202. Fall following the decline
The Chanak crisis of 1922 brought Britain to the brink of war with Turkey. Saner heads, in particular those of both the British general on the spot and the Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal, soon to be Tu...
7 Jul 202414min
201. Decline before the fall
In 1921 and 1922, the sharks were beginning to circle around Lloyd George. While he thought that getting a Peace Treaty for Ireland was a major success, many felt dissatisfied with a compromise that g...
30 Jun 202414min
200. Ireland partitioned
Would Britain go to war in Ireland? Was military action its only available response to the republican party, Sinn Fein, and its determination to govern an independent nation from its own parliament, t...
23 Jun 202414min
199. Unaffordable, looming wars
We saw last week that Britain wasn’t in any fit state to go fighting more wars in 1919. Having got out of the bloodiest war in history (up to then), a deep war-weariness had set in amongst the combata...
16 Jun 202414min
198. Unfit for heroes
At the end of the First World War, a devastating worldwide flu pandemic killed perhaps as many as 50-100 million around the globe, and even 228,000 in Britain. That was a cruel addition to the 880,000...
9 Jun 202414min
197. White Man's Burden
Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, is a song of praise to the selflessness of the white man who goes out to the lands of benighted savages and gives them the benefits of his wisdom and ki...
2 Jun 202414min
196. An independent Ireland?
The 1918 election was a disaster for the Liberal Party. Although Lloyd George’s faction, inside the coalition government with the Conservatives, took 127 seats, the Liberals independent of the coaliti...
26 Mai 202414min
195. Empires collapsing, women voting, a coalition campaigning
The return of peace after the First World War might have heralded the arrival of a time of tranquillity. Sadly, it didn’t. Too much had changed. Four empires, three venerable and one an unpstart, had ...
19 Mai 202414min
