Peter Hennessy brings his deep political and historical understanding to this study of two of the most turbulent and disruptive years experienced by Britain in peacetime. As the protracted withdrawal from the EU and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic dragged on, a series of unprecedented challenges – some global, some domestic – laid bare the fragility of Britain and the Union. Beginning with the chaotic Fall of Kabul, which exposed Britain's military dependence on the United States, through the protracted, unedifying removal of a prime minister – and the economically catastrophic, short-lived tenure of his successor – that further exposed the vulnerabilities of an unwritten constitution; to the country sweltering in record breaking temperatures amid dire warnings of climate catastrophe; and finally to the death of a much-loved monarch, a point of constancy during decades of tremendous social and technological change. In his final chapter, Hennessy considers the continuities and upheavals of the last seventy years, asking whether there can be said to have been a second 'Elizabethan Age', and lamenting that the post-war period came to its close amid such upheaval and loss.

Reissued with a new foreword to mark the centenary of Harold Wilson's birth, Ben Pimlott's classic biography combines scholarship and observation to illuminate the life and career of one of Britain's most controversial post-war statesmen. Harold Wilson is one of the most enigmatic personalities of recent British history. He held office as Prime Minister for longer than any other Labour leader, and longer than any other premier in peacetime apart from Mrs Thatcher. His success at winning General Elections - four in all - has so far not been matched. His grasp of economic policy was better than that of any other Prime Minister, and he enjoyed a high reputation among foreign leaders. Yet, in retrospect, he seems a master tactician rather than a strategist - and he is regarded today with more curiosity than respect, when he is not treated with contempt.

The first book to describe fully the foundations and development of St John's College Cambridge, highlighting the role its alumni have always played in the life of the nation. Within a generation of its foundation on the site of a decayed hospital at the behest of Lady Margaret Beaufort, England's queen mother, the College of St John the Evangelist had established itself as one of the kingdom's foremosteducational establishments: in the words of one notable contemporary, as 'an university within it selfe' indeed. And in the period thereafter - the years between 1511 and 1989, the period covered by the present volume - St John's has continued to provide its fair share of Prime Ministers and other politicians, bishops, Nobel laureates, artists, writers, and sporting heroes, as well as to irrigate the rich loam of the nation's history in all sorts of other unexpected ways and places. However, not until the organisation of the College's archives and records in the present generation has it been possible to describe in sufficient detail the full story of that progress and adequately to trace the College's development and achievements in recent centuries. The present history, the first since the early 1700s to provide a systematic and informed account of the subject, seeks to make good this historical defect. It is published as part of the celebration of the quincentenary of the College's foundation.

The British constitution matters. Its observance is crucial to the well-being of all our people, to every state activity and deployment of government power. It is crucial to the face our society presents to itself as well as to those who observe us from overseas. For all its importance, however, the British constitution is a thing of considerable mystery and elusiveness. It does not reside inside any set of hard covers. But the decency of government and the constitution from which they draw (or should draw) their sap and vitality, find themselves at a low ebb in the wake of the Boris Johnson premiership. There has been a serious seepage of trust, which has generated a pessimism of the spirit. The Bonfire of the Decencies offers a range of suggestions about what might be done to repair and restore the British constitution. Time is pressing for what needs to be a shared national endeavour; a story of restoration, revival, and creative purpose. Andrew Blick and Peter Hennessy compel us to look anew at our constitutional procedures. The last three years have shown us we cannot keep muddling through. Only by repairing and restoring our constitution can we keep the United Kingdom safely in the highest ranks of the rule-of-law nations - a gift we assumed was so securely banked that, until recently, we did not have to worry about it.

One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-covid society in Britain The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.

Like so many of the postwar generation in Britain, Peter Hennessy climbed the ladders of opportunity set up by the 1944 Education Act designed to encourage a more meritocratic society. In this highly personal book, Hennessy examines the rise of meritocracy as a concept and the persistence of the shadowy notion of an establishment in Britain's institutions of state. He asks whether these elusive concepts still have any power to explain British society, and why they continue to fascinate us. To what extent are the ideas of meritocracy and the establishment simply imagined? And if a meritocracy rose in the years following 1945, has it now stalled? With its penetrating examination of the British school system and postwar trends, Establishment and Meritocracy is an important resource for those concerned about the link between education and later success, both for individuals and their societies.

One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-covid society in Britain The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.

In this book, Hilary Sunman considers the day-to-day experience of her father, Owen, who served in the Colonial Agricultural Service from 1928-1950. Weaving together a human and family story, she combines her father's work with her own experience as a development economist to discuss colonial policy. Focusing on themes such as All the the 'White Highlands', race, colonial leadership, and the rise of the Mau Mau, she looks at the academic training in agricultural science offered as preparation for the colonial service as well as the attraction of Africa and the idealism felt by many young officers. Using her family as a case study, she examines the realities of life in Kenya for the wives and children of colonial officers, as well as for the officers themselves.

Winner of the Orwell Prize The second part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow of war into growing affluence. 'If the Gods gossip, this is how it would sound' Philip Ziegler, Spectator Books of the Year The 1950s was the decade in which Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, Bill Haley released 'Rock Around the Clock', rationing ended and Britain embarked on the traumatic, disastrous Suez War. In this highly enjoyable, original book, Peter Hennessy takes his readers into front rooms, classrooms, cabinet rooms and the new high-street coffee bars of Britain to recapture, as no previous history has, the feel, the flavour and the politics of this extraordinary time of change. 'Utterly engaging ... a treat. It breathes exhilaration' Libby Purves, The Times 'A particular treat ... fine, wise and meticulously researched' Andrew Marr 'Stands clear of the field as our best narrative history of this decisive decade' Peter Clarke, Sunday Times 'A compelling narrative ... Hennessy's love of the flesh and blood of politics breathes on every page' Tim Gardam, Observer 'The late Ben Pimlott once described Hennessy as "something of a national institution". You can forget the first two of those five words' Guardian

In The Kingdom to Come, Peter Hennessy records the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum in September 2014, its immediate aftermath and describes the enormous constitutional building site opened up for the whole of the United Kingdom by the result. This fourth volume in the Haus Curiosities series includes Lord Hennessy's personal impressions of the time when the Act of Union, over 300-years-old, was called into question and when he, as the UK's foremost expert on our unwritten constitution and a Professor of Contemporary British History, became an important voice in what may happen next. The Kingdom to Come examines the possible agenda for the remaking of the constitution in the medium and long term.

The centrepiece of this memoir by Sir Christopher Mallaby, former British Ambassador in Germany and France, is the unification of Germany in 1990 - the culmination of years of work by Sir Christopher and his colleagues. He held different views from the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. He saw unification as the key to ending the Cold War with a peaceful victory for the West and the liberation of millions in eastern and central Europe from Soviet control. She disliked the Germans and opposed unification. Christopher Mallaby writes vividly of many other people, places and events. He and his wife were a young couple in Moscow during the Cuba crisis, and knew they might be destroyed by American nuclear weapons. He explains why Khrushchev took such a huge risk and why he yielded to President Kennedy. Living the Cold War describes the work of diplomats and leaders on many other fronts, from dealing with the threat of the Soviet Union to Britain's attempt to persuade Argentina to withdraw peacefully from the Falklands. The author brings different experiences alive, including the KGB's harassment of diplomats in Moscow and the fascination of his time as Ambassador in France. In doing so, he shows what diplomats can really achieve. He mixes amusing incidents with an insider's insights on crucial world events.

Following Never Again and Having It So Good, the third part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy 'By far the best study of early Sixties Britain ... so much fun, yet still shrewd and important' The Times, Books of the Year Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War. In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era. As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.

Analyzing the special chemistry of life in Number 10 Downing Street, Peter Hennessy scrutinizes what the Prime Minister actually does and the way that Cabinet government is run. He draws on unprecedented access to many of the leading politicians and also recently declassified, electrifying archival material. He illuminates Prime Ministerial attitudes towards, and authority over, such topics as nuclear weapons policy, the planning and waging of war, and foreign crises from Suez to the Falklands. He concludes with controversial assessments of each Prime Minister’s performance and outlines a new profile of the premiership for the 4th century.

Accompanying the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 program, Reflections features interviews with twelve of Britain's most influential political figures from the last twenty years. Presented by Peter Hennessy, one of the UK's most renowned historians, each interview not only offers an honest and frank assessment of a political career, but also acts as a biography filled with fresh insights and moments of new revelation. From one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers and three of the Conservative leaders who stood against him, to dominant figures of late Thatcherism, stalwarts of successive New Labour cabinets, and leaders of the Liberal Democrats, Hennessy brings his characteristic style to each encounter. The politicians included in this volume are: Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine, Vince Cable, Margaret Hodge, William Hague, Harriet Harman, Michael Howard, Paddy Ashdown, Sayeeda Warsi, David Blunkett, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Baker.

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Winner of the NCR Award for Non-Fiction From the high politics of Court and Cabinet room to the kitchen or the queue, Peter Hennessy's Never Again: Britain 1945-51, the first part of his Post-War Trilogy, recreates life in early post-war Britain. 'Hennessy conjures up the Attlee years more vividly than any previous writer' Ben Pimlott, Guardian At the end of the Second World War Britain was in flux. It was an age of rationing and rebuilding; when hope for a better future contrasted with the horror of war. Fresh ideals emerged during the common experience of the conflict and the new, widespread belief that everyone should be treated equally led to the creation of the 'welfare state' and the NHS, despite tough economic circumstances. Internationally, Britain was finding a place in a world increasingly overshadowed by Cold War with the Soviet Union. 'A joy to read' Sunday Times 'Hennessy is never for a moment dull' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Hennessy is the antithesis of the dry-as-dust academic historian. He laughs a great deal, and punctuates his writing with cheery and illuminating anecdotes' Ian Aitken, Guardian 'A sympathetic, highly readable, meticulously researched account of the Cabinet room politics and popular habits of life and recreation during the high noon of Labourism' Roy Jenkins, Observer

Peter Hennessy's The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010 is the story of secret government plans for combatting attacks on Britain, from the Cold War to modern counter-terrorism. Now completely revised and updated, Peter Hennessy's acclaimed account of the secret state includes material from a host of recently declassified documents, to give an up-to-date picture of Whitehall's efforts to defend the safety of the realm. What were the secret plans for Britain if World War Three had erupted and 'breakdown' had occurred? When would the Queen have been informed and where would she have gone? How does the contingency planning for a national emergency work today? By what procedures would the Prime Minister authorise a nuclear strike and how would those orders be carried out? This book now gives the most detailed and authoritative answers to all these questions. 'Riveting, path-breaking and wonderfully readable' Christopher Andrew, The Times 'Effective and vivid ... One of the fascinations of this book is the bureaucratic aridity to which Whitehall reduced concepts of bloodcurdling awfulness' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'An insider's insider, if ever there was one' Anthony Howard, New Statesman 'One of those rare books that reflects credit not only on the author but on its subjects too' John Crace, Guardian Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London, and the Director of the Mile End Institute of Contemporary British Government, Intelligence and Society. He is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes); the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State.

In this major study, Peter Hennessy explores the formal powers of the Prime Minister and how each incumbent has made the job his or her own. Drawing on unparalleled access to many of the leading figures, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, he has built up a picture of the hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office. From recently declassified archival material he reconstructs, often for the first time, precise prime ministerial attitudes towards the key issues of peace and war. He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945 and a new specification for the premiership as it enters its fourth century.

The nuclear weapons question runs through post-1940 British history like an irradiated thread. It represents part of the hidden history of twentieth-century Britain, given the high level of technical secrecy and political sensitivity in which the bomb was - and is - embedded.
This volume publishes previously classified Cabinet papers and related archives, dealing with the first theoretical scientific breakthrough in 1940, through the A-bomb and H-bomb procurements, to the Polaris missile upgrading decisions of the 1970s. The story is brought up to date in Peter Hennessy's narrative, which covers developments up to the spring of 2007.
The fascination of the book lies in its uncovering the very private internal themes, debates and justifications for Britain's being a nuclear weapons power exchanged between ministers, civil servants, diplomats, scientists, military and intelligence officers. There is a strong element of now-it-can-be-told in the book, which will appeal not just to professional historians but also to undergraduates and A-Level students who are partaking in the current mini-boom on the study of the Cold War. Cabinets and the Bomb is also a contribution to wider public understanding in the context of the present debate about Trident upgrade (though it is a book of explanation, not advocacy).

'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep. Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever before. In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent Deep provides an essential historical perspective.

The gathering of information by the Intelligence Services is now an issue of major importance in the modern world. But what are the ethical responsibilities of these bodies. How is that intelligence collected, assessed and used. What is the impact and significance of the new protective state that has been constructed in Whitehall over the years since 2001. With new threats appearing to society both at home and abroad and sweeping changes being made to the law and Government, intelligence and police authorities where does the debate now take us. All these matters raise profound questions for the nature and future of democracy and human rights. These are considered and analysed by those the cutting edge of the debate in this brilliant book.