In 1831 John Dodgson Carr, son of a Quaker grocer, set off to walk from his home in Kendal to Carlisle, determined to launch a great enterprise. Within 15 years, Carr's of Carlisle has become one of the largest baking businesses in the world - and is a by-word for biscuits to this day. Following his trail from humble beginnings in Kendal to huge influence in the city of Carlisle (where she herself was born and grew up), Margaret Foster brings 19th-century daily life into void focus and charts the rise and rise of a middle-class family like the Carrs, ambitious, innovative yet sternly religious. Drawn from family documents, photos and rich local archives, this is history as it was lived by the men and women both above and below the stairs - from the shop floor to the comfortable bourgeois homes of the paternalistic Carrs. We see the conflict between religion and profit, the family feuds and the changing face of a city through this compelling historical narrative, told with Margaret Foster's characteristic blend of scholarship, readability and marvellous attention to the texture of everyday life.