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I first learned of the Beveridge Report at about the age of 7 or 8 by reading the ‘Just William’ stories.1,2 By then, the report was already 25 years old. Richmal Crompton’s short story, ‘The Outlaws’ Report’, first published in 1944, revolves around our hero, William Brown, and his gang—Ginger, Henry and Douglas (I don’t recall whether Jumble the dog was present)—penning a response to the report’s publication and smuggling it into the briefcase of a War Office official.

It is hard nowadays to imagine so major a work of social policy as the Beveridge Report having such penetration of the collective consciousness. Its significance, even at second-hand in children’s comic fiction, registered sufficiently that I was later surprised to see credit for the NHS given largely to Nye Bevan.

As we mark the 75th anniversary of William Beveridge’s publication in December 1942, it remains totemic. According to Nicholas Timmins in ‘The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State’, ‘Bismarck’s is the only name to rank above Beveridge’s as a welfare state designer’. Yet in the preface to its new edition Timmins laments that ‘the welfare state is at death’s door’.3

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Editorial
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