In 1974, the US broadcaster Studs Terkel talked to Americans "About what they do all day, and how they feel about what they do". His book telling their stories, Working, became a seminal tract in social history, and left an indelible print of how Americans worked and felt in the seventies.

Biggs has revisited Terkel's model in her tour of contemporary Britain - her interviewees including a lawyer, care worker, fishmonger, giggle doctor (yes, there really is such a thing), ballet dancer, quiz writer and potter, among many others. The book is a beautifully-observed portrait of the United Kingdom at work in the twenty-first century.

Episode 1: The Lawyer

Joanna Biggs is an assistant editor at the London Review of Books. She was born in Willesden, North-West London, in 1982.

Readers: Ben Crowe, Teresa Gallagher, David Holt, Colleen Prendergast, Michelle Terry and Thom Tuck

Abridged by Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4. Show less