A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

· Allen Lane · Narrated by Matthew Spencer
Audiobook
7 hr 6 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 10 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

Brought to you by Penguin.

The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed?

In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before corona) and AC (after corona). He looks back to beginnings when, during wartime, Sir William Beveridge identified the 'five giants' on the road to recovery: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state. Hennessy examines the attack on the giants after the war and asks what the giants are now, and calls for 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-corona Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved in the decades after the Second World War.

© Peter Hennessy 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

About the author

Peter Hennessy, one of Britain's best-known historians, is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of the classic 'post-war trilogy', Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes), Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (winner of the Orwell Prize) and Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties, the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State: Preparing For The Worst 1945-2010. He was made an independent crossbench life Peer in 2010.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.