In 2003, researchers embarked on a project to piece together a picture of changes in British working life over the course of 600 years. The emerging results seem to demand a rewrite of the most important chapter in our social and economic history.
The books that have changed our view of the Universe, eruptions that shook the world and Stalin's fiercest henchmen are just some of the themes that will be under discussion during the popular Cambridge Series at this year's Hay Literary Festival.
It was the dawn of an age of prosperity and transformed Britain into an economic superpower but our rose-tinted view of the industrial revolution masks another side of its legacy, a new history suggests.
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