Overview

An accessible and entertaining narrative history of the establishment, development and unravelling of the British Welfare State – now fully revised to cover Blair’s first term. Lively writing in the style of Peter Hennessy.

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9780007335138

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`For years now, old copies of The Five Giants have been changing hands in Westminster for dizzying sums - and for a simple reason. Other books just offer fragments of the story of British government, only this gives you the full picture. I lend my copy to new recruits at The Spectator not as history but as a guide to what they will encounter - and how the same problems keep surfacing again and again. The facts and the figures, the jokes and one-liners, the power and the personality - The Five Giants has it all. It's possible to understand modern Britain without reading this book, but it's just a lot harder (and a lot less fun)' Fraser Nelson, Spectator `Nicholas Timmins has done something extraordinary: he has made a masterpiece of contemporary history even better. Updated, extended and more relevant than ever, this book is quite simply indispensable' Matthew d'Ancona `A splendid book - knowledgeable, readable and fair' Sunday Telegraph `A tour de force - thoroughly researched and vividly written' Sunday Times `Extraordinarily comprehensive without ever being incomprehensible' Roy Hattersley, Independent

Author Information

Nicholas Timmins has been public policy editor of the Financial Times since 1996. Before that he was with the Independent for a decade from its foundation, working variously as its health and social services correspondent , political correspondent and its public policy editor. He previously held similar posts at The Times. He has also worked for the Press Association and Nature. He has therefore been reporting on the events covered in The Five Giants: a Biography of the Welfare State, his first book, for twenty years.

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