This extension of a PhD is an original study of Public Social and Welfare spending in the UK. 1829-2008, through the lens of the spending on each of the six programmes studied-Income support, Education, Health, Lunacy, Housing and Labour Market Interventions-as a proportion of GDP, GR. It is split into three periods, 1829-1889, 1889-1948, and 1948-2008. It is based on a fresh data base from which the trends for each period are adduced. The author considers many conventional explanations whilst concentrating his analysis on twelve intermediate economic/fiscal explanations. The data is often original, the trends are not always as usually thought,, the periodisation has an original division at c. 1890, and many explanations tend to the status of myths as in the title of the work.