Fran Abrams Knihy

Fran Abrams was commissioned by the Guardian to work as a night cleaner at the Savoy—living on (or as it turned out, below) the minimum wage. A short version of that experience appeared in the paper in January 2002. For this book, she has spent a month living on or below the minimum wage in South Yorkshire working in a pickle factory, and then another month in Scotland working as a care assistant. This book shows what it is like to try to live on such a meager wage. Where can you live? What can you afford to eat? What are the jobs, and the workmates, and the bosses like? This book, in entertaining prose, sympathetic portraits, and a telling eye for detail reveals all—including the extraordinary differences across the length of Britain.

Many teachers and school leaders are tired, stressed and overstretched. This book argues that creating a positive environment for staff wellbeing and school performance is rooted in the culture and climate of our schools. It provides a roadmap to recovery for struggling schools, guiding readers towards improved mental wellbeing.

As recently as 100 years ago British children existed in ways now unthinkable; boys as young as eight worked grueling hours in unlit factories; girls were sold into sexual slavery with dolls still in their grasp; and boys at schools like Rugby and Harrow were brutally trained for their future at the helm of Britain's vast red empire. This book charts the transformation of childhood in the UK from early Victorian disagreements about childrearing to the Scouts' very direct involvement in World War I. Poignant first-hand accounts of poverty and deprivation as well as innocent pleasures carry the reader through a Dickensian landscape of urchins and Fauntleroys, the cosseted lives of Edwardian children to the self-sufficient charges of Baden-Powell. Fran Abrams draws distinctions along class lines and divisions such as town and country, Romantic and conservative, to achieve a historical perspective shows the progression of the idea of childhood through a century of massive social change brought about by urbanization, war, and medico-psychological advances. Songs of Innocence employs searing personal testimony and immaculate research to provide a fascinating exposition of the past and a mirror for the present.