This is the second and final volume of the business history of one of the UK's oldest and largest insurance offices, based upon probably the best archive in the business. This volume covers the period from 1870 to the absorption of the Phoenix by Sun Alliance (now Royal and Sun Alliance) in 1984. The Phoenix papers are used to analyse the triumphs and trials, not only of a single insurance venture, but of an entire financial sector in a notably turbulent century. Insurance is concerned with the way people drive, the way they retire, or buy their houses, or invest, or educate their children, or go to war. It follows that a major insurance history also throws light on many aspects of modern British social history. As the great composite offices expanded to offer fire, accident, marine, and life insurance across a single 'counter', so they caught within their dealings an increasingly representative slice of British commercial and social life.

The public sector spends nearly GBP 125 billion, or ten per cent of GDP, each year purchasing goods and services in the UK economy. This report focuses on whether the rules and practices relating to procurement of goods and services by public authorities hinder or help UK manufacturers in obtaining public contracts.