REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON
When Tim Bouverie’s first book Appeasing Hitler appeared in 2019, it was generally considered to be something of a stunning debut: an eloquent and well-researched history of one of the most written-about periods in British history that put all previous accounts in the shade.
Bouverie’s latest book, Allies at War, is in many ways a follow-up to his first, as it looks at the diplomacy of defeating Hitler that replaced the failed efforts to pander to him. This diplomacy was truly global in scope, involving not just the ‘Big Three’ powers of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but many other nations around the world.
Of course, when war broke out in September 1939, there was no guarantee that there would be such a thing as a ‘Big Three’ at all. Hitler and Stalin were then allies, having agreed a cynical pact to carve up Poland between themselves. The United States was led by a president sympathetic to the plight of Europe but restrained by the widespread mood of isolationism in his country. And then there was Britain, led still by Neville Chamberlain, which – as Bouverie is at pains to point out – barely wanted American involvement in the war.
Excavating Glamorgan and Monmouthsire