Introduction
The introduction to this book considers the ways in which the history of modern social welfare in Britain has been written and explained. These approaches include biographical and prosopographical studies of key individuals and groups responsible for founding the welfare state and administering it; the study of crucial social policies and institutions; appreciation of the key intellectual concepts which underpin the idea of welfare in Britain, including philosophical idealism, citizenship, planning, and social equality; the role of political contestation in the initiation and also in the obstruction of policy and its implementation; and the relation of specific places to the development of welfare in theory and in practice, whether east London in the late Victorian era or west London in the 1960s, both of which districts and the social innovations deriving from them are examined in chapters in this volume.