The difficulty of inheritance; the prolonged currency crises of 1976 and his conduct of Cabinet government during the IMF autumn; his construction of the Lib/Lab pact; his education initiative; his development of nuclear weapons policy, and his handling of the 'winter of discontent'.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London, and was recently elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Before joining the Department in 1992, he was a journalist for twenty years with spells on The Times as a leader writer and Whitehall Correspondent, The Financial Times as its Lobby Correspondent at Westminster and The Economist. He was a regular presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme from 1987 to 1992. In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary British History. Professor Hennessey was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric between 1994 and 1997.
