So a quick heads up in this episode our guest Jane Humphreys had some issues in her internet connection and we got cut off someone abruptly.

So apologies for the truncated interview.

All right, Gabe, should we get started?

Let's get started. Oh, Oh, I'm not. So today I'm very pleased to have as our guest Professor Jane Humphreys who is an economic historian

at All Souls College in Oxford.

Very eminent and important historian of the Industrial Revolution

and it's the sort of demographic experiences of the Industrial Revolution,

would that be a fair characterization, Jane?

Yeah, that's good.

Someone whose work has been very important for me.

So anyway, welcome, Jane, very good to have you and today we will be discussing chapters

10 and 11 of the making of the English working class as well as whatever else comes back it comes up in conversation

Gabriel you asked me to reflect on the making of the English working class.

And I, in reflecting on it, I would like to come back at the end to think about how we might read it as a guide to the unmaking of the English working class in more recent times.

Because I found in places the book quite painful to read in terms of recent history

including of course COVID-19 but not exclusively so.

But reflecting on the book, I re-read it and I was actually amazed by how well parts of it have worn. I did read it a few years ago because

it was some anniversary of EP Thompson which I was invited to speak at that.

But of course, things have moved on.

History has moved on.

Of course, history has took its after,

I mean, at the time EP Thompson was writing, economic

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