Beautiful Lives by Stephen Unwin, Hardcover, 9781035424733 | Buy online at The Nile
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Beautiful Lives

How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong

Author: Stephen Unwin  

Beautiful Lives
Hardcover

A powerful examination of changing attitudes towards people with learning disabilities, and a community's fight for human rights and dignities.

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Pre order release date
8th September 2025
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Hardcover

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

A powerful examination of changing attitudes towards people with learning disabilities, and a community's fight for human rights and dignities.

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Description

'A beautiful book - powerful, persuasive, illuminating, moving.' Gyles Brandreth

'A powerful, multi-faceted, myth-busting account of the most marginalised and belittled out-group in modern society.' - Simon Jarrett, author of Those They Called Idiots

For much of history, people with learning disabilities have been regarded as unworthy of interest - often seen as a threat to the social order and sometimes dismissed as barely human. While recent years have seen an improvement, learning-disabled people are still treated as fundamentally different.

Beautiful Lives is a personal and pragmatic account, told through the eyes of a father whose son has severe learning disabilities. From early civilisation to the chilling realities of twentieth-century eugenics, this powerful book uncovers a startling and rarely told history - one deeply embedded in the challenges still faced today.

Unwin shapes this history into a powerful story of love, lived experience and the long struggle for a better future.

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About the Author

Stephen Unwin is one of Britain's leading theatre and opera directors. He founded English Touring Theatre in 1993 and opened the Rose Theatre Kingston in 2008, which he ran until 2014. He is the author of ten books, including guides to Shakespeare, Brecht, Ibsen and twentieth century drama for Faber and Faber, Nick Hern Books and Bloomsbury. In 2022 Reaktion published his Poor Naked Wretches, an original and much praised study of Shakespeare's working people.

Stephen's second son Joey has severe learning disabilities and Stephen is a campaigner for the rights and opportunities of people like him. His stage plays includes All Our Children (London, 2017; New York 2019) and Laughing Boy (London, 2024), both of which concern the historic abuse of disabled children and young people. He writes a regular column for Byline Times, mostly on disability, as well as a popular blog on his website.

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Product Details

Publisher
Headline Publishing Group | Wildfire
Published
5th June 2025
Pages
304
ISBN
9781035424733

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