This is a wonderful and important book. Beautifully written, of course; but full of pain and joy, concern and celebration.

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.

Unwin’s marvellous, elegant, moving book is a major contribution to both the history and 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.

This book is both heartrending and gorgeous. It crosses the line many times but ultimately it’s about love. He teaches us humanity.

A beautiful book – powerful, persuasive, illuminating, moving.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Erudite, wise, and beautifully written; but above all, a labour of love.

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.

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.

As a politician who has advocated for people with learning disabilities, I found Beautiful Lives a powerful read, addressing the historical treatment of people with learning disabilities as well as highlighting recent cases of discrimination, abuse and neglect.

The book weaves in the author’s personal experience with his son Joey who has a learning disability. Stephen Unwin rightly challenges society’s obsession with intelligence and productivity as sole measures of human value.

His critique of policy and the current state of care makes Beautiful Lives essential reading for all those shaping policy or providing healthcare and those who care about the lives of people with learning disabilities.

Unwin brings his many talents as literary scholar, author, advocate, and social critic to this engaging and moving work. At once a sweeping history, a call to action, and a father’s loving tribute to his son, Beautiful Lives is a remarkable book. It offers the reader a detailed chronicle of the past, a searing indictment of the present, and a powerful glimpse of a more humane and just future. In the process, Unwin honours the rich array of beautiful lives, lived and lost, that together reveal a more “creative conception of what it is to be human”.

Stephen Unwin’s capacious account unmasks historic attitudes towards intellectual disabilities, and shows how these need to change so as to create a better world for all. Drawn from life with his son, Joey, this convincing book reminds us why people with disabilities are fundamental to who we are as human beings.

A superb book that achieves something very rare: being both authoritative and profoundly human