Carl is a social historian with a national profile, writer, teacher and public speaker. He is the author of 35 books, amongst them studies of working-class housing, urban working-class life, poor women’s lives, manufacturing, Birmingham, the Black Country, bookmaking and ethnic minorities. He is also co-editor of ‘Birmingham: The Workshop of the World’, the first major history of Birmingham since the 1970s.
He has contributed to many documentaries, broadcasts and periodicals and his latest works address the reality of the gangsters of ‘Peaky Blinders: The Real Story’. The true history of Birmingham’s most notorious gangs.
Carl is a noted campaigner for the rights of the working class and played a prominent role in the preservation of the last back to backs in Birmingham, now a National Trust Museum.
Awarded MBE in 2001 for services to local history and charity fundraising