Snakes and Ladders

Politicians claim social mobility is real – a just reward for ambition and hard work. This book proves otherwise. From servants’ children who became clerks in Victorian Britain, to managers made redundant by the 2008 financial crash, travelling up or down the social ladder has been a fact of British life for more than a century. Drawing on hundreds of personal stories, ‘Snakes and Ladders’ tells the hidden history of how people have really experienced that social mobility – both upwards and down.