Author Guide · Social Reporting & Politics
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In 2002 Polly Toynbee moved into a council flat on the Clapham Park estate in south London and lived on the minimum wage, then £4.10 an hour, taking the jobs the job centre offered: hospital porter, school dinner assistant, cake packer, telesales, care assistant. It was not the first time. Thirty years earlier, for A Working Life (1971), she had worked on a cream-cake production line and in a car components factory. Between those books she was the BBC’s social affairs editor, and since 1998 she has been a columnist at The Guardian, where her subject has stayed the same: who gets what in Britain, and why. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1971–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Polly Toynbee’s best-known book is Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain (2003), about forty days on the minimum wage. Her other key books include A Working Life (1971), Unjust Rewards (2008), The Verdict (2010) and The Lost Decade (2020), the last three with David Walker, and her family memoir An Uneasy Inheritance (2023). Start with Hard Work; the rest of this guide shows where each book fits.
Where to Start with Polly Toynbee
If you want her defining book
→ Hard Work (2003) — forty days on the minimum wage in 2002.
If you want the Labour years weighed up
→ The Verdict (2010) — the 1997–2010 government, promise against result.
If you want Britain in the 2010s
→ The Lost Decade (2020) — austerity, Brexit and Grenfell in one book.
If you want her own story
→ An Uneasy Inheritance (2023) — family, class and privilege.
12 Polly Toynbee Books, in Order
A Working Life
Her first non-fiction book, built on taking ordinary jobs herself: on a cream-cake production line, as a hospital orderly and in a car components factory. It set the method she would come back to three decades later in Hard Work.
Hospital
A detailed portrait of the London Hospital at work, written from inside the wards and departments. It was published in the United States as Patients.
Lost Children
The stories of adopted children in Britain searching for the mothers who gave them up. The book appeared while she was a columnist at The Guardian, before she moved to the BBC in 1988.
Did Things Get Better?
Published by Penguin in 2001, the first of her books with David Walker, a former social affairs editor at The Guardian. It is an audit of Tony Blair’s first term, setting Labour’s successes against its failures.
Hard Work
For forty weekdays in 2002 Toynbee lived in a council flat on the Clapham Park estate in Lambeth on the minimum wage of £4.10 an hour. Through agencies she worked as a hospital porter, school kitchen assistant, nursery assistant, telesales caller, cleaner and care assistant, and ended up in debt. Reviewers compared it with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed; some, including Judith Williamson in the New Statesman, questioned whether a middle-class writer could “try out” being poor.
Better or Worse?
An audit of Labour’s second term, published in February 2005: public services, transport, climate policy, the constitution and rural affairs. The authors conclude that most measurable results improved while public trust fell, and ask whether Blair’s style or the press was to blame.
Unjust Rewards
Toynbee and Walker put a panel of law-firm partners and senior bankers in a room with a statistician and questioned them on the facts of pay, benefits and tax, then on what high earners deserve. The book uses the answers to argue that the very well paid have little idea of how the rest of Britain lives, and that “tax should be taxing”.
The Verdict
Published by Granta in the year Labour lost power, this is their judgement on thirteen years of government, from 1997 to the financial crisis. They travelled the country comparing Labour’s initiatives with what people saw where they lived. Critics on the left, such as Socialism Today, called it too kind to the academies programme and to tuition fees.
Cameron’s Coup
Published by Guardian Faber in January 2015, before the general election, it audits David Cameron’s first five years and the coalition’s austerity programme, portraying Cameron as a covert champion of a smaller state. George Eaton praised it in the New Statesman; Tim Montgomerie called it “dreadful” in The Times.
Dismembered
Based on interviews with nurses, patients, teachers, parents and police officers across Britain, it argues that cuts and a sustained campaign against the public sector have weakened the state that houses, educates and protects people: a fragmented NHS, fewer police, divided schools.
The Lost Decade
Published in March 2020, a survey of Britain from the coalition to Brexit: austerity, food banks, the housing crisis, Grenfell and Windrush. The authors also count what went right, from renewable energy and falling crime to same-sex marriage.
An Uneasy Inheritance
A memoir of a left-wing family that was never working class: her grandfather, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee; her father, the critic Philip Toynbee, who struggled with drink and depression; and relatives from Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell. She looks back at her schools, at leaving Oxford, and at her low-paid jobs, and asks how a privileged person can live by egalitarian beliefs.
In What Order to Read Polly Toynbee
The books do not continue from one another, so you can read by subject. They fall into three groups: the early reportage written from inside workplaces (1971–1985), the political audits with David Walker that follow each government (2001–2020), and the memoir (2023). Hard Work (2003) sits between the first two and joins them.
The audits date quickly by design, each written about a government still in office or just out of it. If you want only one, read The Verdict for the Labour years or The Lost Decade for the 2010s. Read An Uneasy Inheritance last: it looks back at the jobs and the family behind the earlier books.
A reading path
1. Hard Work (2003)
2. Unjust Rewards (2008)
3. The Verdict (2010)
4. The Lost Decade (2020)
5. An Uneasy Inheritance (2023)
Everything Else Polly Toynbee Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books
2
2 books · 1966–1981
- 1966Leftoversher first book, a novel, published at nineteen
- 1981The Way We Live Nowher fourth book
The years · 1946–2023
Quick facts about Polly Toynbee
- Known for
- Polly Toynbee is known for reporting on low-paid Britain from the inside, above all in Hard Work (2003), and for her Guardian columns on inequality and public services since 1998.
- 1946
- Born on the Isle of Wight
- 1971
- A Working Life, her first reportage
- 1988
- BBC social affairs editor
- 2003
- Hard Work
- 2023
- Family memoir An Uneasy Inheritance
- Born
- 27 December 1946, Yafford, Isle of Wight
- Family
- Daughter of the critic Philip Toynbee; granddaughter of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee
- Education
- Badminton School, Holland Park School and St Anne’s College, Oxford, which she left without a degree
- Worked
- The Observer, The Guardian, BBC social affairs editor (1988–1995), The Independent, and The Guardian again from 1998
- Politics
- Signed the 1981 Limehouse Declaration; SDP candidate for Lewisham East in 1983
- Honours
- Orwell Prize for journalism; Columnist of the Year, British Press Awards (2007); declined a CBE in 2000
- Humanism
- President of the British Humanist Association, 2007–2012
The red mark is 2003: Hard Work, her forty days on the minimum wage.
How Polly Toynbee Writes: Taking the Job Herself
Her reporting starts with doing the work. For A Working Life (1971) she took factory and hospital jobs; for Hard Work (2003) she lived for forty weekdays on £4.10 an hour and recorded the debts she ran up. The University of Essex, giving her an honorary degree in 1999, described the method as participant observation, the sociologist’s term for it.
From 2001 most of her books are written with David Walker, her partner and a former Guardian social affairs editor, and they work like audits: a government’s promises set against statistics, then tested against interviews with nurses, teachers, police officers and claimants. Unjust Rewards (2008) turned the method on the rich, with a panel of lawyers and bankers questioned in front of a statistician.
She writes as an advocate, not a neutral observer, and says so: a social democrat whose books argue for higher pay at the bottom, more tax at the top and a stronger state. Andrew Marr said her strong views were matched by “a ferocious appetite for research”; critics from the left and the right have called the same books too kind to New Labour or too one-sided to persuade.
Frequently asked questions about Polly Toynbee’s books
How many books has Polly Toynbee written?
About fifteen. Twelve are the key books on this page, from A Working Life (1971) to An Uneasy Inheritance (2023), seven of them with David Walker. The others are her novel Leftovers (1966), The Way We Live Now (1981) and a shorter book with Walker, Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time.
What are Polly Toynbee’s books in order?
A Working Life (1971), Hospital (1977), Lost Children (1985), Did Things Get Better? (2001), Hard Work (2003), Better or Worse? (2005), Unjust Rewards (2008), The Verdict (2010), Cameron’s Coup (2015), Dismembered (2017), The Lost Decade (2020) and An Uneasy Inheritance (2023).
Where should I start with Polly Toynbee?
Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain (2003). It is short, it is reporting rather than argument, and it shows the method behind everything else she writes. If you want politics first, start with The Verdict (2010) or The Lost Decade (2020).
What is Polly Toynbee’s most famous book?
Hard Work (2003), her account of living for forty weekdays on the minimum wage of £4.10 an hour on a council estate in Lambeth. Outside her books she is best known for her Guardian column, which she has written since 1998.
Who is David Walker?
Her partner and co-author of seven of the books on this page, from Did Things Get Better? (2001) to The Lost Decade (2020). He is a former social affairs editor at The Guardian and worked as a managing director at the Audit Commission.
Is Polly Toynbee related to Arnold Toynbee?
Yes, to two of them. The historian Arnold J. Toynbee, author of A Study of History, was her grandfather, and the economic historian Arnold Toynbee, after whom Toynbee Hall in east London is named, was her great-grand-uncle. Her father was the critic Philip Toynbee. She writes about the family in An Uneasy Inheritance (2023).
Did Polly Toynbee stand for Parliament?
Yes, once. She left Labour for the Social Democratic Party in 1981, signing the Limehouse Declaration, and stood for the SDP in Lewisham East at the 1983 general election, finishing third with 22% of the vote. She later rejoined Labour.
Why has Polly Toynbee been criticised?
Mostly for her columns. In 1997 she wrote “I am an Islamophobe and proud of it”, and in 2010 she described benefit changes as a possible “final solution” for the poor in London; the Press Complaints Commission called that phrase insensitive but found no breach, and she apologised for it. She has also been criticised for backing state education while two of her children were partly privately educated, and Hard Work drew reviews questioning whether a middle-class writer could report poverty by trying it out.
What prizes has Polly Toynbee won?
The Orwell Prize for journalism, for her work at The Independent in the 1990s, and Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2007, among other press awards. She declined a CBE in 2000.
Is Polly Toynbee still alive?
Yes. She was born on 27 December 1946 on the Isle of Wight and still writes a column for The Guardian. Her most recent book is An Uneasy Inheritance (2023).
Footnotes
- Polly Toynbee — Wikipedia
- Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain — Wikipedia
- Polly Toynbee, honorary graduate oration — University of Essex, 1999
- Cameron’s Coup review — Prospect, 2015
- An Uneasy Inheritance review — The Arts Desk, 2023
- Dismembered — Faber
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“…searching for some liveable ground somewhere between Gandhi and hypocrisy.”
— Polly Toynbee, An Uneasy Inheritance (2023)
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