Catherine R. Schenk is Professor of International Economic History at the University of Glasgow. She has held academic posts in the UK, New Zealand and Malaysia and has been a visiting researcher at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research and the International Monetary Fund. Her previous books include Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre (2001) and Britain and the Sterling Area (1994).

• List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction and outline of the book; Part I. Reconstructing the International Monetary System 1945–59: 2. The post-war international monetary system 1945–50; 3. Return to convertibility 1950–9; Part II. Accelerating the Retreat: Sterling in the 1960s: 4. Sterling and European integration; 5. The sterling devaluation 1967: relations with the USA and the IMF; 6. Sterling and the City; 7. Multilateral negotiations: sterling and the reform of the international monetary system; 8. The sterling agreements of 1968; Part III. Sterling's Final Retreat 1970–92: 9. Sterling and the end of Bretton Woods; 10. Years of crisis 1973–9; 11. The aftermath 1980–92; 12. Summary and conclusions; Index.

'Catherine Schenk tells the story of the changing fortunes of sterling across the second half of the twentieth century. This ranges over everything from convertibility, reserve currencies, sterling balances, the euro-currency markets, the international financial architecture, and a great deal more. Sterling has also been placed in the context of the international monetary system, and in the context of the growing literature on the economic and wider history of the period. It is an excellent account of difficult territory.' Forrest Capie, Cass Business School and Official Historian of the Bank of England