Helen Evans

In 1933, R. G. Collingwood forwarded a four-headed approach for the advancement of knowledge of Cumbrian prehistory; office work, fieldwork, excavation and publication. The office work included three main tasks. The first task, the cataloguing and classification of sites and finds. This present study draws on Collingwood's ideas in a number of ways, not least in that in order to interpret Cumbria's prehistoric record at a regional scale, it has been necessary to analyse and interpret many disparate strands of evidence.

Politicians will go to any lengths to persuade the voting public that the National Health Service is safe in their hands. Alternative policy models cannot be placed before the electorate unless political parties take huge risks. Yet, at the same time, we see even a Labour government drawing private finance into the health service and giving patients rights to use the private sector. This groundbreaking new study shows that, although the politicians do not feel confident in proposing radical new models of healthcare, elite opinion in the media, in political circles, in academia and in policy think tanks has fallen out of love with the idea of a centrally planned health service provided and financed by government. Elite opinion does not, as yet, warm to a free market in healthcare. Although aspects of a market-based system are accepted, ideas of 'market failure' loom large - especially amongst the political-class. Nevertheless, the author shows how some groups of opinion formers are prepared to be more radical. These groups, she believes, may in time be effective in promoting a vision of a market in healthcare that is free from government interference and from the stifling power of government-granted professional monopolies.