centuries ... The ...

The sweeping narrative is anchored by incredible personal stories … In showing how disabled people throughout history have rejected the narratives foisted upon them, Turner in turn rejects another false narrative: t ...

A timely and enjoyable untold history, filled with resilience, courage and even humour

Splendid ... Turner's detailed study explores the objectification and stigmatisation in the UK's past and instead celebrates a history of activism that helped the disables rights movement grow over centuries ... The ...

The sweeping narrative is anchored by incredible personal stories … In showing how disabled people throughout history have rejected the narratives foisted upon them, Turner in turn rejects another false narrative: t ...

A timely and enjoyable untold history, filled with resilience, courage and even humour

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