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A number of papers given at the third annual summer school of the Institute of Contemporary British History have been collected in What Difference Did the War Make?, ed. Brian [...]

Winston Churchill's interest in social welfare waned in the 1930s and led to his defeat in 1945. He believed that welfare should be maintained by authority. Social progress, in his view, required a capitalist economy overseen by the state. A benign world order was dependent on the British Empire and the European balance of power.

HISTORIANS of twentieth-century British politics are fixated on party. Hence monographs on party themes abound and every leading party politician attracts a biographer. On their individual merits, such works often [...]

Reassessment of the welfare state suggests that social reform was not as radical as former historians have maintained. Social services were already developing in 1939. The Beveridge Report of 1942 was only partly implemented and subsistence benefits were rejected. Class divisions continued. The National Health Service removed charges for the middle class but failed to improve medical services for the working classes. However, reforms did reduce poverty and improved the social position of the working class.

Churchill and His Generals. By Raymond Callahan. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. x, 310. $34.95.) Tensions between political and military leaders are almost inevitable in wartime, but [...]

Thirteen essays on the history of Britain since 1945, some of which originated as papers to the first summer school of the Institute of Contemporary British History, have been collected [...]

The BBC is often said to have made a crucial contribution to the unity and morale of the British people during the Second World War. As Sian Nicholas shows in [...]