The Decline of Power, 1915–1964

Between the disintegration of the Liberal Party in 1915 and the election of Harold Wilson''s Labour in 1964, Britain weathered a turbulent half-century including two world wars and many profound socio-political changes. What did not survive this tumult was Britain''s sea-based Empire, as the great land-based USA and USSR now assumed dominance. With customary wit, scholarship and wisdom Robert Blake guides the reader through Britain''s slow decline from the world''s premier power to a nation with no military commitments East of Suez: still important, wishing to see itself as ''a cut above the rest'', but now effectively no better than third-ranking.

''[T]he most successful sections [are] the four brilliant chapters on the Second World War... But it is not only for these that The Decline of Power should be read. It is a fair-minded book... fluently, even racily written...'' Peter Pulzer, London Review of Books