Kathleen Burk

The riveting eight-thousand-year story of wine, nectar of the gods and the pleasure and support of man As far back as history can reach, wine has been intertwined with the growth and development of the human race. Over eight millennia, this remarkable drink has influenced cultures, built economies, healed men, and supported armies. Ranging from the Late Stone Age to the present day, historian Kathleen Burk illuminates the rich history of wine. Beginning in Neolithic-era Georgia in the Caucasus, Burk methodically traces how wine has evolved over time and place as a religious, social, cultural, economic, and even culinary force--including the complicated relationship between Islam and alcohol, the rise and decline of France as the world's wine superpower, and the rapidly growing importance of Asian countries in the world of wine. Through this, Burk weaves a comprehensive history not only of wine, but also of the peoples who produce and enjoy it. Ambitious and engaging, Wine is essential reading for everyone who enjoys a glass, whether a devoted connoisseur or a curious dabbler.

An invigorating history of the arguments and cooperation between America and Britain as they divided up the world and an illuminating exploration of their underlying alliance Throughout modern history, British and American rivalry has gone hand in hand with common interests. In this book Kathleen Burk brilliantly examines the different kinds of power the two empires have projected, and the means they have used to do it. What the two empires have shared is a mixture of pragmatism, ruthless commercial drive, a self-righteous foreign policy and plenty of naked aggression. These have been aimed against each other more than once; yet their underlying alliance against common enemies has been historically unique and a defining force throughout the twentieth century.This is a global and epic history of the rise and fall of empires. It ranges from America’s futile attempts to conquer Canada to her success in opening up Japan but rapid loss of leadership to Britain; from Britain’s success in forcing open China to her loss of the Middle East to the US; and from the American conquest of the Philippines to her destruction of the British Empire. The Pax Americana replaced the Pax Britannica, but now the American world order is fading, threatening Britain’s belief in her own world role.

Anglo-American relations were transformed during the First World War. Britain was already in long-term economic decline relative to the United States, but this decline was accelerated by the war, which was militarily a victory for Britain, but economically a catastrophe. This book sets out the economic, and in particular, the financial relations between the two powers during the war, setting it in the context of the more familiar political and diplomatic relationship. Particular attention is paid to the British war missions sent out to the USA, which were the agents for much of the financial and economic negotiation, and which are rescued here from underserved historical obscurity.

Anglo-American relations were transformed during the First World War. Britain was already in long-term economic decline relative to the United States, but this decline was accelerated by the war, which was militarily a victory for Britain, but economically a catastrophe. This book sets out the economic, and in particular, the financial relations between the two powers during the war, setting it in the context of the more familiar political and diplomatic relationship. Particular attention is paid to the British war missions sent out to the USA, which were the agents for much of the financial and economic negotiation, and which are rescued here from underserved historical obscurity.

In OLD WORLD, NEW WORLD Kathleen Burk sets out to tell the story of Britain and America across four hundred years, from colonisation to Iraq. There are two strands to this story. The first is the grand narrative that takes in the British colonisation of America and the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War and the global conflicts of the twentieth century. This is the story of America's inevitable eclipse of its former colonial master as a Great Power, and of the enmities and sympathies, the confusions and understandings born along the way. The second strand is quieter but no less fascinating. Displaying a breathtaking command of her subject, Burk examines the relations between the two countries in many other spheres: economic, religious, cultural, social, even romantic. These two strands taken together make Old World, New World an unprecedented achievement. No one could hope to write the definitive story of these two countries and their relationship, but few will come closer than Kathleen Burk has in this brilliant book.

Popular, prolific, and impassioned, British historian A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) was also outspoken, controversial, and quarrelsome. Taylor’s many books, including The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, The Origins of the Second World War, and English History 1914-1945, changed the way history was written and read. His legendary television lectures, delivered live and unscripted, brought history to a huge popular audience. In this masterful biography, Kathleen Burk provides a perceptive account of the life and achievements of Britain’s most famous twentieth-century historian. Burk draws on her personal acquaintance with Taylor in his later years and on an array of previously untapped archival materials to analyze the successes, failures, and controversies of Taylor’s life as historian, Oxford don, broadcast journalist, husband, and friend. The author sets Taylor’s professional work in the context of the development of history in England during the century, and she traces the relations between his writings and his reactions to domestic and foreign politics. Her account of Taylor’s years at Oxford explores the customs and rituals of the academic community, his colleagues, and the successive crises that beset him personally and professionally. The book also assesses Taylor’s political activities and his self-described role as an “impotent socialist,” his development as a journalist and broadcaster, previously unknown financial aspects of his freelance activities, and his private upheavals, in particular his failed marriages.

In this authoritative and gripping book—the first full account of the 1976 International Monetary Fund crisis—Kathleen Burk and Alec Cairncross peel back the surface of the most searing economic crisis of postwar Britain to reveal its historical roots and contemporary context. During the spring of 1976, the plummeting value of the British pound against the U.S. dollar triggered a traumatic economic and political crisis. International confidence in the pound collapsed; an article in the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Good-bye, Great Britain," urged investors to get out of sterling. Refused aid by the London and New York markets, the Labour Government under Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to turn for help to the IMF—a highly unusual move for a developed Western economy. Fearing that the economic crisis would drive Britain into a left-wing siege economy which would endanger NATO and the EEC, the United States and Germany used the IMF loan as a means to force Britain to make major domestic policy changes; when the IMF mission arrived in London in November 1976, it was announced that the price for the loan included deep cuts in domestic spending. Burk and Cairncross uncover the maneuvers of the Labour Government to evade IMF conditions. They also examine underlying economic factors, the political agenda, the rise of monetarist ideas, and the Keynesian response. Juxtaposing narrative with analysis, they provide surprising answers to critical questions and reveal how the breakdown of the post-war consensus on the macroeconomic management paved the way for the triumph of Thatcherism.

This is the arresting 150-year story of one of the oldest and most illustrious merchant banks and of the men who made it. Founded in 1838 by an American, George Peabody, Morgan Grenfell quickly became the most important American banking house in London, and by the turn of the century held an unrivalled position as part of the most powerful investment bank in the world. The book chronicles its role in financing the overseas purchases of Britain and her allies during the First World War, in taking the lead amongst the private London bankers in reconstructing Europe during the 1920s, and in pioneering the new field of corporate finance. In the 1980s Morgan Grenfell took off with a substantial rise in profits and an extraordinarily powerful Corporate Finance Department: an epilogue summarises recent events to the end of 1988 when it decided to exit from securities in London and to concentrate on developing its areas of traditional strength. Based on a wide range of original sources, this book is unmatched as a banking history: no other book combines the unrestricted access to the bank's archives afforded to the author with a narrative of events up to the 1980s.