'Survival capitalism' and the Big Bang: Culture, contingency and capital in the making of the 1980s financial revolution

This book about the Thatcher government and the City of London tells the compelling human story of the people and processes that made Britain’s 1980s financial revolution. Fusing insider testimony with new archival discoveries, it examines high stakes and networked solutions, and uncovers new objectives that drove reforms. In so doing it demystifies a major shift in capitalism. This has implications for our understandings of government and capitalism, from the way we think about the origins of subsequent financial crises to today’s growing inequalities.Survival Capitalism offers new insights into the last major restructuring of the City, disrupts myths surrounding the logics of the market, and pays attention to people and processes at a time when the City of London again faces major change as Britain seeks to find its place outside the European Union in the wake of Brexit.

About the Author

Dr Emma Barrett is Arts and Law Teaching Fellow and Honorary Research Fellow in History at the University of Birmingham and former John Antcliffe By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.