Books by Peter Hennessy

One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-covid society in BritainThe '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 covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.

The first volume of Hennessy's postwar history of Britain concerns an age dominated by the shadow of war. With the beginnings of the Cold War, the foundations of the new Europe and the granting of independence of former colonies, Britain was forced to negotiate a new place in the world. It was also a time of rationing and of rebuilding, marked by the founding of the NHS and the welfare state. This comprehensive history embraces both high politics and everyday experience. It recreates the mood of the time and tells us where people lived, how they worked and what they wore.

Hennessy surveys the constitutional building site opened up for the whole of the UK by the Scottish referendum, offering personal impressions of the time when the 300-year-old Act of Union was called into question and when he, as the UK's foremost expert on our unwritten constitution, became an important voice in what may happen next.

This updated edition of The Secret State revises Hennessy's picture of the Soviet threat that was presented to ministers from the last days of the Second World War to the 1960s. He maps the size and shape of the Cold War state built in response to that perceived threat, and traces the arguments successive generations of ministers, the military and civil servants have used to justify the British nuclear capability. He also adds new material exploring the threats presented by the IRA and radical Islamic terrorists post 9/11. In what circumstances would the Prime Minister authorize the use of nuclear force and how would his orders be carried out? What would the Queen be told and when? In this captivating new account, Peter Hennessy provides the best answers we have yet had to these questions.

Having It So Good evokes Britain emerging from the shadow of war and the privations of austerity and rationing into growing affluence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and now coffee bars of 1950s Britain and also into the secret Cabinet rooms in which decisions about the British nuclear bomb were taken and plans made for the catastrophe of nuclear war. He brings to life the ageing Churchill, in his last faltering spell as Prime Minister, the highly-strung Anthony Eden taking his country to war in the teeth of American opposition and world opinion, and the rise of Supermac Harold Macmillan, gliding over problems with his Edwardian insouciance. Above all, Having It So Good captures the smell and the flavour of an extraordinary decade in which affluence and anxiety combined to produce their own winds of change.

Explores the formal powers of the Prime Minister and how each incumbent has made the job his or her own. Drawing on unparalleled access to many of the leading figures, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, the author has built up a picture of the hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office.