1936 Our Centenary Year

There are books that set out to tell great stories, and then there are books that commemorate the fact that an insurance company has successfully remained in existence for one hundred years. At first glance, the latter may sound like a challenging proposition. Yet 1936: Our Centenary Year turns out to be exactly the sort of eccentric historical survivor that Crappy Old Books loves best.

Published in 1936 by the magnificently named Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Company Limited, and written by J. Dyer Simpson, this volume was produced to celebrate the company’s centenary. In other words, it is a birthday card of industrial proportions, written at a time when corporations celebrated major anniversaries by commissioning books rather than issuing press releases nobody would ever read.

The title itself deserves admiration for its straightforward honesty. Our Centenary Year. No mystery. No suspense. No attempt to disguise its purpose behind a dramatic subtitle such as One Hundred Years of Fire, Fortune and Financial Courage. The company had reached one hundred years old and was sufficiently pleased about this achievement to publish a book. One cannot help but respect such uncomplicated confidence.

What makes the volume fascinating today is that it inadvertently becomes far more than a company history. Every page serves as a portal into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, charting the growth of commerce, industry, empire, transport, finance, and the countless other forces that shaped the modern world. The insurance company may be the official subject, but history itself frequently steals the limelight.

There is also something wonderfully reassuring about a period when corporate publications possessed a certain grandeur. Modern companies tend to celebrate anniversaries with hashtags, branded cupcakes, and vaguely motivational videos. In 1936, they commemorated the occasion with a substantial book, carefully printed and intended to endure. One suspects there were fewer PowerPoint presentations involved.

The timing of publication adds another layer of intrigue. This book appeared in 1936, a year that sat delicately between worlds. The Victorian age was long gone. The First World War was already history. The Second World War had yet to begin. Readers today know what was coming next. The people who first opened this volume did not. As a result, the book possesses that strange quality found in many interwar publications: confidence mixed with an innocence that hindsight finds deeply moving.

For historians, collectors, and anyone fascinated by the machinery of everyday life, company histories can be unexpectedly rewarding. They preserve details that more conventional histories often overlook. Buildings, offices, employees, business practices, advertising, financial crises, technological changes, and social developments all leave their fingerprints behind. What began as a celebration becomes a valuable historical record.

As a physical object, this book positively radiates period charm. It belongs to an era when books were expected to feel substantial and authoritative, particularly if they were discussing matters as serious as commerce and insurance. It is the sort of volume one imagines sitting proudly in a boardroom, quietly demonstrating that the company had survived for a century and intended to continue doing so.

Condition-wise, this copy is described as Fair. It has clearly lived an active life over the last ninety years and bears the marks of experience accordingly. Yet that feels strangely appropriate. A book celebrating longevity should perhaps look as though it has itself endured a considerable journey through time.

The text remains readable, the historical interest remains immense, and the wear merely adds another chapter to the story. After all, if an insurance company can survive a century, a commemorative book can surely survive a few decades of enthusiastic ownership.

Whether you are interested in business history, Liverpool, insurance, corporate archaeology, the interwar period, or simply enjoy unusual publications that were never intended to become collectable, 1936: Our Centenary Year is a delightful curiosity. Informative, nostalgic, and unintentionally revealing, it offers a glimpse into a vanished world of ledgers, confidence, and institutional pride.

Exactly the sort of obscure, dignified, and unexpectedly fascinating survivor that Crappy Old Books is delighted to rescue from the filing cabinet of history and return to circulation.

Keep browsing: See more History books Other books by J Dyer Simpson