The Decline of Power, 1915–1964

Robert Blake

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571298259
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• MAPS
• Chapter One: THE FIRST WAR COALITION
• Chapter Two: THE SOMME AND JUTLAND
• Chapter Three: THE SECOND WAR COALITION
• Chapter Four: THE SECOND COALITION IN PEACE
• Chapter Five: THE FALL OF LLOYD GEORGE
• Chapter Six: ELECTION FEVER
• Chapter Seven: BALDWIN’S SECOND INNINGS
• Chapter Eight: THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
• Chapter Nine: THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
• Chapter Ten: REARMAMENT AND ABDICATION
• Chapter Eleven: PRELUDE TO WAR
• Chapter Twelve: WAR
• Chapter Thirteen: REVERSES
• Chapter Fourteen: THE TURN OF THE TIDE
• Chapter Fifteen: VICTORY
• Chapter Sixteen: THE TRIUMPH OF LABOUR
• Chapter Seventeen: THE CONSERVATIVE RECOVERY
• Chapter Eighteen: THE SUEZ CRISIS
• Chapter Nineteen: THE ASCENDANCY OF MACMILLAN
• Chapter Twenty: THE CONSERVATIVE DECLINE
• EPILOGUE
• CHRONOLOGY
• FURTHER READING
• INDEX
• Copyright