ABSTRACT
In recent years, following financial scandals such as the collapse of the Maxwell empire, BCCI and Barings Bank, the issue of the effectiveness and value of the external audit of British company accounts has been prominent in public debate and was given due weight, for example, in the Cadbury Report (1992) on corporate governance generally. In this context, in 1996 the research committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) funded a project based at the Cardiff Business School investigating the changing nature of the company audit historically in Britain, a major part of which consisted of interviewing retired or experienced chartered accountants about their careers, with particular reference to their work as auditors. In other words an oral history of the issue.
