Review of George R. Boyer, The winding road to the welfare state—economic insecurity and social welfare policy in Britain, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019

In 1943, Karl de Schweinitz set out to ‘summarise … the most significant trends in the English development’ of social security, from the Statute of Labourers in 1349 to the publication of the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services almost 600 years later. He argued that Beveridge’s Plan ‘marks the highest point which England has reached on her road to social security’ and that ‘the people of England have come at last … “to the top of the hill called Clear” whence they can see opening before them the way to freedom with security’ (De Schweinitz 1943: v, 245–246).