In his absorbing and richly detailed new book, Sam Wetherell tells a Liverpool story which highlights Merseyside's unique qualities while at the same time showing how the recent past of one particular city might foretell the future of Britain as a whole.

Alan Allport, author of Britain at Bay

Liverpool becomes an original and compelling lens through which Sam Wetherell reassesses our industrial, maritime and social history, and provides an arresting account of Britain's decline and fall.

Will Hutton, author of This Time No Mistakes

Wetherell cleverly projects a diagnosis for Britain's post-industrial decline through the prism of Liverpool's hidden social histories.

Stephen McGann

Staggeringly good... the most thoughtful and creative history of modern Britain for a long, long time.

Bill Schwarz

This book is a persuasive argument for Liverpool as a lens through which to understand British history. The trajectory of this extraordinary port city, as a major node in the ignominious networks of slave trade and colonial commerce, a palimpsest of immigrant communities including the oldest Irish, Black and Chinese populations in England, a site of working-class revolt, a testing ground for Thatcherite policies, and a troubling example of 'managed' obsolescence. Wetherell demands that we see Liverpool as a prophecy of what might befall us all in Britain.

Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade

It is not an overstatement to say that this book will change the way we think about the history of modern Britain.

Emily Baughan, author of Saving the Children and 2024 BBC New Generation Thinker