For more on the BFI project ‘This Working Life: Steel’ see http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collect…

Veteran filmmaker Lewis Gilbert (Alfie, Educating Rita) made his directorial debut with this quirky documentary, promoting the contribution of the British steel industry during the nation’s housing crisis in the wake of WWII. A pre-‘Carry On’ Charles Hawtrey appears as a writer assigned to investigate the strange new phenomenon of the ‘prefab’ – steel-framed prefabricated homes designed to take advantage of wartime advances in mass production.