At the sign of the plough: 275 years of Allen & Hanburys and the British pharmaceutical industry, 1715-1990

This is a history of one of the oldest and most prestigious of British drug houses - Allen & Hanburys Ltd - founded by a Welsh Quaker, Silvanus Bevan, in 1715. The author looks at the way this company and others made the difficult transition from producing traditional medicines to manufacturing synthetic drugs. He describes how Allen & Hanburys (as part of the Glaxo Group) in the 1960s successfully embraced the latest advances in drug design to market a new range of pharmaceutical specialities, which have made it an acknowledged leader in the field of respiratory medicines.