This is an original and controversial contribution to the topical debate on Britain's alleged economic decline. Rubinstein presents a critique of the thesis, made familiar by Wiener, Sampson, Barnett and others, that Britain has failed in economic terms because of its anti-industrial and pre-modern cultural values and class system. He argues that Britain was never an industrial economy, rather a commercial and financial one whose comparative advantage always lay in that area. He examines Britain's cultural values, class system and elite structure to demonstrate that these were unusually...