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Legacy

Legacy

One Family, A Cup of Tea and the Company that Took on the World

by Thomas Harding
Paperback
Publication Date: 03/09/2019

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$35.00

A panoramic new history of modern Britain, as told through the story of one extraordinary family, and one groundbreaking company.

In the early 1800s, Lehmann Gluckstein and his family escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and made their way to Whitechapel in London’s East End. There, starting with nothing, they worked tirelessly to pull themselves out of poverty, creating a small tobacco factory that grew to become the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons.

For over a century, Lyons was on every high street, in every home, in every coffee and teacup. It was an ascent from rags to riches in the face of many obstacles: poverty, hatred and anti-Semitism stood between this poor immigrant family and the British Dream.

Legacy charts the rise and fall of one of the most influential dynasties in British history through the lives of five astonishing generations; both sweeping and intimate, it is a story of sacrifice and selflessness, betrayal and personal tragedy, and Empire and its cost. It is also an illuminating new exploration of Britain and its place in the world, from the bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake.

ISBN:
9781785150890
9781785150890
Category:
British & Irish history
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
03-09-2019
Publisher:
Cornerstone
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
592
Dimensions (mm):
234x153x43mm
Weight:
0.88kg

"This story of the family behind the Lyons Corner Houses and many other ventures, its rise and its business demise, is endlessly fascinating and hard to put down. I read it all in one sitting, enjoying the colour and grandeur, whilst spitting with fury at how women were kept out of the financial loop. Full of character and characters, this is a tour de force."
Rabbi Julia Neuberger

"In this fascinating history of the dynasty that founded and developed J. Lyons & Company, Thomas Harding provides his readers with an illuminating insight into the lives of the founders and their descendants. This is an impressively researched account of one of Britain’s most well known corporations, one which dominated the business scene from the 1920s through to the 1980s. Yet this book is much more than a family saga. Through the lens of the Salmons and Glucksteins, the author provides authoritative accounts of the changing social, economic and political landscape both in Britain and further afield. It is a book to be recommended to all those who are interested in family and business histories and to those who are keen to learn more about the changing face of Britain in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
Anne Kershen

Thomas Harding

Thomas Harding is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He co-founded a television station in Oxford, England, and for many years was an award-winning documentary maker.

He also ran a local newspaper in West Virginia, winning the West Virginia Association of Justice's Journalist of the Year Award, before moving back to England in 2011, where he now lives with his family.

He is the author of Hanns and Rudolf, a Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the JQ-Wingate Prize; the internationally acclaimed Kadian Journal: A Father's Story; and The House by the Lake, a Costa Biography Award and Orwell Prize nominee.

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