Book description
?I have not become the King?s First Minister in order to preside over
the liquidation of the British Empire.? Winston Churchill?s famous
statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was
beginning to turn, pugnaciously proclaimed his loyalty to the world-wide
institution which he had served devotedly for most of his life. The
majority of the British people, who believed they were fighting the war
to beat the Germans and preserve the Empire, shared his view. Yet less
than five years after Churchill?s trenchant speech, and despite ?
apparently ? winning the war, the British Empire effectively ended with
Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in
Palestine in May 1948. How did this rapid change of fortune come about?
In January 1945, just before the conference at Yalta between Churchill,
Stalin and Truman, where the disposition of so much of the post-war
world was made, Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India wrote in his diary: ?I
wonder if the Prime Minister, who is the biggest man of the three, will
still be able to assert his dominant personality. A great triumph if he
can, the oldest man of the three, with the weakest hand to play.? Peter
Clarke?s book is the first to analyse in detail the losing hand which
Britain was dealt in the last year of the war, and then to see how that
hand was played over the next two years by Churchill?s successors. Its
originality lies in the detailed narrative which shows how military,
political and economic developments bore down upon each other. It makes
superb use of the copious letters and diaries now available of the major
participants and many involved observers to show how decisions were
taken, and of contemporary newspaper reports and contemporary witnesses
to show how those decisions were received: it recreates both the
geopolitics and the atmosphere of the period. Not least, it analyses
dispassionately the role of the USA: how Roosevelt and his successors
were determined that Britain must be sustained both during the war and
after, but that the British Empire must not; and how the tension between
Allied war aims, suppressed while the fighting was going on, became
rapidly apparent when it stopped. The book thus also describes the short
pivotal period when American influence finally took over from the
British in world politics. Peter Clarke was Professor of Modern
British History from 1991-2004 at Cambridge University and Master of
Trinity Hall, Cambridge between 2000 and 2003. He is the author of a
number of important books, including
Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-1990
(1996) (the acclaimed history of Britain in the twentieth century) and
A Question of Leadership: Gladstone to Blair
(1999), both available in Penguin paperback. He is a Fellow of the
British Academy and reviews books regularly for The Times Literary
Supplement, the London Review of Books and the Sunday Times.
