In 1945 Britain emerged triumphant and victorious from the Second World War. On July 26, after a landslide election victory by the Labour party, Winston Churchill resigned and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister. The country looked forward to the 'New Jerusalem' that Labour had promised, a land in which poverty, ill health, slums and unemployment would be banished by lavish state expenditure. But by 1950 Britain was impoverished, the 'new Jerusalem' was a shaky structure, only half built. Why?

In this brilliant, savage and original book, based on fascinating new material from Cabinet and other Whitehall records, Correlli Barnett shows the enormous double cost of 'New Jerusalem', and points out the destructive contradictions between mistaken strategies and their consequences.