A nation of shopkeepers is how Britain has been described and some families have become synonymous with their products, as much as for their success as their philosophies.
Cadbury, Sainsbury and John Lewis are some of the most famous names in the retailing landscape of Britain and often held up as role models for other companies. On this side of the Irish Sea, Cadbury is best known for the ubiquity of its confectionery rather than its Quaker roots, but the others have penetrated our consciousness through advertising on UK channels and the almost inevitable sojourn in England.
John Lewis, aside from being the first port of call for your drapery needs, is famous for its "partners" as each employee is called, while Sainsbury has long epitomised what was best in supermarket trading.
However the three couldn't have been further apart in their formative years, though Cadbury and Sainsbury have lost their distinctive mark in recent years and the John Lewis experiment seems in ever-present danger of dissolution as the carrot of flotation and share sell-offs is dangled in front of the partners.
Cadbury epitomised the muscular Christianity of the Victorian era with its emphasis on self-reliance and thrift but tempered with care for its workers. As devout Quakers, they took their ideals seriously and strove to live them out. Bournville was built to house their workers in what was looked on with awe by fellow toilers and regarded as a waste by the mercantile class.
The family was troubled by the turning over of its factories to war production but accepted that defeating Nazism was a price worth paying for compromising their non-violent beliefs.
Yet nowadays Cadbury has been subsumed into a vast multinational and, despite hazy notions of it being informed by the Quaker legacy, it is a profit-driven organisation with the Cadburys themselves holding about 2 per cent of stock and spread out over a large and extended family.
John Lewis started as your classic patriarchal company paying low wages and bitterly contesting trade union rights, so much so that the son, Spedan, was determined that his reign would be different. He came up with the partnership idea and turned the chain over to its employees who became partners in the firm and stakeholders in its future. A radical idea then and even more radical idea now that individual rather than the collective has triumphed, and, despite the lures of the same, it has survived.
Sainsbury epitomises the classic retailing success and was not burdened by such philosophical notions as the others. Instead it concentrated on service and value in dealing with its customer and staff.
Such a simple business plan paid off with it becoming the dominant supermarket chain in Britain, a title which it has only recently relinquished. Of the three it is the most humdrum story as it lacks the romance of the other two but nonetheless it is a fascinating account of how to get it (mostly) right.
Carol Kennedy has produced an immensely readable and thorough gallop through the fortunes of some of Britain's most famous families whilst also documenting the change that has overtaken manufacturing and retailing in the last 100 years without drowning the reader in either sociology or hagiography.
