Given the nature of the Bank of England's tasks, it is hardly surprising that our recent official historians have tended to concentrate much more on the development of policy than on the Bank as an institution in its own right. There has in fact been no purely domestic history of the Bank since Marston Acres published ‘The Bank of England from Within’ in 1931, and of the three official histories published since then only Sir John Clapham's (1944) gave our domestic affairs any real prominence.

It was at the time of our commissioning the most recent history, by John Fforde, which was published earlier this year, that we recognised the omission and resolved to correct it by inviting Elizabeth Hennessy to take the story on from the 1930s, when the Peacock Committee initiated a series of major reorganisations, right up to 1960, when Mr Fforde's history stops. The inspiration for this came from the then Deputy Governor, Sir George Blunden, whose personal and family recollections of the Bank could themselves have furnished several histories, and who indeed contributed substantially to this one.

Mrs Hennessy has produced a fascinating account of a very eventful period of our history.