False Prophets

Fascinating... Diary entries, telegrams, diplomatic records and, where possible, interviews with aides and advisers help bring out the psychology, preoccupations and prejudices that framed British decision making. The result is an empathetic but not a sympathetic account. * Guardian, 'Book of the Day' * Ashton gives an authoritative account of this familiar saga... He unravels the diplomatic and political intricacies with enviable skill. -- Piers Brendon * Literary Review * A truly masterly book on a crucial running theme of British history since 1945. It is rich in scholarship, laced with insight and burnished with fluency. Nigel Ashton has a special feel for that fissile terrain where oil, sand, geopolitics and UK foreign policy meet. It is second only to the European Question as a wrecker of premierships and political reputations. False Prophets is a tour de force that will be read for a very long time. -- Peter Hennessy, author of WINDS OF CHANGE Engaging... Ashton frames his study through the lens of 10 Downing Street, showing how its occupants, from Anthony Eden to David Cameron, dealt with successive postwar crises in the world's most hydrocarbon-rich, but politically volatile, region... It has the advantage of shaping a cacophony of confusing events into a highly readable narrative. * Financial TImes * A fascinating and challenging insight into the twists and turns of Britain's relationship with the Middle East. Prime ministers and their diplomatic advisers must understand this history if we are to get better at understanding this region in the future. -- Tom Fletcher, author of THE NAKED DIPLOMAT As Nigel Ashton details in his insightful book False Prophets, successive British prime ministers have been lured into the quick-sands of the Middle East by an exaggerated sense of the threat emanating from the region and by the desire to enhance the UK's special relationship with the US. Too often, Britain's over-estimation of its ability to control events led to interventions that proved detrimental to national interests and compounded the region's problems. -- Emma Sky, author of THE UNRAVELLING A masterful new account of the perceptions and underlying motivations that swept a succession of British prime ministers into (often messy) entanglements in the Middle East, post-1955. Superbly researched and written with tempo, this is a brilliant book; one which will be enjoyed by professional historians and general readers alike - not least because the author has a special eye for those small yet revealing, sometimes ironic, often amusing, moments that history can so delightfully throw our way. -- Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, President and CEO of the International Peace Institute This is an outstanding book, combining a wide-ranging knowledge of the history of the Middle East and of successive prime ministers, interwoven with a vital understanding of Anglo-American relations. It is both stimulating and very well-written. -- Kathleen Burk, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History, University College London As if Anthony Eden's tragic missteps over Suez in 1956 were not warning enough, this lively, sobering account shows how British prime ministers have continued to get drawn into Middle Eastern affairs, often at a high political cost and with little foreign policy gain. -- Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King's College London Nigel Ashton's fascinating, sweeping study, lively and detailed, is of all prime ministers trying to exert their personal authority in the Middle East and to sustain the idea of Britain as a world power. It is a history of ambitions, egos, imperiousness, interventions and often failure, with painful legacies, and it is written with an expert's grasp. -- Dr James Ellison, Reader in History, Queen Mary, University of London Vivid and salutary. * The Tablet * This fascinating book makes a strong case that the volatile mixture of history, economic interests and personal convictions it describes will continue to exert a fateful fascination for British prime ministers. -- Peter Ricketts * Engelsberg Ideas *