The bankers and traders in the City of London are proof of Hegel's contention that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. Bankers do have a history, but mostare wilfully ignorant of it. In the 1990s a talented young historian named David Kynaston set out to tell their story, and made his reputation with a history of the City of London from 1815 to 2000. The intention was to write it in a single volume, but it spread over four, adding up to more than un words. Mr Kynaston delights in vivid personalities, such as Nathan Rothschild, who single-handedly rescued the Bank of England when it was about to run out of gold in 1825, Sir Montagu Norman, who stubbornly defended the gold standard against the bitter criticism of John Maynard Keynes, and Siegmund Warburg, who overcame anti-Semitism and entrenched custom to become a pre-eminent merchant banker in the Eurodollar market which triggered the explosive growth of the 1960s.
展开▼
