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Despite the enormous growth in research and writing on contemporary British history, postwar British history is, curiously, lacking a comprehensive textbook which lecturers can recommend to students with complete satisfaction.
To historians, the intrinsic value of history is self-evident. However, the study of history as an intellectual activity extends beyond the careful reconstruction and critical analysis of the past. For the past seeps into the present: it shapes the identities, perceptions, and attitudes of individuals and institutions.
On 18 September 1938, British policymakers, shocked by Hitler’s evident readiness to go to war over the Sudetenland, the German-speaking fringe of territory around the western half of Czechoslovakia, offered to guarantee what remained of Czechoslovakia once it renounced its alliances with France and the Soviet Union and agreed to transfer the territory in question to Germany.
Fergus Campbell’s book explores the relationship between agrarian conflict and nationalist politics in the period from 1891 to 1921. Although the study focuses primarily on the five counties of Connaught, with a particular emphasis on east Galway and especially the Craughwell area, provincial and local events are located in a national context.
On 17 May 1940, in a unique display of vulnerability and anguish, Neville Chamberlain confided to his sisters that his whole world had 'tumbled to bits in a moment' (p. 434). Clearly in shock from his 'tremendous reverse of fortunes' (p. 1), he lamented: 'There is no pleasure in life and no prospect of any' (p. 434).
On 15 February 1921, in the city of Cork, Ireland, a military court consisting of three British Army officers assembled for the purpose of inquiring into the death of a local man the previous evening.
Andrew Thorpe’s monograph is a wide-ranging, meticulously researched study of political organisation in Britain during the Second World War, one that makes an important contribution to the historiography of the period.
Harold Macmillan once said that what he feared most was ‘events’. Jack Lynch was one of those politicians who was ambushed by ‘events’. Before 1969, he seemed to have a talent for avoiding the arrogance and mud that normally congeal on those who climb the greasy pole, and projecting himself as gentle, decent, moderate, honest, and dutiful.
This is a very carefully researched and well-written account of reactions within Britain to the Soviet Union during the industrialisation and forced collectivisation programmes of the 1930s.
A Man and an Institution is in reality three books combined into one. It is, first, a contribution to a biography of Sir Maurice Hankey, the first Cabinet Secretary; second, a history of the origins of the Cabinet Office and its development until Hankey’s retirement in 1938; and third, an account of how the Cabinet Office came to be the guardian of official secrecy.