Late Shift: The Death Of Retirement, by Richard Tomlinson

Middle England is a place something like Reading. Fairly unlovely, this Berkshire town of almost 150,000 people will never be on anyone's tourist map. But from the 19th century, it prospered on the back of its local "three Bs": biscuits (Huntley & Palmer), beer (Courage) and bulbs (Suttons Seeds). These gave steady, secure jobs in an ambience of paternalism.

Today, such classic blue-collar jobs have gone. Reading prospers in a new world of "laptops and lattes". Work is global, not local. Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard flourish. But the upshot is a branch-plant economy: even the tills at Asda connect, ultimately, to Wal-Mart's Arkansas head office. A local union official remembers the old days with fondness, even though the munificence had its limits: "If you didn't work in the office, you didn't get a pension."

With a Joseph Rowntree Foundation grant, Richard Tomlinson has examined this newer version of Middle England from the perspective of those who get the dirty end of the stick: anyone over the age of 50 looking to get a job, usually through sheer necessity.

It's too seldom pointed out that all policy decisions about pensions are made by ministers, MPs, academics and Civil Servants whose own pensions are tax-funded, inflation-proofed and based on final salaries. Perhaps this cushioned ease explains why - as Tomlinson's poignant survey confirms - they are so heedless of the "perpetual anxiety" that plagues the later years of the 80 per cent of people employed by private firms. Even if they work hard, they can be ditched with little compensation. If they try to save, they can end up at the mercy of incompetent insurers, such as Equitable Life.

Tomlinson, who interviewed about 130 people around Reading, calls the outcome "pension apartheid". He sees last year's age-discrimination law as a meaningless gesture. Meanwhile, Clive, at 59, finds himself rejected as a shelf-stacker after "a psychotropic test". Pat, at 58, no longer puts her age on her CV - which gets her to interviews, but no further.

This is no dry-as-dust chronicle. It is a very human story that demands to be read. Among many tales of unjust failure, Tomlinson does find heart-warming successes. But these call for enormous determination. At 57, Jane finally qualified as a nurse - her ambition as a teenager. "In the latter part of my life," she says, "I feel I've achieved more than in the previous 50 years. I can go to my grave happy."