This book was written at a time when the market for government stocks in London, the gilt-edged market of the title, had undergone a period of rapid innovation in the forms of its instruments - index-linked stocks, variable rate stocks, and other new types - and of methods of issue. This had been the response of a government that had needed to fund a massive public sector borrowing requirement despite its attempts to slash public expenditure. In the same period the opening of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), with its 20-year gilt contract, had introduced a new method for hedging risk for investment managers. This book charts and analyses these developments.

Contents:
Part I. The foundations of the twentieth-century debt
1. Sinking funds, annuities and savings banks
2. An Edwardian debt
Part II. The Great War
3. Lloyd George's Loan
4. McKenna's conversion
5. The small saver and continuous borrowing
6. The beginning of overseas borrowing and the Anglo-French Loan
7. The year of drift: internal borrowing in 1916
8. The year of drift: external borrowing in 1916
9. External borrowing 1917-18: (I) the United States of America
10. External borrowing 1917-18: (II) the neutrals, Canada and silver
11. Bonar Law's Loans
12. National War Bonds and continuous borrowing
Part III. Repayment, refinancing, conversion and funding
13. Victory and funding
14. The struggle for internal control, 1919-23
15. The external market and Canada
16. The debt to the US Treasury and the Blackett-Rathbone talks
17. The Balfour Note and the Baldwin Settlement
18. The price of indebtedness, 1924-31
19. The great conversion
20. Savings Certificates, savings banks and capital advances
21. Debt repayment and the sinking funds
22. The development of market management

This impressive and pioneering work describes and analyses the management of the national debt of the United Kingdom from the Boer War (1899-1902) to the period of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. It therefore spans the expansion of the debt during the Great War of 1914-18 and the struggle to bring its structure and cost under control in the decade and a half following Armistice. The Management of the National Debt in the United Kingdom is the first definitive work on the subject. Using an impressive array of research, from archives and unpublished material, Jeremy Wormell has brought together material that is unavailable in any other form. It will be an invaluable resource for political and economic historians, as well as economists in general, civil servants, bankers and financial journalists.

This book was written at a time when the market for government stocks in London, the gilt-edged market of the title, had undergone a period of rapid innovation in the forms of its instruments - index-linked stocks, variable rate stocks, and other new types - and of methods of issue. This had been the response of a government that had needed to fund a massive public sector borrowing requirement despite its attempts to slash public expenditure. In the same period the opening of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), with its 20-year gilt contract, had introduced a new method for hedging risk for investment managers. This book charts and analyses these developments.

In the period from the Crimea War to the end of World War I there was a massive increase in the size of British national debt. These volumes chart the history of the debt during this period. They explore why the debt grew, and how it was accomodated. Particular attention is paid to the creation of the financial instruments necessary to sustain the debt. For the bulk of the period the pre-occupation was with repaying the debt, and the set discusses the measures considered for this purpose. However with the end of the set and Keynes' arrival in the treasury came the final acceptance that high levels of national indebtedness were going to be a permanent feature of national economies. The documents reproduced illustrate the origins and characteristics of the securities on which the government borrowed, and how the terms were adapted as the Treasury and Bank of England sought to widen their market and attract new investors.