History Today

Nick Crafts looks at political factors in the chequered history of British economic performance since the high noon of mid-Victorian Britain.

David Edgerton accentuates the positive in looking at the story of British technology in the 20th century.

Theo Barker looks at how Britain innovated and kept ahead of her international competitors before the Great War.

A hundred years ago the greatest civil engineering feat of the late Victorian age linked the Irish sea with the town that had become an international symbol of modern industrialisation. Douglas Farnie traces the interaction between a waterway and the economic and industrial fortunes of the North West and its 'Cottonopolis'.

G. Waterfield and Nicola Smith look at an initiative to blend industrial living and artistic appreciation in Victorian Britain.

Neil Robinson on how Cardiff's brewery has been nationalised for over half a century.

Did the British state help the UK's transformation into a position of world industrial dominance? Were 'gentlemen capitalists' or no-nonsense industrialists fawned on or frustrated by government and its agents? Martin Daunton addresses a controversial historical debate.

David Armitage looks at the Bank's founder and his contribution to the Financial Revolution that arguably launched Britain on the road to economic pre-eminence.

Has Britain been de-industrialising since 1945? Robert Millward weighs up the evidence for and against - with some surprising conclusions.