A.J.P. Taylor

War has been throughout history the curse and inspiration of mankind. The sufferings and destruction that accompany it rival those caused by famine, plague and natural catastrophes. Yet in nearly every civilisation war has been the noblest of professions, and among the heroes of every age those distinguished in war have always ranked first, as a visit to St Paul’s Cathedral will bear witness. In many civilisations, war has been a once-for-all affair: the conquest of neighbouring territory or the repulse of an invader. In some, however, war between contending states has gone on for generations – the Times of Trouble, in Toynbee’s phrase. Ancient Greece experienced such a Time, and there followed one of the first attempts to limit the sufferings of war, as the Olympic Games indicate. But the Greek wars were not ended by moderation and wise agreement. They were ended by the Roman conquest, which provided one solution to the problem of war: the establishment of a single dominant power that subdued or eliminated all other contenders.

Liverpool has always been a special case in British politics. At first glance the pattern may appear much the same as anywhere else: Whig and Tory, Liberal and Conservative, with Labour intruding towards the end. The names may be the same: their significance was widely different. For instance, Unitarians provided early 19th-century Liverpool with its intellectual aristocracy. Somewhat later, Liverpool more than anywhere else produced that strange anomaly, the Conservative working man, who kept Liverpool Toryism afloat. Liverpool was also distinguished by the rule of the party boss. The Conservatives had a whole dynasty of them: Sir Arthur Forwood, Sir Archibald Salvidge and Sir Thomas White. Even Labour followed the example thus set, in the person of John Braddock, a founder member of the Communist Party who lapsed into respectability. Perhaps one should include his wife Bessie in the list.

The festschrift, a collection of essays in honour of a senior professor, used to be dismissed as a rather tiresome German habit. Now, I think, it has become embedded in English academic procedure. A festschrift is a gratifying compilation to receive and sets an interesting task for the contributor. But it is the most difficult type of book to review. Where is the underlying theme, the spirit that holds together, in this case, 24 historical essays ranging from the question of who, if anyone, wrote the poems attributed to Homer to the imperialism and bellicosity of Great Britain before the First World War? I contemplated this problem gloomily for a long time and then stumbled on the answer.

Maybe there was once a time when the British Foreign Secretary, occasionally assisted by the staff of the Foreign Office, conducted British foreign policy single-handed. This was by no means the case during the Second World War or even after it. Winston Churchill, when Prime Minister, ran foreign policy with only expostulations here and there from the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and Eden certainly did not take much notice of the Foreign Office when making his interventions. The Treasury had one foreign policy, the Ministry of Economic Warfare had another. The Chiefs of Staff had a foreign policy – usually rather wild – and so did the Political Warfare Executive. The War Cabinet counted for more than the Foreign Office, as did the press, especially the Times when expressing the views of that former member of the Foreign Office, Professor E.H. Carr. Rothwell says apologetically: ‘At the very least, to study British foreign policy from the standpoint of Foreign Office officials can scarcely be an invalid exercise.’ I doubt whether this book tells the reader much about British foreign policy and its motives. At best, it is a competent précis of ‘what one clerk said to another clerk’ during a period when great events were happening a long way from Whitehall.