When lists are compiled of our best and worst prime ministers (before the present incumbent), the two main protagonists of this book usually feature, holding the top and bottom positions.
Attempts are periodically made to revise these verdicts, most recently in John McDonnell’s description of Churchill as a villain; and by Robert Harris’s sympathetic portrayal of Chamberlain in his thriller Munich. By and large, however, the general view of the two PMs remains fixed: Churchill was a hero who saved his country and arguably freedom and democracy worldwide, while Chamberlain was a purblind and arrogant fool who let Hitler stomp his jackboots all over him.
The revisionists who want to change those verdicts will get little comfort from this absorbing study of appeasement, the flagship policy of Chamberlain’s woeful premiership. Tim Bouverie has cast his net wide in telling the story, successfully melding the escalating acts of aggression by Europe’s Nazi and Fascist dictators abroad with the reaction to these events in Britain.
What is striking about Bouverie’s gripping narrative, as a distant cloud in the sky escalates into the thunderheads of looming war, is the complacent, escapist inaction, not only of the ruling political establishment, but of the general public at large.
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