His family survived famine-ravaged Ireland in the 1850s. His ancestors settled in poverty-rife Victorian Liverpool, working to survive and thrive. Some of them became soldiers serving on the Western Front. One would be the last man to step off the SS Titanic as it sank beneath the icy waves. He would testify at the inquest. This is their story.
Here, Richard Sennett examines the relationship between the human body and the urban environment it inhabits, looking at the different attitudes to nudity, burial, sanctuary and urban planning in ancient Greece and Rome, and Medieval and Renaissance Europe.