The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State

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.

'Giant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Ignorance. Giant Squalor. And the insidious Giant Idleness, "which destroys wealth and corrupts men". These were evils to be vanquished by the postwar reconstruction of Britain. Timmins' book recaptures brilliantly the high hopes of the p...