Disability

A groundbreaking 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 lack of evidence: it is a forgotten, suppressed history - the result of deliberate choices about whose histories matter. This remarkable book rectifies this.

Disability is a story of resistance and ingenuity, full of people who refused to be silenced or pitied. We meet the labourer who fights accusations in court that he's faking his disability, and wins; the painter who signs her royalty miniatures 'without hands'; and the one-armed textile worker who turned his injury into reform. We see how disabled people have rallied together to demand equality - fighting for their right to lead ordinary lives like everybody else.

This is a story not of progress led by doctors or philanthropists, but an extraordinary ground-up history of ordinary people demanding dignity and justice. By putting disabled people back into our national story, David Turner reveals a fuller and richer history of modern Britain than ever before.

'A timely and enjoyable untold history' PHILIPPA GREGORY, author of Normal Women

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

© David Turner 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026