This book brings together chapters from the leading historians of British business. The contributors were asked to consider the renaissance in the British economy during the closing decades of the 20th century. In doing so they were also asked to reconsider the debates and assertions relating to relative economic decline in Britain since the end of the 19th century. Chapters range across the economy, from banking, retail, high technology and staple industries, transport, to sports and leisure industries. In addition, key themes such as foreign investment, government policy, managerial characte ... More

This book brings together chapters from the leading historians of British business. The contributors were asked to consider the renaissance in the British economy during the closing decades of the 20th century. In doing so they were also asked to reconsider the debates and assertions relating to relative economic decline in Britain since the end of the 19th century. Chapters range across the economy, from banking, retail, high technology and staple industries, transport, to sports and leisure industries. In addition, key themes such as foreign investment, government policy, managerial characteristics, marketing, business, ethics, and so on have their own chapters. What emerges is a picture of complexity and reappraisal bringing into question the accuracy or applicability of much of the writing and axioms surrounding British business in the 20th century. Both the nature of economic recovery, the depth and periodization of relative decline clearly do not stand up to scrutiny. If nothing else the book disposes with the notion that a simple re-injection of market forces ideology in the 1980s changed and modernised the British economy. The book has identified both a need for a broad reappraisal to take into account the complexity underlying ideas of renaissance in the late 20th century, in addition to a need to reject unicausal explanations for the fate and possibilities of the British economy in the 21st century.