Diamonds in the Mud

Something unusual happened in Britain during the spring of 2020. As the nation went into lockdown to fight a killer pandemic our view of what constituted a hero changed. Suddenly celebrity businessmen, actors, sports stars, singers, even royals seemed irrelevant. The people we were truly in awe of were the low-paid lifesavers, so much so that we stood outside our homes every Thursday to applaud them. ‘Diamonds in the Mud’ asks why the British have traditionally been taught to veneate kings and queens, generals and Eton-educated Prime Ministers, while, a few notable exceptions aside, those who changed history from below rarely got a look-in. It does so by telling the stories of a selection of working-class heroes the author has met through life and journalism.