# A Duty of Care

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/peter-hennessy/a-duty-of-care/9780141995670

![A Duty of Care](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/peter-hennessy/a-duty-of-care_978-01-4199-567-0.jpg?v=2026-04-24%2007%3A54%3A14)

- Book: [A Duty of Care](https://www.bookquiver.com/peter-hennessy/a-duty-of-care) ([A Duty of Care.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/peter-hennessy/a-duty-of-care.md))
- Authors: [Peter Hennessy](https://www.bookquiver.com/peter-hennessy)
- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-01-4199-567-0
- Published: 2022-03-03
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? In A Duty of Care , Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.