With the title The Development of the British Welfare State readers might be surprised to learn that this history essentially begins in 1945. The book is a political and social history of the welfare state since the 1940s with one chapter devoted to the early-twentieth-century ideologies which led to the idea of a welfare state. The first part of the book chronicles the politics and history of the successive administrations. Part II has chapters on the welfare state services while there is a short concluding section which looks at current trends and prospects for the future in which Sullivan discusses the implications of markets and consumerism for the welfare state idea.