This series of edited papers, originally published in 1982, examines Britain’s industrial and commercial performance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries against the background of the development of state education. The performance of certain key nineteenth-century manufacturing industries is analysed and the reasons for their relative decline in the face of foreign competition is assessed. Further, the title examines the present and future of British industry contending that the British Malaise is a disease of industrial dyslexia, the inability to match the industrial problems of the real world with variable industrial objectives and performance.