Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime

Exploring the history of common daily activities as they come up during a typical day, starting with breakfast and ending with bedtime, Joe Moran shows how such tendencies conceal all kinds of hidden histories and meanings. By looking closely at the normally unobserved, he tells a story about social and cultural change in Britain and the Western world, in particular since World War II. And along the way connections become apparent between what seem unrelated phenomena—pubs and the weather forecast, sandwiches and commuting, smoking and gossip. Drawing on his academic research on everyday life but writing with wit for a popular audience, Joe Moran shows that we know less about ourselves than we think.

Joe Moran is a reader in cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. He contributes regularly to the New Statesman, and has also written for the Times Higher Education Supplement. He has written three academic books and his most recent academic article is a history of crossing the road. He also writes poetry and children's poetry. He lives in Liverpool.