When a nation endures a collective ordeal, it does not emerge unchanged. Trauma brings fear, loss and, if we’re lucky, renewal. The Britain which emerged from the Second World War was not the nation which had entered it. Beveridge saw the war as offering the chance of real change: “the purpose of victory is to live in a better world than the old world”. The war created the impetus to re-evaluate not just what was possible but what was just. Soldiers returning from the front should not be left to the poverty and powerlessness so many faced after the previous war. Women who had lost their husbands while they kept the home fires burning and the factories turning out munitions should not face penury or see their children starve.

In 2020, we entered another collective ordeal. The Covid-19 pandemic brought fear and loss in abundance. It led to restrictions to domestic life even greater, in some ways, than those during the war. The pandemic exposed the weakness of our systems, shamefully demonstrated by a coronavirus death rate twice as high in the most deprived areas as in the least deprived. But it also demonstrated our collective strength. Improvements to social security and housing security which had seemed out of reach for years were pushed through in days. Low-paid workers, dismissed as unskilled only weeks before the pandemic hit, were revealed as the backbone of Britain: supermarket staff, care assistants, delivery drivers and many others faced the risk of infection to keep the rest of us safe. As we emerge out of the Covid-19 crisis, we have the same opportunity as that grasped by Beveridge: to create a better world rather than reverting to the old one. This book is about the aspects of the pre-Covid-19 world we should leave behind and how I believe we can grow something better.

I’ve loved writing this book. It's been a joy and a privilege to have the chance to do so. I’m very grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for the opportunity to be part of its work to understand and find solutions to poverty, for fantastic flexibility and support when I’ve been unwell and for generously enabling me to take the time to write this book.

Alison Howson and the team at Agenda Publishing have been wonderful to work with and guided me through the book-writing journey with expert grace.