Author(s): Malcolm Balen

History

The early years of the eighteenth century produced two great monuments: one, Christopher Wren's new cathedral of St Pauls, an enduring testament to principled craft and masterful construction, the other, an empty fraud of such magnitude that its collapse threatened to overturn monarchies and governments. The full scale of this deceit was quietly covered up, its enduring legacy a poorly understood colloquialism: the South Sea Bubble. For the first time, Malcolm Balen uncovers the story of corruption and scandal that attended the birth of the first shareholder economy, and with it uncovers a parable for our times.