"Meet the Gypsy entrepreneurs"

Click on the picture above to read "Meet the Gypsy entrepreneurs" on The Spectator's website. Image: screegrab from Spectator.co.uk

"Ask anyone from the settled community (known as ‘gorgias’ to Romani Gypsies and as ‘country people’ to Irish Travellers) what Gypsies do for money and the list would be short: tarmacking, roofing, scrap-metal dealing, hawking or maybe horse dealing," writes Katharine Quarmby in The Spectator.

Quarmby, whose book No Place to Call Home: Inside the real lives of Gypsies and Travellers is out now, takes on some of the common myths about Travellers and work. She looks at the history of Traveller women and work; the links between Gypsies and Freemasonry, and "the 500" people from old British Romany families who own big businesses (and skyscrapers) in New York.