Once upon a time, a job in the City of London meant pin-striped suits, bowler hats, furled umbrellas, a languid air, the right school and a little skill being "a rich man tending other rich men's money". Then, along came the Americans and spoiled the party.

Not quite, but that is a reasonable off-the-cuff analysis of the profound changes that have wracked the city in the last 20 years. In this book Philip Augar explores what happened to the legion of gentlemanly capitalists with their "unshakeable faith in gifted amateurism, their love of hierarchy and a knack for finessing trouble until it was far too late".

Mr Augur takes us through the placid years before the Big Bang of 1986, when Thatcherism was not only disposing of the miners but was about to blow away the comfortable constraints of the city.

Mr Augur's point is that those who ran the city were not prepared for this. He points to their reliance on a small group of managers recruited from a shallow pool of public schools, who, despite their staggering self-confidence, were not equipped to deal with the new world order.

And it is a new world order with all the bastions of city capitalism swallowed by foreign predators, and a deal to merge the Deutsche Borse with the LSE just averted, as if Frankfurt was a peer and not just a jumped-up johnny-come-lately. How times have changed.

This is an excellent read, analytical without being dry. A must.

comidheach@irish-times.ie