False Prophets: British Leaders’ Fateful Fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria
NIGEL ASHTON
(ATLANTIC BOOKS, 480 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064
The 11 British prime ministers from Eden to Cameron had one thing in common: all stumbled in the Middle East. As Nigel Ashton argues in this vivid and salutary book, they suffered from a blend of fear and hubris which frequently proved inimical to British interests as well as to their own political fortunes. Rather than a sharp discontinuity between imperial and post-imperial policies, there is, he suggests, a remarkable thread of continuity from Eden’s debacle in Suez to Blair’s in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Cameron’s in Libya and Syria.
