If history is not to be repeated, it must first be understood. Which is why the publication of this elegant and comprehensive study is so valuable and timely. Most historians of the Labour Party ignore or marginalize its foreign policy. But not John Callaghan. He puts foreign policy at the centre of the entire Old Labour story, in the process illuminating many of the dark corners of the Party's past. Anyone needing a reliable guide to the full complexity of that past would do well to start with this excellent book. David Coates, Wake Forest University, USA John Callaghan has written an authoritative, lucid and compelling analysis of Labour's foreign policy from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1980s. Its relationship to the legacy of liberalism, to socialist internationalism, to colonialism and imperialism and to war - especially the two world wars - figure prominently in this excellent volume. Stefan Berger, The University of Manchester, UK