ABSTRACT
While the immediate post-war years began to see the most considerable changes in the retail scene of Britain, it was in the '80s, in the Thatcher years of enterprise culture and with a retail 'boom', that its geography became so radically transformed. Under the glare of the spotlight of public debate and scrutiny, the features of the retail revolution were well chronicled. So dramatic were the events of the period that they made profound changes in the retail scene. Not only that, for the major actors on the stage, they also created what came to be regarded as a 'Golden Age' of UK retailing. In conjunction, the tolerance of discrimination and the diffidence towards mergers facilitated file remarkable growth of the major retail concerns. Indeed, it could be said that the success of these firms in meeting the fast-growing needs of an increasingly mobile and acquisitive society was the undoubted cynosure of retailing in the '80s.
