The business of history

by Tom Levitt

ISBN: 9781916749368

Published: 2025-06-24

Why are today's businesses as they are? Building on WH Beable's Romance of Great Businesses, a description of 32 significant companies published a century ago, this book explores how some British commercial icons started, evolved and then coped with an ever-more-complex economic environment. Who were those Victorian entrepreneurs? How did their beliefs influence their work? What is their legacy? What has been lost and what gained? Finding that the political and religious affiliations of many leaders were not those of the 'establishment', how did owners' awareness of their companies' social and environmental impacts evolve? Why did ownership shift away from families towards shareholders and high finance? Of the 32 companies, what was it about just four that has enabled them to survive intact into the twenty-first century? Twenty others still exist but only as brand names, often well-known, but eight have disappeared altogether - including some within living memory. How inevitable...