The lost victory - Correlli Barnett

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.