Books
Liam Byrne

Dragons


Britain's rise to global dominance from the 16th century owed as much to the vision and creativity of traders, industrialists and bankers as it did to wars of conquest fought by military men.

DRAGONS tells the story of British business endeavour through the lives of ten titans of commerce. Beginning with the Tudor merchants who transformed England's economy via trade with the New World, Liam Byrne traces an entrepreneurial golden line through men such as Thomas Pitt, saviour of the East India Company; financier Nathan Rothschild, creator of the modern bond market; William Lever, brand-builder, philanthropist, and creator of Britain's first great multinational; and John Spedan Lewis, founder of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership.

At the start of the 21st century Britain remains a major economic power. DRAGONS is both a rousing celebration of British business genius and a fascinatingly informative narrative of a neglected but essential strand of our island's story.

728 printed pages
Copyright owner
Head of Zeus
Publication year
2016
Publisher
Head of Zeus
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Quotes

  • b9000542659has quoted9 months ago
    From the eighth century, the most active traders with England were probably the Frisians of the northern Germanic coast, who bought and sold wine, timber, grain and fish from towns like London and York and, from at least the late seventh century, traded a certain amount of English cloth, known, appropriately, as Frisian.
  • marilyukhas quotedlast year
    a full-scale constitutional revolution was in progress as the group of English leaders known as the ‘Immortal Seven’ invited James’s Dutch son-in-law (and nephew) William of Orange to intervene to restore England’s ‘ancient laws and liberties’.*12 William landed at Brixham on 5 November 1688, with a fleet four times the size of the Spanish Armada, James’s cause melted away, and the old king fled abroad.
    A ‘Convention Parliament’ deemed James to have abdicated, and William was crowned in April 1689. The ‘Glorious Revolution’ was complete; it marked a new relationship between sovereign and subjects
  • b9000542659has quoted5 months ago
    Co., Oriental and the Victoria Company, largely through

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