Over the last 13 years, Nick Danziger has lived and worked with people outside the UK. Now he turns his attention to conditions on the home front and, by taking to the road, and mostly undiscovered life of the underclass - bereft of employment and finding themselves alien to the traditional patterns of British social life. Britain is a country whose 200-year-old manufacturing economy is largely in ruins, where huge numbers of people no longer feel part of society, where alcohol (far from being a social pleasure) becomes a means for violence, and drugs are taken as a necessity to escape reality. What does it mean to live without so many of the everyday things most of us take for granted? How are people able to adapt and survive in conditions of such apparent hopelessness? This book records the human stories that dramatically illuminate Britain's bleakest economic blackspots.