This is a thought-provoking book that aims to link personal experiences of ‘disabled people’ with physical impairments born across decades of the post World War II era and which aims to link broader policy developments to personal experiences. Fifty interviews across the three chosen generations provided background to six (two per cohort) ‘vignettes’ of more in-depth personal explorations. Chapters 1 provides context in exploring the role of biography in disability and policy studies and chapter is on storytelling and its’ value for a more nuanced connection between personal and public lives. There are some very rich and unexpected findings presented and a generational approach seems to be a neat idea in capturing the intersection of self, place and temporal positioning in terms of policy and broader socio-economic change. Subsequent chapters deal with the substantive issues of family life, medical regimes/medicalisation, schooling, employment and ‘living with ‘disability’. In reading the depth of material in this book, I am struck by the parallels with Humphries and Gordon's excellent Out of Sight (Reference Humphries and Gordon1992) which provides a photographic and textual history of disabled people's life in the early to mid twentieth century. I was also reminded of the histories and oral histories of Atkinson and Walmsley (Atkinson et al., Reference Atkinson, Jackson and Walmsley2003), which although depicting the lives of people with learning difficulties does aim to convey otherwise hidden voices in an historical context.

Disability and Social Change is another largely successful offering at the level of richness of personal insight, it provides good evidence for the generational influence on what we have recently dubbed life chances. It makes clear that when we are born, our social class and economic context are all important, indeed these are presented as at times more significant than impairment as a predictor of social progress and prosperity. However, the book also makes clear that impairment and disabling responses are profoundly significant factors in limiting disabled people in a way that does not attach to many non-disabled people.

This book is I think most significant as a set of stories and as historical testament. Indeed, it should count as one of the best offerings in this field. The policy materials are more mixed in quality, whilst the attempt to debunk previous policy insights does not always respect the nuances of previous policy analyses. The best chapter is arguably the family policy chapter. In looking at disability and impairment in a family context, the work gets to the nub of the policy challenge of viewing specific policy in the wider matrix of family support, inter-dependency and often patriarchal histories. Poverty reduction in disabled childhoods, for example, is often better focused on the whole family if it is to avoid unplanned behavioural changes. This chapter stands out in making convincing links between family policy and disabled children's lives across the three age cohorts. I was also convinced and enjoyed the education chapter as it too provided unexpected insights on the 1944 Education Act and allowed the reader to judge why the Warnock Report and 1981 Education Act were limited in their impact.

I was much less convinced by the employment chapter and the policy evidence put forward was here stretched very thinly. Policy links to personal lives seemed tenuous at times. An example of the limits of this chapter are evident in the author's critique of Warren's historical account of changes in the 1990s towards personalised solutions to worklessness which rather unfairly notes:

This is one of a number of examples where I think critical policy analyses is absent and where policy is treated as a linear, anodyne and rationally self-evident entity. Warren's point is perfectly consistent with the author's assertion. Indeed, the attempt to offer planned support was never implemented and the shift to more personalised approaches reflected a failure not of collective and planned approaches but of the failure or refusal to implement policy. I think the lack of a critical unpacking of policy traditions and the mismatch between policy aims and achievements reduces the policy bite of the book more generally.

A broader critique is that the scope for convincing links between six vignettes and major policy shifts is limited and the ambition arguably too great. The successful marrying of policy, policy memory and personal experience would be a challenge for any writer. However, having fewer substantive policy areas and a greater numbers of disabled people for depth vignettes would have given fewer hostages to fortune.

As a book offering new historical insights and challenges to current orthodoxies, this is a highly readable book and I would recommend it as a way of substantiating general disability policy insights. As a detailed and advanced policy offering, I am less convinced, and there are now many excellent alternatives out there that provide policy depth. Put succinctly, this is a better disability studies and inter-disciplinary offering than it is a policy book. I would however recommend this to tutors and students that deliver courses with a weight of disability policy as background reading to complement more specialist policy texts.