This review of the Suez Crisis gives a chapter each to such key players as the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the Secretary to the Cabinet. It incorporates 1956 releases from the Public Record Office to reassess the role of officials and the process of policymaking.
The Daily Telegraph, 3/3/00 - reviewed by Douglas Hurd
"So much has been written about the role of the politicians in the Suez affair - Butler, Macmillan, Eden himself - that the story has become repetitious. The journal Contemporary British History has published these admirable essays on the senior officials and serving officers. It is a brilliant idea."
The Spectator, 1/4/00 - review by Donald Cameron-Watt
"Significant details of the various cock-ups that beset the operation only leaked out gradually beyond the circle of politicians, journalists, academics and other students of the machinery of British government and foreign policy-making. Suez buffs will find in Whitehall and the Suez Crisis a first account of how those internal cock-ups and deceits affected 12 of the leading officials concerned with British policy.... Taken together they give a remarkably consistent picture."
Contemporary British History
"can be confidently recommended as an important contribution to our understanding of one of the central events in Britain"s twentieth century political history"
The Frontline
"should be prescribed as a textbook for trainees in the diplomatic service. Nothing like it has appeared before"
Twentieth Century British History
"well-written and well researched papers that focus on an important individual"
The International History Review
"a groundbreaking book
