The Tyranny of Nostalgia

The performance of the British economy over the past fifty-odd years does not make for comforting reading. Indeed, the story is a depressing catalogue of misapprehensions, missteps, wasted opportunities, crises and humiliations, with all-too-familiar problems arising time and again and yet never being satisfactorily addressed. 'The Tyranny of Nostalgia' describes and interprets the economic and political history of the past half a century, examining the challenges confronted by successive governments and their Chancellors, the policies employed for good or ill, and - running through it all - the desperate search for a panacea that could arrest the nation's relative decline and return the country to its supposed former glories.