‘This book is both heart-rending and gorgeous. It crosses the line many times but ultimately it’s about love. He teaches us humanity.’ MIRIAM MARGOLYES
‘Thank you, Joey, for getting your dad off his arse to write this book.’ HUGH BONNEVILLE
‘A beautiful book – powerful, persuasive, illuminating, moving.’ GYLES BRANDRETH
‘This is a wonderful and important book. Beautifully written, of course; but full of pain and joy, concern and celebration.’ SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
‘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.
‘Thank you, Joey, for getting your dad off his arse to write this book.’ HUGH BONNEVILLE
‘A beautiful book – powerful, persuasive, illuminating, moving.’ GYLES BRANDRETH
‘This is a wonderful and important book. Beautifully written, of course; but full of pain and joy, concern and celebration.’ SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
‘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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Reviews
Beautiful Lives is a book that should be compulsory reading for every politician and every GP. Stephen speaks for every parent of a child with a learning disability in articulating his frustration at a system which forces them to fight for everything that should be a given. Stephen's life and career are about words, but Joey has taught him that there are so many other ways in which to communicate, that a touch, a look, make words redundant. I hope that Joey's voice, amplified by his father, will be heard and understood. A beautiful life indeed.
A beautiful book - powerful, persuasive, illuminating, moving.
Erudite, wise, and beautifully written; but above all, a labour of love.
From a place of intense personal experience Beautiful Lives confronts the myths of learning disability with a startling clarity. It's a profoundly affecting book that also provides a manifesto for the future. Just as he has done with his playwriting Unwin has not only made the "strange, familiar" but tackled every myth and every spectrum of debate with a delicate touch. No reader will be left unchallenged by this incredible and important book. No reader will be left untouched.
In Beautiful Lives, Stephen Unwin takes us on an important and exhilarating journey from ancient philosophy to the contemporary era exploring how people with learning disabilities have been marginalised, excluded and even erased from cultural and historical record. This is a must-read for anyone wanting to develop a deeper, more humanistic understanding of this area.
Stephen Unwin examines the horrific stigmatisation of people with learning disabilities in this highly personal, occasionally-polemical and sometimes-profound book that reminds society of the real meaning of humanity.
Thank God for Joey, for without this remarkable young man his father would not have written this extraordinary book.
Stephen Unwin has used his considerable intellectual force to cast a forensic look on the world of learning disabilities. It is a gallop from Ancient Rome to the present, with literary quotations from The Idiot Boy by William Wordsworth, to the constricting language of various Government White papers - constricting in every sense, for Unwin passionately believes that putting people with learning disabilities into categories denies them their individual humanity.
There are stand out heroes in these pages, but the shocking reality of where we are now, in this so called civilised 21st century, makes for difficult reading. The number of people with learning disabilities and autism who are locked up, abused in residential settings, murdered, tortured and dreadfully neglected, is horrifying.
Beautiful Lives is a book that should be compulsory reading for every politician and every GP. Stephen speaks for every parent of a child with a learning disability in articulating his frustration at a system which forces them to fight for everything that should be a given.
He passionately makes the case that human beings should not be judged by their ability but valued for being who they are; that people with learning disabilities may be 'other', but we need to look past their condition and recognise that they share with all of us a common humanity.
There is justifiable anger in this book but underpinning it all is Stephen's profound love for Joey. For his son who does not speak. Stephen's life and career are about words, but Joey has taught him that there are so many other ways in which to communicate, that a touch, a look, make words redundant.
I hope that Joey's voice, amplified by his father, will be heard and understood. A beautiful life indeed.
This book is both heartrending and gorgeous. It crosses the line many times but ultimately it's about love. He teaches us humanity.
This is a superbly written, even entertaining treatment of a sombre topic - how people with learning disabilities are marginalised and ignored. This has a long history, going back to classical times, a story well told here. If you have never asked yourself whether calling someone an 'idiot' is as bad as using the 'n' word, you will certainly do so after reading this book. I could not recommend it more highly.
This is a wonderful and important book. Beautifully written, of course; but full of pain and joy, concern and celebration.
Unwin's marvellous, elegant, moving book is a major contribution to both the history and the understanding of this thing we call learning disability. Interspersed with the story of his complex, deeply loving relationship with his son Joey, it is a powerful, multi-faceted, myth-busting account of the most marginalised and belittled out-group in modern society.
Beautiful Lives is a fascinating exploration of what it means to live with learning disability and has meant over time. It's the kind of book I dreamt of having when my son's learning disability and possible autism were mooted when he was just two years old. Beautiful Lives is both scholarly, and personal, erudite and profound, historical and bang up to date. It is not sentimental, rather it's realistic and hopeful in equal measure. Readers will feel safe to explore changing attitudes over time without feeling judged and to re-examine their own attitudes.
This important, intensively researched and beautifully written book begins with a thorough, fascinating and - equally - horrifying history of the ways those with learning disabilities have been viewed and treated over many centuries. There is, though, no chance of breathing a sigh of relief when we move on to the present day: we are reminded only too clearly that abuse, discrimination and cruelty are as rife today in the world of disability as they have ever been. But it would be wrong to think that reading it gives no hope or pleasure: without ever being sentimental, the deep love that Stephen has for his son underpins everything and the portrait he gives us of his Joey is a reminder of the potential in all of us to find joy in simply being alive.
There is much in the book to make us think seriously about what we have got so terribly wrong and how we can improve the ways we behave towards those with learning disabilities. I hope that anyone in a position to make positive change will read it and consider carefully how we can move a little closer towards recognising and accepting that every human life is equal in value and every person has the right to be happy.
With an astonishing breadth of research and a profoundly personal narrative, Stephen Unwin's book on society's treatment of those living with learning disabilities is revealing, wise, angry and hopeful. Thank you, Joey, for getting your Dad off his arse to write this book.