The Lost Victory

In 1945 Britain emerged triumphant and victorious from the Second World War. On 26 July, after a landslide Labour victory, Clement Attlee became Prime Minister and the nation looked forward to a 'New Jerusalem', a land in which poverty, ill health, slum housing and unemployment would be banished by lavish state expenditure. In this brilliant, savage and original book based on fascinating new material from Cabinet and other Whitehall records, Correlli Barnett shows how the enormous double cost of these policies fell on a bankrupt and technologically backward economy. He demonstrates how the Labour government chose to squander a huge American loan and then Marshall Aid in pursuit of these twin dreams, instead of investing substantially in modernising Britain. He argues that, as a result, by the start of the Korean War in 1950, Britain, unlike Germany and Japan, had failed to lay the foundations for an 'economic miracle'. An outstandingly important book which casts new light not only on Britain's recent past but also on her present and future.