In London, the world's foremost financial centre, the week before the outbreak of the First World War saw the breakdown of the markets, culminating with the closure for the first time ever of the London Stock Exchange on Friday 31 July. Outside the Bank of England a long anxious queue waited to...

The Bank of England's tercentenary (July 1994), coming as it does with the future status of the Bank a subject of much discussion, is an apposite moment to offer an overview of the Bank's history as a whole. Obviously there have been several detailed histories of the Bank, but this collection of...