What do you think?
Rate this book
Disability: 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 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.
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 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.
Kindle Edition
First published June 4, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 20, 2026
Disability: A History of Resistance is a brilliant testament to the agency of disabled people throughout history. The author succeeds in bringing in many incredibly researched life stories into an accessible book that avoids any condescension and grasps the necessary nuance needed for positive change to happen. This book will definitely be influential.
August 19, 2026
A wonderful book which sets the standard for histories of disability. Limited almost entirely to the UK and to the last 500 years most of the book is concerned with mobility and sensory impairments with some attention to learning disabled people. It also layers this with race, gender, sexuality and class. It is very readable for the non-specialist, largely because it is a book stories told by disabled people about their lives drawing on a rich literature unknown to me at least. And as the title states, this is a history of resistance to an oppressive society with limitations on anyone different. Most touchingly this includes love and marriage.
Depressingly it needs to conclude on the struggles of an age of austerity and the continued need for resistance.
Depressingly it needs to conclude on the struggles of an age of austerity and the continued need for resistance.
August 23, 2026
As someone who was much more familiar with the American disability rights movement, it was a pleasure to learn about the British version. This book is extremely well researched and clearly written, and I learned a lot from it!
June 6, 2026
4.5 stars. Very interesting.
August 10, 2026
A solid and enjoyable book
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews