Commoners

For 1000 years, the English working class have been the engine of history: building cities, cleaning castles, fighting wars and shaping culture.

Your great-great-great-great-grandma might have helped to build the Tower of London or taken part in the Battle of Cable Street - and you’d probably never know about it. A huge amount of history is made not by Great Men assembling decrees or declaring wars, but by thousands of common people changing how they do things ever so slightly from how their parents did it - tiny snowflakes causing avalanches.

Uncommon People brings to life these forgotten voices, revealing the past as something that anyone had the power to influence. Whether your ancestors were rebelling against Henry VIII, being transported to Australia or building Concorde, read on to see them rescued by history.