Danny, bravo! You take us into unexplored and fascinating territory with your thoughts on the sterling exchange rate post WW2 and the wider inflationary effects of war. I for one am with you all the way, because I think that these are the markers of human history and indeed of war.
There is an excellent book entitled 'The Downwave - Surviving the Second Great Depression' by Robert Beckman (ISBN 0 903852 38 1). Beckman was a broadcaster on LBC, a financial guru, and tipster, who had all the right answers but not necessarily in the right order. A summary here spells it out better than I can:-
The Downwave Revisited | (almost) always thinking
Nonetheless I found his basic theory, that human society is driven alternately by greed and fear, compelling. He has graphs of indicators against timelines telling you where you are in the cycle. Thus there are upwave wars and downwave wars. The first indicated by much flagwaving and martial music at the dockside as the troopships cast off, the second with a growing unease at the inevitably of the coming maelstrom that seemingly cannot be avoided. By contrast the first example always ends in great acrimony about what happened and why, the second merely with an overwhelming sense of relief that it is over. The most obvious examples in recent history being WW's 1 and 2 respectively.
Other indicators are to be found as well, one of the most interesting being women's fashions. In upwaves they become ever more revealing, necklines descend, hemlines rise, and the material becomes ever more diaphanous. In contrast downwaves witness a great covering up with many layers of material. Just think of the early and later Victorian eras.
Returning to inflation as per your post, he has a graph plotting 'The Price of Wheat in England: 1259-1975' ( the book was published in 1983). Calibrated in Shillings per Winchester Quarter (no, I don't know either) it violently lurches like some seismographic readout, starting from less than 3 to ending in excess of 285 over those seven centuries. He helpfully superimposes the various wars in between, starting with the hundred years one (1337-1453) and the War of the Roses (1455-1485), via the Napoleonic Wars (1795-1815), through to WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam.
Personally I preferred the price of beer as my personal indicator. Every time I went to Berlin (1973-88) it had risen further. Not in DMs of course, but in the £sd that they cost me.