Is This Working?

From the sex worker to the lorry driver, the hedge fund manager to the veteran-turned-teacher, this is the story of work in twenty-first-century Britain, as told by workers themselves.

Charlie Colenutt is a writer and historian who, since 2021 has been interviewing people from all walks of life across the United Kingdom. Together they form a polyphony of stories from every part of the country, all of whom discuss the one thing that most of us simply cannot avoid and the one thing that most of the adult population has in common – work.

Since the Covid pandemic forced a great many of us to work from home – whilst not affording that luxury to very many others – there has been an increasing debate about work: what we do, how we do it and what value we assign to it. Is This Working?: A Portrait of Work in Modern Britain attempts to answer those questions and to shed light on how Britons today view work and its place in their lives.