Steel City Survivors: New book celebrates 40 extraordinary people who reinvented Sheffield

Sheffield's remarkable transformation from a city battered by industrial decline into a centre of music, culture, sport and innovation is being celebrated in a new book featuring more than 40 of the people who helped make it happen.

Steel City Survivors, a 200-page coffee table book by Sheffield author and social historian Neil Anderson, brings together an extraordinary collection of personal stories spanning four decades of the city's reinvention.

BUY NOW: Steel City Survivors is available as a standard edition and a signed collector's edition featuring an exclusive cover, limited to 1,000 copies. Buy now at amazon.co.uk

It can also be bought here dirtystopouts.com and is available at Waterstones in Sheffield.

Among those sharing their memories are Pulp drummer Nick Banks, singer-songwriter Richard Hawley, former world boxing champion Johnny Nelson and celebrated Sheffield artist Pete McKee.

Their stories sit alongside those of entrepreneurs, industrialists, sporting heroes and community figures who helped shape the Sheffield we know today.

Neil argues how, as Sheffield's steelworks started to close and traditional industries disappeared from the late 1970s, the city faced an uncertain future - but from that upheaval emerged extraordinary creativity, enterprise and determination.

Neil Anderson, who has spent the past 18 months researching and interviewing contributors, said: "Sheffield has an extraordinary story to tell, and what struck me throughout this project was just how much determination, humour and sheer bloody-mindedness went into reinventing this city.

"We went through some incredibly difficult times. Entire industries disappeared, communities were devastated and nobody really knew what the future held.

"But people refused to give up. They created businesses, made music, achieved extraordinary things in sport and helped build a completely different Sheffield.

"It's been a genuine privilege talking to some of the people who made that happen.”

The project was funded by Sheffield businessman David Slater, after he and Neil discovered a shared passion for Geoffrey Beattie's ‘Survivors of the Steel City’, published in the mid-1980s, which painted a gritty and often bleak portrait of Sheffield as its traditional industries collapsed.

David Slater said: "I wanted to help ensure that this remarkable chapter of Sheffield's history was captured for future generations. And there's something particularly fitting about using a celebration of the city's past to help young people build a better future. Roundabout does tremendous work supporting young people facing homelessness, and I'm delighted that this project will contribute to that."

Profits from the book are supporting Roundabout, the Sheffield charity tackling youth homelessness.

A launch party was held at Factory Floor in Neepsend on October 29.

The book is available online from publishers Dirty Stops Outs.

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