Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The book is a soap opera as well as a history book. It has these three central characters of Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and George Clemenceau and all took place in such a short space of time, as well as all these mad folkloric characters from Greek, Turkey, Australia, South Africa. This event was the transition from the British Empire to the American Empire.
Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers.
This is the best short-cut to the history of the 20th century. She focuses on the meeting between Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson that decided what the new boundaries would be for the world at Versailles in 1919. On one level it is a great human drama, with Italy popping in and out depending on the state of its government, the origins of the conflict between Greece and Turkey and the Iraq war. That is all the fault of a woman who was a bit in love with Lawrence of Arabia and insisted on creating this country, Iraq. Rupert Murdoch’s father makes an appearance and what has happened in Palestine has its roots here too. Everything for right or wrong in the 20th century, the League of Nations and then the UN… all started here.
The book is a soap opera as well as a history book. It has these three central characters as well as all these mad folkloric characters from Greek, Turkey, Australia, South Africa, and it all took place in such a short space of time. This event was the transition from the British Empire to the American Empire.
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James Purnell, Labour politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde from 2001 to 2010, is currently the head of the Open Left project at the left-leaning think tank Demos. He has previously served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; he resigned from the government on 4 June 2009, criticising the leadership of Gordon Brown. He says power with no ideas is hollow, and ideas without power are irrelevant and a betrayal of the ideas themselves.
What is Peacemakers about?
It was published in 2001 and written by Margaret Macmillan, and this is the book that made her, because she took a fresh look at the Versailles Treaty – about which we thought we already knew enough. Where The Laughing Diplomat was very much about the diplomatic lifestyle, here is the high policy: here are those compromises that have to be made between nations, which can be disastrous in their outcome or, in a more unexpected way, can actually do some good. And the beautiful story she tells is how men of goodwill did try to make the Second World War impossible. The Italians, the Chinese and the Japanese put in brief appearances, but it’s mainly about the clash of these three great men – Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson, and the Germans playing their part as best they could. Individually, she takes you through their motivations, their style of operating, and their attempts to get things right.
Does she see the failure to prevent the war as being theirs?
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Michael Maclay worked for the British Foreign Office in West Africa, at the United Nations in New York, and on European and Southern African Affairs. After working as a journalist he returned to the Foreign Office as Special Adviser to Douglas Hurd, dealing mainly with the European Union and the Balkans. After the signature of the Dayton Agreement he served with Carl Bildt, International High Representative for Bosnia, as his Special Adviser and Spokesman. He is now Executive Chairman of Montrose Associates, a London-based company providing strategic intelligence and advice on politics and business around the world to international corporations and government agencies.
