Chocolate Wars

The delicious true story of the early chocolate pioneers by the award-winning writer, and direct descendant of the famous chocolate dynasty, Deborah Cadbury In 'Chocolate Wars' bestselling historian and award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. In the early nineteenth century Richard Tapper Cadbury sent his son, John, to London to study a new and exotic commodity: cocoa. Within a generation, John's sons, Richard and George, had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Fry and Rowntree, and their European competitors Lindt and Nestlé. The major English firms were all Quaker family enterprises, and their business aims were infused with religious idealism. In America, Milton Hershey and Forrest Mars proved that they had the appetite for business on a huge scale, and successfully resisted the English companies' attempts to master the American market. As chocolate companies raced to compete around the globe, Quaker capitalism met a challenge that would eventually defeat it. At the turn of the millennium Cadbury, the sole independent survivor of England's chocolate dynasties, became the world's largest confectionary company. But before long it too faced a threat to its very survival, and the chocolate wars culminated in a multi-billion pound showdown pitting independence and Quaker tradition against the cut-throat tactics of a corporate leviathan. Featuring a colourful cast of savvy entrepreneurs, brilliant eccentrics and resourceful visionaries, ‘Chocolate Wars’ is the story of a uniquely alluring product and of the evolution, for better and worse, of modern business.

'What emerges from Deborah Cadbury's vibrant history is the growing importance of advertising, the birth of brands and the impact of the financial markets' appetite for profit over national interest or social welfare…most poignant is her portrait of an impressive pair of brothers…engaging and scholarly, confident and compassionate…less a family biography than an impressively thought-provoking parable for our times' Daily Telegraph ‘This is history, brought bang up to date, in the hands of a master chocolatier-storyteller’ Evening Standard 'There are fascinating things here…I relished the story of chocolate itself' Observer 'Clear, readable and richly detailed' Sunday Times

Deborah Cadbury is the highly acclaimed, bestselling author of several books, including ‘The Dinosaur Hunters’, ‘The Lost King of France’, and ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’. She has also won numerous international awards as a TV producer for the BBC, including an Emmy for ‘Horizon’. She lives in London.