Choose Your Weapons

When writing his magnificent life of Robert Peel, Douglas Hurd found himself caught up again in a debate that has always fascinated him as a former diplomat and Foreign Secretary - the argument between the noisy popular liberal interventionist approach and the more conservative diplomatic approach concentrating on co-operation between other nations. The argument has run for two centuries - and is at the heart of heated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic today. Hurd concentrates on personalities and circumstances. He begins with the dramatic antagonism after Waterloo between Canning (liberal, populist, interventionist) and Castlereagh (institutions, compromise, real politics) - the last occasion on which ministerial colleagues fought a duel. A generation later comes Palmerston vs Aberdeen, from which Palmerston, the noisy interventionist, emerged the victor. A fascinating, but forgotten vignette is provided by the quarrel between Disraeli and his old friend and Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, which led to Derby resigning as a protest against jingoism and Disraeli spreading the rumour that Lady Derby was leaking secrets to the Russian Ambassador. Salisbury and then Edward Grey wrestled with the same dilemma in the context of imperialism (Salisbury) and the European balance of power (Grey). Between the wars, another vignette describing Austen Chamberlain, the decent, monocled Foreign Secretary who began as an idealist (Locarno Treaty) and ended as a passionate opponent of appeasement. Finally Eden and Bevin, from wholly different backgrounds, combined with the Americans to create a post-war compromise, which served its purpose for half a century, but is coming apart today as the old questions resurface in new and savage forms in an era of terrorism and racial conflict.

ISBN 0297853341   Pages 448 ISBN13 9780297853343 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 734 Publisher Orion Publishing Co   Published in London Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson   Height (mm) 234 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 153 Publication date 18 Feb 2010   Spine width (mm) 36 DEWEY 327.41   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

'Douglas Hurd has done the impossible...he has produced a page-turning book about the history of British foreign policy.' -- Denis MacShane THE INDEPENDENT 'Hurd elegantly profiles eleven British foreign secretaries... Written with a lightness of touch despite its serious message, one only hopes David Miliband buys a copy.' GQ 'One of the great achievements of this thoughtful and elegant book is to emphasise the thread of continuity running through British foreign policy from the age of Napoleon to the cold war... a book of great authority and insight.' -- Dominic Sandbrook THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Highly readable... I enjoyed Choose Your Weapons immensely, particularly the magnificently colourful account of the Bevin and Eden years... it is also a timely book... Any future foreign secretary would be well advised to read this engrossing book on their first day in office.' -- Jack Straw THE OBSERVER 'a highly readable fusion of archival scholarship and personal experience, mixing vivid portrayals of the personalities and private lives of their chosen protagonists with cool analysis of the policy choices they made' -- John Campbell MAIL ON SUNDAY 'This is a fascinating book' -- David Owen GUARDIAN 'Hurd brings forward the arguments from history to consider the role of diplomacy in the modern world, and how a British government has to balance the interests of the nation with the ideals which its leaders and its people prefer.' TOTAL POLITICS 'it is Hurd's own viewpoint - as a longtime occupant of the Foreign Secretary's awe-inspring room- that gives this book the sort of insider perspective that Roy Jenkins gave to his life of Churchill.' COUNTRY LIFE 'full of wry, unillusioned wisdom. There are some delicious apercus... All Douglas Hurd's characters are portrayed sympathetically, even when they fail.' -- Bruce Anderson THE INDEPENDENT 'That Douglas Hurd was once Foreign Secretary lends piquancy to his elegant account of that office... a very canny, diplomatic book.' -- Stuart Kelly SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'this elegant examination of the contrasting strands of British foreign policiy from the Napoleonic wars to the Suez debacle... is an entertaining book, enriched by the insights of an experienced practitioner.' THE ECONOMIST 'Diplomatic relations make for riveting reading in Douglas Hurd's new book Choose Your Weapons' THE LADY 'Every so often in Choose Your Weapons the Foreign Office can be seen tryiing to match the means and ends of policy. The next such exercise must now be overdue.' -- Christopher Fildes THE TABLET 'elegant, stimulating and shrewdly perceptive... David Cameron, would be well advised to read it and then pass his copy on to shadow foreign secretary William Hague.' THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST (IRELAND) 'His entertaining new book, Choose Your Weapons, looks at the lives and impact of British Foreign Secretaries from Canning and Castlereagh in the first decades of the 19th century to Eden and Bevin in the middle of the 20th' STANDPOINT 'Although ostensibly a work of history [Douglas Hurd] neatly comments, by allusion and implication, on the current state of foreign affairs in Britain.' THE CHAP MAGAZINE '[Hurd and Young] tell their story well, and always with a good eye for the revealing detail.' TLS 'CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS is a fascinating book which should give pause to those who thoughtlessly claim that knowledge of the past is irrelevant to the conduct of affairs in the present.' HISTORY REVIEW

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