Health, Happiness, and Security

First published in 1989, Health, Happiness, and Security is a definitive account of the process by which the NHS was created. It is widely believed that the medical profession opposed the creation of the NHS and that only the combined wills of the Aneurin Bevan and Lord Beveridge forced it through. Honigsbaum shows that it was partly the Civil Service who stood in the way, wanting a system of health care based on local planning and control. Had civil servants been more flexible, the NHS might have evolved more peacefully than it did.

Ministers of course made the ultimate decisions, but the book shows how they were influenced by the staff who serviced them. It also describes for the first time how the consultant service evolved, revealing the enormous influence exerted by Lord Moran, then President of the Royal College of Physicians.

An historian with an intimate knowledge of NHS problems at the time, Frank Honigsbaum has provided an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to examine the history of a major British institution. Historians, politicians, civil servants, doctors, students of social policy, political science, and public administration will find the book an essential reading.