606b People at Work 2
(easy reading)

The Road Makers marked a slight change of content, from "individual" jobs to more generic and perhaps less glamorous trades. A brief history of road-making is followed by a detailed description of the process by which roads are built.

To the uninitiated, the job is a lot more complicated than you might think! Consultation is not mentioned in the book, nor are any environmental issues. Once the Minister for Transport has decide a road is needed, it is up to engineers to choose the best route.

Car Makers has less historical details than most in the series, with a couple of pages mentioning Henry Ford. As well as the factories, the book mentions the offices; "men and girls work in these". All designs for cars are mocked up in clay (there were no computers in them days!). Almost all the cars in the book are Austins, mostly Minis.

With the current decline of the British motor car industry, this edition makes for a nostalgic trip down memory lane. It makes you wonder if there was any sponsorship involved! My edition (NIS320) has a pale blue background to the cover title, with the illustration underneath. If anyone has a different cover, please let me know.

The Ship Builders (1969) is another example of the classic 606b format of "men and machines". Berry maintains his high standards as we learn about the secret world of ship building. When a ship is launched, we learn that "a well-known lady is asked to launch and name the ship", but the lady in the illustration looks like an extra from "’til death us do part"! the words "a Ladybird Easy Reading Book" have floated across into the centre of the cover. It seems that nobody was really worried about consistency across a series, many minor changes being made and later rescinded.

Next in the series was the Pottery Makers, also in ’69. Like all of the books in this series, it is fascinating to read because although we all know in general terms how the job is done, the fine details are a mystery to most people.

The book explains phrases like "blunger", "slip", "biscuit firing" and "pug-mill". An interesting conjecture is that Berry may have been happier painting from a photo rather than from his imagination. In most of the books, the early "history" pages are somewhat less impressive than the contemporary illustrations throughout the rest of the book.

A gap of two years elapsed before the Life-boat Men hit the shops, produced, as ever, by the same Havenhand/Berry team. The book must have given a lot of welcome publicity to the people who performed this dangerous but essential job. Many people would have been surprised to learn that the RNLI is self-financed, without Government aid of any kind. We also learn than a chap called Lukin invented an "unimmergible boat" as far back as 1785! The inside front and back cover both show the same map of Great Britain listing all the RNLI stations.

In a Hotel is perhaps the most difficult of the series ot track down, but it's a classic vignette of life in the early 70's, when management was an exclusively male affair.

The drawing of a chamber-maid chanign the sheets on page 13 is quite curious - it has little charm or warmth and looks exactly like a poorly-composed photo, even down to the shadow from the flash gun!

It clearly shows the way in which Berry approached his work and the accuracy of his reproductions as well. Whilst earlier books in this series were quite upbeat, the later period shown quite a cold depiction of the realities of life.

The Customs Officer returned to the cover style of the car makers, with a blue title backing over the illustration. Whether a book could be written nowadays about the exciting life of a customs officer remains to be seen, but in 1972 it was still seen as a valuable public service, beating the smugglers, albeit along the lines of "Whisky Galore".

Page 13 shows a particularly careless smuggler who thinks he is still selling black-market watches. The sexual divide is as strong as ever – the main job of the women customs officers is " to search women passengers", but if they are not busy, "they help with the office work". Customs officers also had the unenviable task of burying dead whales that may be washed up on nearby beaches. I gather dynamite is oftne used in these cases...

On the Railways, "prepared with the help of British Rail", is basically one long advert for the company. "highly-skilled chefs" work in the kitchen, "skilled workmen keep the trains in first class condition". Reading through the book only serves to reinforce ones opinion about the poor service we have these days. It was written by John Forbes with artwork from the ever-present Berry, who does give the impression that everyone working for BR in those days was of near-pensionable age!

In 1973, the series came to an end with "In a Big Store", returning to the team that produced almost all the earlier books. Based on stores such as C&A, we are ushered into the world of "are you being served", with fir-trimmed coats and leather boots everywhere.

Perhaps the most surprising omission is the lack of Ladybird product placement – there appears to be no "book department" in the store.