Till Time's Last Sand: A History of the Bank of England 1694-2013

by David Kynaston

The authorised history of the Bank of England by the bestselling David Kynaston, 'the most entertaining historian alive' (Spectator).

'Not an ordinary bank, but a great engine of state, ' Adam Smith declared of the Bank of England as long ago as 1776. The Bank is now over 320 years old, and throughout almost all that time it has been central to British history. Yet to most people, despite its increasingly high profile, its history is largely unknown.

Till Time's Last Sand by David Kynaston is the first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of the Bank of England, opening with the Bank's founding in 1694 in the midst of the English financial revolution and closing in 2013 with Mark Carney succeeding Mervyn King as Governor.

This is a history that fully addresses the important debates over the years about the Bank's purpose and modes of operation and that covers such aspects as monetary and exchange-rate policies and relations with government, the City and other central banks. Yet this is also a narrative that does full justice to the leading episodes and characters of the Bank, while taking care to evoke a real sense of the place itself, with its often distinctively domestic side.

Deploying an array of piquant and revealing material from the Bank's rich archives, Till Time's Last Sand is a multi-layered and insightful portrait of one of our most important national institutions, from one of our leading historians.

Genres: History, Economics, Finance, British Literature, Nonfiction, London

896 pages, Hardcover

First published September 7, 2017

About the author

David Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written eighteen books, including The City of London (1994-2001), a widely acclaimed four-volume history, and W.G.'s Birthday Party, an account of the Gentleman vs. the Players at Lord's in July 1898. He is the author of Austerity Britain, 1945-51, the first title in a series of books covering the history of post-war Britain (1945-1979) under the collective title "Tales of a New Jerusalem".

Reviews

[Kip]

I will probably not be reading this book. An early sample gives the sense that it has not story to it; it is a list of people I will never know. It is perhaps helpful to someone, but not to me.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kynaston tells the story of the Bank of England, which predates the Federal Reserve by more than two centuries. Great and detailed chronicle in a beautifully designed book.

For anyone with an interest in central banking and the history of world finance, this is worth a read.