My book Banking in Crisis has recently been awarded the Wadsworth Prize by the Business Archives Council for the best business history book published in 2014. The list of previous winners can be viewed here . At the awards ceremony at Lloyds last week, the chair of the judging panel, Professor Richard Roberts , said the following: Early on, Judith Rowbotham helpfully defined the book that should emerge as the winner as Q: ‘the book that we all felt it would puzzle everybody if it DIDN’T win.’ And the book that meets that criterion is: Banking in Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present, by John Turner. Why was that? Well, this is both an original and an important book. It provides a lucid analysis and critique of the development of British banking over the last two centuries. It is the culmination and synthesis of a decade and a half of research on aspects of the history of banking, and of bank corporate structure, management and