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Brian Jenkins. Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War . Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. Pp. 541. $49.95 (cloth).

treats an episode in the history of British foreign policy where the lessons and legacy of Munich played a decisive role. In the earlier examples, this decisive role was explained by the continuity of personnel, albeit now the policy makers and power brokers were those men who had avoided the tar of “Cato’s” brush, and, as a consequence, were acutely conscious of avoiding repetition of the mistakes made and the reputations earned by the Guilty Men in 1938. The shameful memory of Munich predetermined Churchill’s policy towards the Soviets, British involvement in the Korean War, Eden’s political suicide in his handling of the Suez Crisis, and Harold Macmillan’s policy during the Berlin Wall Crisis (1958–62). The legacy remained powerful throughout the Cold War and past it, too, and Hughes demonstrates how the rhetoric of anti-appeasement constructed and constricted British foreign policy and war making in Thatcher’s Falkland Islands conflict and all the way to Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, diplomatic and international historians and International Relations specialists have long been tracing the Munich motif, pausing at various intervals (and usually on anniversaries) to remark upon the contemporary resonances of appeasement debates. Here we have a work of framing and reframing, and of synthesis, vividly illustrated by the fact that a third of the book is made up by the end notes and the bibliography. In this respect it will certainly be a useful resource for students and a welcome addition to the modern British history syllabus. As a history of and about contemporary resonances, it will also be a valuable reference work for policy makers and journalists as they try to place in context the Munich moment of the moment. Hughes makes the provocative point that “the rhetoric of postwar anti-appeasement often caused policy makers to embrace morally-driven absolutist positions in international affairs” (191), thereby rendering a number of policy options permanently unavailable. But the most exciting insights are to be found in the exploration of the personal and domestic fallout of foreign policy crises, demonstrating how each postwar foreign policy crisis was performed and narrated as a sequel to the Munich Crisis.