Glaxo: A History to 1962.

Pharmaceutical followers have, for some time, turned to the business section of their newspapers as well as to the science pages. It now seems that the literary supplements will also become required reading, as an increasing number of books about drug companies, their products and their histories are published.

In the past few decades Glaxo has been a particularly favoured subject: Matthew Lynn's Merck v Glaxo: the billion dollar battle (1991) gave an investigative journalist's view, somewhat jaundiced when looking at Glaxo, of the R&D strategies, marketing practices, corporate structures and boardroom personalities of the two companies; At the sign of the plough (1990) by Geoffrey Tweedale provided the third, and most recent, history of Allen & Hanburys, initially a competitor company but from 1958 a constituent part of the Glaxo Group.

Now comes this account by two distinguished business historians, who trace the development of Glaxo from a family trading concern in late nineteenth century New Zealand, through proprietary foods and vitamins, to a place in the sunshine of pharmaceutical promise in …