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Lion in the Sand: British Policy in the Middle East, 1945–67

There are a number of books that are helping piece together the jigsaw of understanding Britain’s role in the Middle East from the end of the Second World War until the Six-Day War of June 1967. These books offer explanations of different aspects and events of Britain’s interaction with the region, and in many cases also look at the British position in the wider world. Generally speaking, we are able to divide the post-war era until June 1967 into the following periods: 1945–November 1956, post-Suez until the coup d’état in Iraq in 1958, and post-1958 until the Six Day War of June 1967. It is worth noting that the majority of the books continue to be ‘Suez-centric’ – a reflection of the continued interest of this ‘sad little war’ for diplomatic and military historians alike. The British, American and Israeli archives continue to offer a rich seam for historians interested in constructing the narrative of British involvement in the Middle East. The doors of the Arab archives, however, remain firmly shut and this means that many accounts of British interaction with the region are two-dimensional in that they lack the clarity, confirmation and sometimes even revelations that more three-dimensional accounts are able to provide the reader. Historians, however, have to operate within the existing rules of the game and cannot be blamed for the failure of the Arab world to embrace a more enlightened approach to academia.