The Authorized History of the Royal Mail

Masters of the Post

'Vivid, detailed, colourful ... a first-class history ... all sorts of delights leap out of these pages' Daily Telegraph 
 
From the very first 'master of the post' in 1512 to the vast network of today, the Royal Mail is an intrinsic part of everyday life in Britain. This book tells its extraordinary story in full. Whether describing the sensation caused by the penny post in 1840, the Post Office boffins who helped the wartime code-breakers of Bletchley Park, the Great Train Robbery of 1963, the growth of telegrams and telephones, or the many visionaries, philanthropists and firebrands who made the service what it is today, Masters of the Post shows how the history of the Royal Mail is our history.

An authorised and comprehensive account of an institution that was long held to be the best of its kind in the world. Campbell-Smith's book is vast, monumentally detailed, sharply observant of personalities and wittily readable.

The Post Office is currently in difficulties and Duncan Campbell-Smith's thoughtful and well-written book helps provide an explanation of its present situation, placing it in the context of an impressive history of the Royal Mail. This book has much to offer the scholar and general reader alike.

Highly valuable. An assured and fascinating account.

Some of the subjects Campbell-Smith is obliged to tackle would defy the liveliest pen to make them fascinating, but he has written a solid, brilliantly researched and sometimes drily witty account of an institution once again in the throws of dramatic reinvention.

Duncan Campbell-Smith's account not only provides a wealth of information and insight. He has succeeded in presenting the often complex story in a clear and incisive style. All in all a highly recommended book.

Duncan Campbell-Smith is a former Financial Times and Economist journalist whose career has also included working in the City and as a management consultant with McKinsey. He holds Visiting Senior Research Fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research and at the Centre for Contemporary British History at King's College, London. His previous books include Follow the Money (Penguin 2008).

A History of the Audit Commission

Follow the Money

Duncan Campbell-Smith is a former journalist on the Financial Times and The Economist. His previous publications include Struggle for Take-Off, A History of British Airways (1986). He has worked as a management consultant with McKinsey in the 1980s, briefly as a consultant to the Audit Commission in 1989, and since then in corporate communications roles with Pearson plc, The Maitland Consultancy and Rolls-Royce plc.

Most books on politics and government take a view from the top down. They focus on the individuals and institutions that set policies in place and make the laws. But how are these policies and laws translated into action on the ground, where their success or failure helps determine the day to day running of schools and hospitals, police forces and councils? This is the much less familiar territory explored by Follow The Money. It tells the story of the men and women responsible for keeping track of the money spent locally on public services since the early 1980s. What emerges is a rare behind-the-scenes account of the political world in which central government edicts come up against the reality of how things are made to happen at the grass roots. 
 
Follow The Money shows how the Commission has helped over 25 years to transform the management of public services, including the NHS, while mediating in an often tense relationship between central and local government from the Thatcher era to the years of New Labour. The result, encompassing a string of scandals and battles between town hall and Whitehall, is a compelling narrative for which an accounting qualification is most certainly not required.

Duncan Campbell-Smith

Crossing Continents

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