Living in your smart, modern flat in a multi-million pound mill conversion, the lifestyles of the people who worked there more than 200 years ago are almost unbelievable, and bear as much resemblance to yours as those living in the poverty of today's Third World.

Sue Wilkes' history of the state of the North West and its people as they struggled to make it the workshop of the empire recreates the fascinating stories of the ordinary folk and the sequence of events that changed the way people lived in Lancashire and Britain forever.

We live in the region that was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution when an agrarian economy was left behind in favour of city life and hard graft at the coal face, the loom and on the factory floor.

It was an astonishing upheaval. What did not change was the grinding poverty and exploitation of the common people and Sue Wilkes' book details the breakthroughs that led to the change, such as Crompton and Cartwright's efforts in textiles, the canal, the railway and the mines that provided the power, but it also gives some staggering insights into how the workers lived in those dark satanic days.

Far from being a depressing descent into that drabness, she enlivens it with poignant nuggets from some research.

Details of the degraading housing conditions in the cities feature vivid passages about horrors such as the the jerry-built back-to-back houses with walls just half a brick thick so that locals dubbed the streets pickpocket row.

The author also sheds light on the cellar people, unfortunates so poor that they lived and died in the cramped cellars of these dreadful homes, sleeping amid the damp and the effluent of those above.

"A hole has been scraped out of the earthen cellar wall just large enough for an old man who is lying on his back in some mucky straw. The landlady shrugs: 'If we didn't let him crawl in there, he'd have to sleep in the streets.'"

Add to this the child slavery, the horrors of the mines and the colourful tales of the navvies who drank and sometimes dug their way across the land to forge the canal routes and railway lines of the nation and you end up with a fascinating book.

It's a must for anyone studying the period, those who wants to learn about their heritage or 21st century citizens who simply need convincing about how lucky they are to live in our pampered times.

(Tempus publishing, paperback, £15.99)