A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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Arifa Akbar’s Consumed: A Sister’s Story is about the death of her sibling from tuberculosis. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ But let’s move on from these (strange) times, to other times (and places). I could not be more excited about Fall by John Preston (Viking, February), an account of the life and death of the tycoon Robert Maxwell by the author of A Very English Scandal (though I still think it should be called Splash!). In biography, I wonder whether Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury, May) will make me feel any differently about my least favourite writer (if anyone can do this, it’s Wilson); The Mirror and the Palette: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits (Weidenfeld, March) by Jennifer Higgie, the former editor of Frieze, is set to be sumptuous as well as fascinating; and My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland (Virago, February) sounds weird and un-categorisable (in a good way). Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth: The Biography (Cape, April) is bound to be rich, complicated – and very long. (Bailey, the biographer of John Cheever and Richard Yates, was appointed by Roth, and had full access to his archives.) Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty of Care is much more than just an appeal for a politics of sanity and mutual respect. It is also, no less importantly, and more interestingly, a Confucian appeal for a politics of benevolence. Oliver Letwin, The Tablet

A Duty of Care - Penguin Books UK

I write this as a long-term admirer of Lord Peter Hennessy. He is a fine historian of modern British politics and constitutional affairs; an expert commentator and communicator; and appears to be a charming and decent person. These attributes come through strongly in this short book.

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Biographies of Philip Roth and DH Lawrence, the curious death of Robert Maxwell, and dispatches from the Covid frontline I have always enjoyed listening to Peter Hennessey, but admit to finding this book hard going at times, despite its brevity. However, he does very well to produce a very focused analysis of post war Britain when measured against the 5 wants. Hennessy attended the nearby Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, and on Sundays he went to St Mary Magdalene church, where he was an altar boy. He was educated at St Benedict's School, an independent school in Ealing, West London. When his father's job led the family to move to the Cotswolds, he attended Marling School, a grammar school in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He went on to study at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1969 and a PhD in 1990. Hennessy was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard University from 1971 to 1972. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-Covid society in Britain

Peter Hennessy: ‘A diary is an aid to humility, which every

Hennessy’s great skill is flattery. He flatters those that he writes about but he also flatters those who read him. He writes about Britain in the first-person plural and is much concerned to emphasise the virtues that ‘we’ display. He states banal opinions with a confidence that will give anyone who holds such opinions the impression that they must be very clever. Everyone gets to bathe in the warm glow of their own virtue. At times, this book reminded me of those television programmes from the 1970s in which some established star – say Val Doonican – would present a line-up of his friends. There would be an exchange of mutual admiration and the performers would sing a well-known song together. The detailed prescriptions for a better future advanced in this book deserve to be read by anyone actively engaged in politics today. Nobody knows more about the world of high politics in the United Kingdom than Peter Hennessy. Richard Evans, Times Literary Supplement David Gelber: Chancellors & Chancers - Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945 by Paul Lendvai New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time, Craig Taylor’s follow-up to his wondrous oral contemporary history, Londoners, is long awaited (John Murray, March), and it will be interesting to see how this book reads at a point when our urban centres feel so hollowed out. At the other extreme, The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan (White Rabbit, May) is about – yes – foghorns, and promises to sit on the wobbly line (and, in this case, noisy, mournful line) between nature writing and music writing.

However I found this to be a very scrappy and jumbled piece. It covers a very summary account of British health and social policy - taking the Beveridge Report as its starting and reference points - and concludes with a cri de coeur about developing a new Beveridge framework following the Covid 19 pandemic. Eileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman The thought that during a pandemic a doctor might also have time to write is astonishing. But this is, it seems, what some have been doing. Gavin Francis, a doctor best known for his travel writing, is first out of the traps with Intensive Care: A GP, A Community and Covid-19 (Profile, January). Hard on his heels is Jim Down, with Life Support (Viking, March), the Covid diary of an ICU doctor at one of London’s leading hospitals. A slightly different approach to the crisis will come in the form of A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Corona by the distinguished historian Peter Hennessy (Allen Lane, August). How relevant to present problems is the comparison of the war and the pandemic? World War 2 lasted for more than 5years, longer (so far) than the pandemic and was far more disruptive, nationally and internationally. Another difference is that, although it was preceded by 20 years of high unemployment and poverty, war needs brought about unprecedented full employment, rising living standards for many on low incomes and shrinking inequalities, raising expectations for the future and leading to many proposals for post-war improvement in social and economic conditions. Beveridge was deeply disappointed by Labour’s response to his proposals and because the government did not consult him as he hoped, as Jose Harris points out in her excellent biography of Beveridge which, strangely, Hennessy does not reference. 1 Following this missed opportunity, British state pensions have never provided enough to live on without a means-tested supplement (now Pension Credit) and are currently among the lowest in the high-income world. Beveridge’s report did influence real improvements, but full implementation would have achieved still more.

A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid Peter Hennessy, A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer. To grasp his direction of travel in this narrative of the British social experience since 1945, we must fast-forward to the end. He quotes Michael Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, with approval: “It is often assumed that the only alternative to equality of opportunity is a sterile, oppressive equality of results. But there is another alternative: a broad equality of condition that enables those who do not achieve great wealth or prestigious positions to live lives of decency and dignity.” You also quote RH Tawney, who said that the mark of civilisation was to aim to eliminate inequalities. Can we move towards a more egalitarian future with a monarchy?

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deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such conviction. It is a valuable and exceptionally well-reasoned guide to how we might turn round a country battered not by war, as in 1945, but by a wave of disease unknown in living memory. Simon Heffer, Sunday Telegraph He was born in Edmonton, the youngest child of William G. Hennessy by his marriage to Edith (Wood-Johnson) Hennessy Hennessy's analysis of post-war Britain, 'Never Again: Britain 1945–1951', won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1992 and the NCR Book Award in 1993. As a constitutional expert, do you think “partygate” is a storm in a teacup or a fundamental breach of the contract between government and citizens?