After Suez: Adrift In The American Century

Description:
This book talks about a British Prime Minister urging a sceptical public to war in the Middle East, and a project, both desperate and ambitious, to radically change the political landscape of the Arab world. With Tony Blair and George Bush's authority ever more threatened by the blowback from their venture in the Middle East, the Suez Crisis of 1956, which brought down a government and changed the pattern of world politics for ever, has taken on a new relevance. The similarities with contemporary Iraq leap out, as do the differences. Fifty years after Antony Eden's fateful decision to take on the Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, veteran Guardian journalist Martin Woollacott retraces the legacy of this dramatic foreign policy blunder. Bringing to life the personalities and moods of the post-war scene, he shows how Suez changed the Middle East, Britain, and the world.

Review:
The Observer Review, 1 October 2006 'Wisely, veteran Guardian journalist Martin Woollacott did not set out to prospect for new nuggets. Rather, he uses Suez as a peg on which to hang some illuminating reflections about the West and the Middle East and to follow British policy in an era dominated by the expansion of American power, until both faltered at the gates of Baghdad. - Barry Turner GOOD BOOK GUIDE '.. this is a penetrating analysis of the 'two greatest disasters in modern British history''; OLDIE 'Woollacott, in typically deft sentences, says it all...' - Tim Llewellyn NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS 'In a new and convincingly argued book, Martin Woollacott traces a direct line from the Suez disaster to the United States' 2003 interventions in Iraq and the related effects on US and British foreign policy and on the situation in the Middle East.' - Sir Brian Urquhart TRIBUNE '..captures the dynamics of the Anglo-American relationship' - Anna Whiston

Author Biography:
Martin Woollacott is a Foreign Affairs commentator for the Guardian, having previously been their Foreign News Editor for six years. In over forty years experience as a journalist he has won six awards, including the James Cameron Award for his coverage of Kurdistan in 1991, and was nominated International Reporter of the Year for his coverage of the Vietnam war in 1975.